Congrats to Channel 4’s Public Broadcast Gaming initiative! And Alice Taylor!

I just tried Bow Street Runners and by golly it’s amazing! I really enjoyed it! It’s really good lookin’ and even educational! Which seems to be the point of Public Broadcast Gaming – creating games that educate. For example – I didn’t know gin had such a societal impact on London in the 18th century. I learned that just by clicking on a bottle – they called it Madame Geneva. So after the game episode I looked it up and listened to a BBC podcast on the subject – apparently it was a female craze. Really interesting!
The game is in unison with the Channel 4 series, City of Vice, which I ofcourse aim to see now that I’ve played the first episode of the game!

In the 1750s London’s perilous streets were run by armed gangs, corrupt night watchmen and thief takers. Then two Westminster magistrates, novelist Henry Fielding and his brother, John, obtained a grant from Parliament allowing them to bring some law and order to the crime-ridden boroughs of Central London.

Everything in the game is historically correct. Fielding startet the Bow Street Runners – policemenn in Covent Garden, which was completely run down. So you play a Bow Street Runner – you’re the investigator. The sound effects are excellent, the picture, lucious and the point-and-click mechanism works really well. It pays to be curious and you really feel the atmosphere and time period. I’m really impressed. But at this point in my life I’m finding that what I think is really cool and fun, isn’t always in coallition with ‘the kids’ – so who knows?! I wish them the best of luck!

Maybe NRKs next? They had a ski challenge game a while back, do you think they’ll consider going into Public Broadcast Gaming as well – oh that would be fun! I wonder if they have an education policy? I know they have a cultural policy, but what about education?

Perhaps it will be discussed at the Computer Games As Learning conference on the 21st of april in Oslo? The conference is organised by ITU – IT-Research and Competence in Education and I’ll definitely be there, probably wearing my journalism hat.
I find it so scary that I had never heard of them before! Has my head been stuck in the clouds or too far up my own ass? This has been happening to me constantly lately – there’s so many organisations, networks, departments and government groups I didn’t know existed before I became a journalist. It’s fun to learn – but scary to realise how little I know…you know what I mean?

Anyway – Alice doesn’t dissapoint – Aleks has a great interview at The Guardian.

Do I seem rushed? Well – I’ve just postponed all the work I was supposed to do this weekend to this sunday night – why? why do I do this to myself? So now I’m off to learn about .odf’s vs. .oxml’s.