gaming
Rules
Bruno Faidutti has written his thoughts about the merits of designing rules simply and with particular clarity:
The essence of a game is in its rulebook – the rules of the game are autonomous, complete, finite and known by all players. This may even be what makes games different from most other human activities, whose rules are never as autonomous, as complete, as finite and as clear, which may explain why the latter are often more burdensome and frustrating than the former. This game rules set is virtual, and is the fundamental creation, half literary and half logical, of the game’s author. It has to be explained to the gamers as fast, clearly and completely as possible. The main way to do this is the written rules set. Let’s talk now only of this written rulebook, or at least rule sheet.
read the rest of his editorial here if you wish
via @metagaming
Pinballistic De-Evolution
Jason Kottke mentioned this post about the economics of pinball, which brings up questions about more than just what our all-time high scores were:
Black Knight brought pinball to a new level, literally speaking because it was among the first games with ramps and elevated flippers, but even more importantly because it brought a new challenge that drew in and solidified a pinball crowd. In doing so it also set the pinball market on a path that would eventually lead to its demise.
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Remembering the contributions of Phil Dodds
Mark Oehlert, an acquaintance of mine via Twitter, turned me onto his friend Phil Dodds, who turns out was not only in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but contributed a great deal to our culture in his short life, including, but not limited to, SCORM:
From Wikipedia:
He was the chief architect of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) under the guidance of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, a project of the United States Department of Defense. The ADL SCORM is widely perceived as a means to achieve interoperability, accessibility and reuse of the component pieces of web-based instruction, irrespective of Learning Management Systems. Philip’s work on SCORM will continue as hundreds of organizations around the world continue their collective efforts to resolve remaining issues associated with SCORM’s Simple Sequencing Models, such as a lack of common instructional strategies and taxonomies (common definitions) for learning objects.
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Walks the walk: Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol is an interesting fellow, particularly in the context that he writes in a unique way about gaming and its influence on culture. Not to mention, the trajectory and contrast of his own story against what he writes makes him an authentic source IMO.
I am anticipating the arrival of his book, This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities published by the University of Michigan Press.
Amazon’s product description reads like this:
“In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a video game.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me.â€
So begins this story of personal redemption through the unlikely medium of electronic games. Quake, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and other online games not only offered author Jim Rossignol an excellent escape from the tedium of office life. They also provided him with a diverse global community and a job—as a games journalist.
Part personal history, part travel narrative, part philosophical reflection on the meaning of play, This Gaming Life describes Rossignol’s encounters in three cities: London, Seoul, and Reykjavik. From his days as a Quake genius in London’s increasingly corporate gaming culture; to Korea, where gaming is a high-stakes televised national sport; to Iceland, the home of his ultimate obsession, the idiosyncratic and beguiling Eve Online, Rossignol introduces us to a vivid and largely undocumented world of gaming lives.
Torn between unabashed optimism about the future of games and lingering doubts about whether they are just a waste of time, This Gaming Life also raises important questions about this new and vital cultural form. Should we celebrate the “serious†educational, social, and cultural value of games, as academics and journalists are beginning to do? Or do these high-minded justifications simply perpetuate the stereotype of games as a lesser form of fun? In this beautifully written, richly detailed, and inspiring book, Rossignol brings these abstract questions to life, immersing us in a vibrant landscape of gaming experiences.
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Sirikata : BSD-licensed platform for virtual worlds
Sirikata is an BSD licensed open source platform for virtual worlds. The aim is to provide a set of libraries and protocols which can be used to deploy a virtual world, as well as fully featured sample implementations of services for hosting and deploying these worlds. The team is aiming for an alpha release in Q2 2009 and this video teaser should give us some sense of what to expect.
Exciting stuff.
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iGame
This could spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the gaming industry and its plethora of hardware platforms – what if all you needed to play your favorite games was a cable and the device you carry with you all day anyways:
Read more here.
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Tag : Complete
Tag isn’t just a documentary, it’s a chad-calease-made odyssey on the subject of a game that touches everything we do.
Enjoy the trailer.
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WuChess.com
RZA is a huge chess fan and plays not just for kicks but also in formal competition.
For those of us who dig the game and the music, we have a new place to play online.
WuChess.com is RZA’s latest project, bringing the cultures of hip-hop and chess together under one URL.
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Spain : games
As some of you may know, i’m nearing completion on a documentary about the game of Tag.
Safe to say I have a rather compulsive interest in games of all kinds.
My good friend Bergey made this vid earlier in the year about games they play in Espain :
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Machinima
Some of you may remember this rather unorthodox, though, significant event in online history :
Machinima (pronounced /məˈʃiËÂnÉ™mÉ™/ or /məˈʃɪnÉ™mÉ™/), a portmanteau of machine cinema, is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation video games are typically used. Consequently, the rendering can be done in real-time using PCs (either using the computer of the creator or the viewer), rather than with complex 3D engines using huge render farms. Usually, machinima productions are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game.
Machinima is an example of emergent gameplay, a process of putting game tools to unexpected ends, and of artistic computer game modification. The real-time nature of machinima means that established techniques from traditional film-making can be reapplied in a virtual environment. As a result, production tends to be cheaper and more rapid than in keyframed CGI animation. It can also produce more professional appearing production than is possible with traditional at-home techniques of live video tape, or stop action using live actors, hand drawn animation or toy props.
As machinima begins to break out of the underground community of gamers and becomes more widely recognized by mainstream audiences, tools are being developed to allow for faster and easier creation of machinima productions. A number of upcoming machinima products are expected to provide machinimators with original assets, as well as advanced features such as a timeline, gesture and sound creation, and precise camera tools.
Although most often used to produce recordings that are later edited as in conventional film, machinima techniques have also occasionally been used for theatre. A New York improvisational comedy group called the ILL Clan voice and puppet their characters before a virtual camera to produce machinima displayed on a screen to a live audience.
[definition compliments of wikipedia]
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YAVGM : Max Payne
Yet Another Video Game Movie : Max Payne
Is there still hope for the movies made around games? Your guess is as good as mine.
Personally, I will have an affinity for the ones made after games I’ve played and liked.
My pal Ryan turned me on to the game when it came out and we played it for a few weeks with some interest. I just don’t have the time or attention enough to get deeply committed to these types of games and that’s prolly a good thing.
I do remember that the story behind the game was compelling to me at that time, tho, so it will be interesting to see how it translates into the theatre.
Who knows, it might be cool. Mark Wahlberg was great in Boogie Nights.
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don’t forget : spore is coming soon
From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPOREâ„¢, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.
Tide Pool Phase
Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
Creature Phase
Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!
Tribal Phase
Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for, giving tools to and guilding the interactions of an entire tribe.
Civilization Phase
Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.
Space Phase
The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.
So, enough already : check it out :
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Tag : trailer
[thinfilms] is in post-production for a feature documentary about the game of Tag.
a trailer for the film is now on youtube. if you’ve contributed to the film in any way, please know what it means to us – this is a labor of love that represents over 120 hours of footage featuring interviews with people of all ages and cultures describing the game, its countless variations and the ways in which they shape who we are and everything we do. the making of this film has indeed been a remarkable journey and it couldn’t have come this far without all of you. Thank you.
meanwhile, keep an eye peeled for an update about the full release coming in 2008.
we trust this finds you well and enjoying some play time every day, nurturing the whimsical spirit that Tag brings out in each of us.
sincerely,
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WOW : Wrath of the Lich King
For sub.atomic.fusion :
In the cold, harsh northlands…
The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King’s will and end his reign of terror for all time.
Blizzard Entertainment’s latest expansion to World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King – adds a host of epic content to the existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore a vast new continent, and battle other high-level heroes to determine the fate of Azeroth. As you pit yourself against the dangers of the north…
PREPARE!
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