Magnet and Funcom’s Dreamfall have been nominated for ‘Best Video Game Score’ at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards’! Excellent, excellent, excellent!!!! I’m so proud!!!! Oh…how I hope they win!!! Maybe then things will start blossoming in this country – and investors will be running after game designers!
Magnet being a ‘Bergenser’ makes my heart pound even harder!!! Hats off to them and congratulations Funcom!!! I shamefully haven’t played it yet! But is number one on my list!!!
Category Archives: Game Culture
Battleship:GoogleEarth
This is a very novel and great idea! Julian Bleecker, a Research Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication has come up with this game by using Google Earth as “a platform for realtime mobile gaming”:
“The mechanic I’m experimenting with is simpler. One person places their ships
using Google Earth and the other person goes out in the normal world with a
mobile phone, a GPS connected to the mobile phone. The phone has a small Python
script on it that reads the GPS and sends the data to the game engine, which
then updates the Google Earth KML model showing the current state of the game
grid. When the player who’s trying to sink the ships wants to try for a hit,
they call into the game engine and say “drop”. The game reads back the
coordinates at which the “peg” was dropped and shortly thereafter, the other
player will see the peg appear at the coordinate it was dropped. If the peg hits
one of the ships, it’s a Hit, otherwise it’s a miss. ”
I don’t see myself putting up the effort, though. But I have to say…the ideas are just blossoming in my head on something I might actually want to do! I’m thinking games that may take a while though!
Yeah…I would know absolutely nothing interesting if it wasn’t for Mark Wallace.
Oooh…and this might not be the right place to write about this – but you REALLY should check out the Project Good Luck blog! It’s a bunch of MIT students who are on a trip to explore “social networks and their intersection with mobile media” in CHINA(I’m so freakin envious)!! I emphasise ‘really’ because I haven’t been in for a look since Henry Jenkins mentioned it (trying to be selective on my subscription feeds)….and they’ve really done a lot of cool stuff since then!!! Very enjoyable and EXTREMELY interesting!!!
WTF!!
Umh…I don’t really know what to say, which is weird since I’m blogging about this, but I can’t figure out if I’m crying because I’m laughing or laughing because I’m crying! And what the hell is the message behind these lyrics? He knows this great bot named Anna who turns out to be a beautiful woman, but he doesn’t care because to him she will always be a bot? WTF? Anyways! This is a must see!!!
(Stolen from Wonderland)
10 Manliest Games of all time
Awwww!!!! Someone’s written up a list of the “10 manliest video games of all time” – how adorable and sweet isn’t that?!!!
“First of all, video games are often best enjoyed simultaneously with other
manly activities such as chewing and drinking. Video games are also widely
shunned by the female population, thus making them a sort of rebellion against
our female oppressors”Awww….you poor oppressed dude!
Seriously though…the list really is rather cool after getting over my girlish giggles! There’s some really lovely blasts from the past and some I was suprised to find on such a list. Ikaruga?
I’m amused!! Truely!
Yay! Henry Jenkins is blogging!
What joy!!! Definitely a welcome presence!
Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and just a MUST READ!
I’ve just read his post “Fun vs. Engagement: The Case of the Great Zoombinis” where I was introduced to Scott Osterweil’s at The Education Arcade and his captivating podcast.
It’s so good to see discussions and research about learning and games beyond ‘just’ simulations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for simulation games, but I do believe there is a clearer learning power in actual gameplay. And ofcourse this has been a topic for a long time – I guess I just understand the language so much better!
“What we did when we started designing Zoobinis was to try to think about our own experience with the mathematics of the game and try to access our own learning of it — trying to remember what it was like to encounter the subject in school or thinking about how we’d use the subject in our daily lives and try to identify times when we had been playful with the concepts in the past. In fact, most of us when we are trying to master something we find ways to be playful to it and in accessing our own playful approach to the material what we were really doing was finding the game that was inherent in the mathematics. Instead of putting math in the game, we tried to find the game in the math” – Osterweil
Daily Show On Violent Video Games
So…there’s a lot of yoo ha in the states about violent video games and whether retailers should be forced by law to follow the ESRB’s recomendations. So pretty much what we have here in Europe – if the game’s rated 15 retailers should make sure not to sell to under 15 year olds. Now…if a grandma decides to buy an 18 rated game for her 14 year old grandson – that’s her problem. I’m so tempted to become a ludologist here – because sometimes I really do feel that the fiction of a game just provides the rules for gameplay, it’s meaning isn’t that essential when playing games. But – then I realize that I’m just saying that because I enjoy violent gameplay (although it’s been a while now!). Anyways!!!! I found this video hysterical! His new rating of “Child trapped in man’s body” is funny and the politicians are just soooo amusing as well!!!
The Most Influential Gamers of all Time
MTV Video Game has nominated the 10 most influential video gamers of all time! It’s an interesting list! Of course the sensationalism of business start ups in Second Life, Peter Ludlows expulsion from The Sims Online and e-sports stars are mentioned! But other interesting choices as well!!! Not at all bad!!!
Why User-Generated Content in games is good!!!
The excellent David Edery has compiled a list of why User-Generated Content is good for the gaming industry! I’m not even going to bother to comment – the list speaks for itself!
When technology governs
Mark Wallace had a very honest and reflective post in his blog yesterday about ‘the issue of trademark, copyright and intellectual property rights in Second Life’. There seems to be a lot of trust in Linden Lab’s technology to take care of these rights – but that technology can only govern in its space, Second Life. If someone were to copy these virtual objects into another program – what happens to these issues? If then the object comes back into Second Life but modified from another program? And…well…what about when some of the virtual objects become real, without the original creator’s consent? And…oh I’m on a roll now – with virtual worlds such as Second Life, where citizens are making real money from real businesses – well, Linden Lab can’t protect the intellectual property rights of this, can they…would they?
It seems the IP rights issued for creators in Second Life are governed by technology – the ability to protect objects from being copied technolgically. But ideas and creativity go so far beyond technological restrictions, do they not?
Mr. Wallace feels that laws of the physical world should apply to the metaverse as well. And what I think is so funny in these discussions is the assumption that we’re trying to protect the rights of the little man from being stolen from the big corporational man! Or is it just me? These programs were designed to help creators – to create, to be imaginative, to be free – when we start protecting things with an iron fist of the law (real world) and screaming out “You can’t touch this, this is mine ALL MINE!” (wow – it just dawned on me why MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” is so popular now days) – it tends to put a damper on creativity and freedom to express oneself. If there’s absolutely anything this whole Web 2.0 movement has taught me is that you can actually trust people to create, be thoughtful and respectful at the same time. Give them the trust and they’ll give you a lovely gift economy.
I guess I’m wondering, what’s stopping the Creative Commons being involved in Second Life? I’m actually asking here! Is there really a need to go as far as the courts to deal with this issue? And does someone really have to be sued in ‘small claims court’ in order for people’s creativity to be protected as their own?
I’m very wary of the advocation to get real world courts involved in issues concerning the metaverse, but I find Second Life a difficult issue. It’s gone so far beyond any definition of a game and the protection of ‘the magic circle’, so I really can’t say if I agree with Mr. Wallace’s post or not, I just thought I’d point it out as an interesting read! But I will concur that I don’t think we can trust technology to govern such worlds! As he so cleverly puts it:
“If the focus remains on technology as enforcer of the law, then it will eventually be (as Lawrence Lessig has pointed out) the technologists who are writing the laws. Now, I’m all for technologists, don’t get me wrong. But we didn’t elect them as legislators, did we?”
Griefers
The Guardian has a great article on griefers and the evolving community counter measures to tackle them.
I think it’s interesting how the journalist brings up 2 examples of ‘griefing’ that have caused the debate about gaming ethics (although it’s a discussion that’s been going on forever – at least since the LambdaMoo days).
The first is the EVE Online incident where a group calling themselves the Guiding Hand Social Club, cunningly infiltrated the Ubiqua Seraph corporation and basically ruined them! They worked on this for over a year! I first heard about this after watching one of the State of Play III debates, where Dr. Kjartan Pierre Emilsson brought this up as an example of how sometimes developers just have to shrug and say “Hey! It’s all part of the gameplay!”. I remember being so amused and uttering a little ‘Yay!’. The debate harrowed in the community, however.
The second example, is ofcourse when World Of Warcraft mourners (mourning the death of a real life player in WoW) were completely ambushed by a rival guild. Which was ofcourse seen as disrespectful and awful.
But these two examples are not griefing incidents, in my opinion! And we can’t start punishing players for how they’re playing the game. I mean most of these outcries are like children screaming “BUT IT’S SOOOO UNFAIR!”. It reminds me a lot about my life at the moment. I’m moaning and groaning about my thesis and my friends and family are hitting back with “For crying out loud, Linn! Will you please just get over yourself and finish the goddamn thing! Stop taking yourself so bloody seriously!” – the analogy here is me being the screaming child and my friends being the ‘griefers’! My point is….thank God for ‘griefers’!!!! Sometimes it’s good to have players come along and take the piss of those taking the game way too seriously! Which, in my opinion, doesn’t make them griefers at all!!! So what are griefers? I would call advanced players living off of stealing and hassling new players, griefers – but why? They’re still playing the game, are they not? I’m rambling here, sorry about that – it’s just that I feel we really need to define what griefing is before we start making executive decisions about who’s playing the game the right way and who’s not. I don’t believe that anyone should be punished for these two ‘griefing’ examples, but others may disagree.
So who gets to decide what griefing is and what actions are offensive enough to merit punishment? Who should decide? Game masters or democraticly organised groups? Community or an authoritative power?
I’m gonna leave you with these questions which have so often been thrust at you in this blog – and promise to come back with some reflections on what works and why tomorrow! It’s about time, right?!!
Remember What The Dormouse Said 