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The Guide's best games of 2011 | Technology | The Guardian - 4 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...the-guides-best-games-of-2011 games
shared by Ed Webb on 17 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 23 Dec 11
     
    I only know one, Portal 2. Time to play more!
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Raph's Website » Rules versus mechanics - 2 views

www.raphkoster.com/...rules-versus-mechanics games fundamentals production design rules
shared by Brett Boessen on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 15 Dec 11
     
    Nice fine-grained discussion of one designer's distinction between "rules" and "mechanics."
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Ludwig, physics game - 4 views

www.playludwig.com/en science physics
shared by Todd Bryant on 06 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 06 Dec 11
     
    Says 11+ for audience, but review is very promising
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Study of mobile gamers - 1 views

blog.flurry.com/...The-New-Mass-Market-Powerhouse mobile
shared by Bryan Alexander on 30 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 30 Nov 11
     
    Women more into mobile games than men.
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MinecraftEdu - 2 views

minecraftedu.com/index.php gaming
shared by Lisa Spiro on 14 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 14 Nov 11
     
    Not sure about this. Really not sure about it.
  • Erik Hanson on 16 Nov 11
     
    From what I can tell, the game is really popular with k-12 kids. The idea might be worth considering, but that doesn't make this a good implementation.
  • Lisa Spiro on 30 Nov 11
     
    "MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom. "
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Anthropology of Social Behavior in BioShock - 2 views

www.playthepast.org/?p=2169 gamestudies game simulation virtual_world
shared by Bryan Alexander on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 Nov 11
     
    While playing BioShock, we are conducting an anthropological investigation that has a direct effect on how we interact with the narrative and the choices we make. Similar to Fallout 3, as discussed in Trevor's post, we are given the chance to explore a world, make our interpretations about what it means, and directly apply these to the game.
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Is the Recession the Next Big Video Game Bad Guy? - 2 views

kotaku.com/...he-next-big-video-game-bad-guy gaming
shared by Bryan Alexander on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 Nov 11
     
    Interesting discussion about the ways large-scale games respond to current events.
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How All Knowledge Work Will Be Gamified - Technology Review - 2 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27356 gamification
shared by Ed Webb on 22 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 22 Nov 11
     
    Anything that can be tracked can be gamified. Shoot me now
  • Erik Hanson on 23 Nov 11
     
    Do I get extra points for a headshot?
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The "Rattomorphism" of Gamification | Critical Gaming Project - 3 views

depts.washington.edu/...-rattomorphism-of-gamification games design production consumption theory criticism
shared by Brett Boessen on 21 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • the revelation born out in long term studies is that ultimately it backfires. Over time, people engaged in activities that are structured by and sustained through operant conditioning grow to resent or hate those activities, and their creativity in approach as well as their productivity declines.
  • Ian Bogost has done an excellent job identifying gamification rhetoric as bullshit, and suggesting many of its products are exploitationware. In light of Kohn’s work we are compelled to add that the logic of gamification is the logic of corrosion
  • If the goal is to get users to simply DO something, then the logic of gamification may not read as corrosive – just effective
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But if quality of action, emotional engagement, and development over time matter at all, we should be concerned about the corrosive conditioning the techniques of gamification entail
  • The problem is that there is no such thing as a “game layer,” if we understand “game” to mean something more than an assemblage of techniques we find in games
  • What we are really talking about here is more like a “reward layer,” or more abstractly, an activity “feedback layer” that draws its inspiration from techniques associated with games, and thus evokes expectations of gameplay
  • Erik Hanson on 23 Nov 11
     
    The final bit is what I said to Bogost when he was in town earlier this year, shortly after his post in the link. If there's an upshot to "gamification" as a movement and idea, it's that our feedback systems are woefully underdesigned. Not everything needs to be made "fun," but clear goals and feedback could make a lot of things less un-fun.
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Video games are the answer to the New Boring | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...video-games-versus-new-boring gamification games gaming engagement television TV media opinion
shared by Ed Webb on 22 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • And then there's Saint's Row 3, an open-world crime shooter, that seems to have been concocted entirely by hyperactive 14-year-olds force fed on a diet of sherbet, Red Bull and Korean gangster movies. This is a game in which the player can, entirely at random, bludgeon passers-by with a giant dildo. To the best of my knowledge, Downton Abbey features nothing even remotely comparable – although, to be fair, I skipped most of season two, and may have missed a key scene in which Hugh Bonneville attacks his butler with some nightmarish Edwardian device intended for the cure of female hysteria.
  • Please, if you are a parent and you want something to do with your kids on a wet Sunday afternoon, don't rent the latest heavily marketed CGI bore-fest from a Hollywood studio more interested in selling you merchandise and the moral agenda of its self-serving financers, buy Zelda. Buy Zelda and share a genuinely thrilling, heart-warming escapist fantasy with your children. Certainly, it's not as 'good' as taking them to a museum or getting them to play footie in the park, but if the only alternative is Horrid Henry, it is spectacular – and they will never forget it.
  • Interactivity is a blunt but effective tool to ensure attention and alertness. And as such, video games have never sought to stultify or repress. Video games are not interested in teaching us to make the most out of our tired soft furnishings.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Forget mainstream TV, forget it. It's over – at least in terms of water cooler discussion. Apprentice and X-Factor may reliably trend on Twitter, but it's all ironic chatter mixed with barely-disguised collective embarrassment and culpability. There's nothing enriching there.
  • games demand immersion and investment. Traditionally, this has formed a stereotype of dead-eyed zombies slumped in front of monitors, but of course, through XBox Live and PSN, gamers now constantly communicate with each other, as well as share creative tasks in titles like Little Big Planet and Minecraft. New research from Michigan State University suggests that gamers are more imaginative story-tellers – the findings are far from conclusive, but they don't surprise me. The game worlds in Zelda, Uncharted and Dark Souls are rich and deep. They are cluttered with possibilities.
  • Games get to us on some primal level, they speak to the machine code of the human id – and that can be a good thing.
  • You have your doubts and so do I. But the very least mainstream games do is give us a platform to discuss amazing things. When you talk about Zelda or Uncharted 3, you can talk about beauty, art, mythology and adventure; when you talk about the forthcoming Bioshock: Infinite, you can cover architecture, paranoia and politics and it all makes perfect sense. These elements aren't hidden away, to be teased out by cultural studies students desperate to apply their knowledge of Derrida and Saussure. They're there in the very form, the very function of the games. Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 are idiotic and politically suspect, but give them five minutes and they'll show you more about the computerised lunacy of contemporary conflict than most of those MOD-arranged shaky cam war reports beamed into your living rooms by over-stretched 24-hour news channels
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IARPA funding serious games - 1 views

www.networkworld.com/...ets-105m-develop-serious-games simulation
shared by Bryan Alexander on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 20 Nov 11
     
    These games are supposed to teach players to recognize their biases.
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Banana Pepper Martinis: Content Degradation in Modern Warfare 3 - 3 views

literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/...ation-in-modern-warfare-3.html gaming analysis opinion
shared by Ed Webb on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 18 Nov 11
     
    design/content dichotomy
  • Bryan Alexander on 18 Nov 11
     
    First off: that blog has the greatest header image. Second, I think he's dead right about gradual degradation. Sequel syndrome.
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