National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 15, 2011 -
50 comments
Recent research on children. (1) Brothers and sisters who argue a lot can improve their language, social skills and outcomes:
Guardian article;
paper on part of the research (pdf). (2) First findings from
Understanding Society. Conclusions include: the unhappiness of children’s mothers with their partners affect children’s happiness, but this is not the case if children’s fathers are unhappy in their relationships; having older brothers or sisters doesn’t appear to affect children’s happiness, but having younger brothers or sisters is associated with less happiness; not living with both natural parents has a greater negative impact on a young person’s life satisfaction than their material situation. (3) A longitudinal study on people now in their forties has found that for these people reading is linked to career success, though not necessarily to better pay, whilst playing computer games and doing no other activities was associated with less likelihood of going to university. In particular, those who owned a ZX Spectrum or Commodore C64 were less likely to go to university.
thinq interview with researcher.
Guardian article.
Telegraph article. (4) Poll about children’s attitudes to losing in sport.
Press release.
Data from children’s survey.
Data from parents’ survey. (All three are PDFs.)
posted by paduasoy
on Apr 9, 2011 -
30 comments
After years of meticulous research of historic documents, mapping, modeling, texturing, and trying to convince a video game released in 1998 to do something it was never intended to be capable of, the 72 kilometer, 567-turn Piccolo circuito delle Madonie
was released as a community add-on track for
Grand Prix Legends last September. The track was home of the
Targa Florio from 1932 to 1936 and 1951 to 1977, and is made up of
curving,
winding mountain roads in the
Sicilian countryside, and is beautifully recreated in the game. Best of all, it's
absolutely free.
posted by clorox
on Mar 12, 2010 -
21 comments
Editor Marty Halpern looks back at the career of George Alec Effinger (
part 1,
part 2,
part 3), a prolific author best known for his work set in the
Budayeen, a walled city in a future Islamic state, teeming with gangsters, hustlers and transsexual prostitutes, many of them habitual users of plug in personality modules. The noirish tone and exotic technology of the
Marîd Audran books (When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, The Exile Kiss) made Effinger one of the leading lights in the cyberpunk movie, and spawned a
videogame - a rare attempt at a graphical adventure from Infocom - and
an RPG setting. Sadly Effinger
faded from prominence after that, and he suffered from a number of health and financial setbacks before
passing away in 2002. His work has had somewhat of a resurgence in popularity of late, with the Marîd Audran books coming back into print in 2007, a long with a
collection containing The Wolves of Memory, Effinger's personal favourite amongst his novels.
posted by Artw
on Jun 9, 2009 -
32 comments
SFXR by Tomas Pettersson - Ever needed a skilled Foley artist and an audio lab for making sound effects? No, probably not, but even the most amateur game designer needs sound effects for his game. Now, thanks to Tomas Pettersson the long tradition of stealing sound effects from other games is finally over. It doesn't do much more than little 8-bit bleeps and bloops, but it sure feels nice to have original, royalty-free sound effects for your game, or just for fun.
[previously]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia
on Jan 10, 2009 -
15 comments
In this way, Lu Yang became one of the "RMB gamers" she disdains. More than 10,000 RMB was quickly and nearly imperceptibly spent. In the game, the "queen" possessed fearsome power. She carried out vengeance for herself and her friends, she accepted entreaties, and she protected the caravans of the kingdom. At the same time, she went out with the heroes to invade other kingdoms. Her reputation spread far and wide. [...] "Long live the Queen!" People bowed to her in submission. That was the high point for Lu Yang on ZT Online, and for that one fleeting moment, she felt that the time and money she had spent was worth it.
The System is a translated Chinese article examining ZT Online, an MMORPG that has taken fleecing gamers to a new level.
posted by Kattullus
on May 6, 2008 -
34 comments
The
Duke Nukem Forever List provides a bullet-point run down of notable events that have occurred since Duke Nukem Forever was first announced back in 1997. And for those who may have missed last month's Gamespot interview, George Broussard is
still saying
it'll be done when it's done, insisting that 3D Realms "won't be rushed" into releasing DNF before it's ready.
posted by Effigy2000
on Jul 22, 2006 -
30 comments
Save King's Quest IX. Ever since personal computers became powerful enough to run graphics-intensive action games, adventure games like the ones once produced by
Sierra On-Line (
King's Quest,
Space Quest,
Leisure Suit Larry, and countless other titles) and
LucasArts (
Maniac Mansion,
Monkey Island,
Sam & Max Hit The Road) have been in decline--most of the series have been abandoned,
King's Quest was awkwardly morphed into an unsuccessful first-person fighting game, and
Sam & Max 2 was famously cancelled (and, less famously,
uncancelled).
In the last couple of years, the genre's gotten a shot in the arm from an active
emulation community, the ready availability of "
abandonware," but mostly from unauthorized
sequels and
remakes created by fans and distributed for free. The flagship of these new games was to have been
King's Quest IX, a three-part finale to the series that wrapped up all outstanding loose ends and properly said goodbye to the characters. The project team included forty people, some of whom worked on the game for more than four years. And, at the end of October, Vivendi Universal (which bought, then disbanded Sierra On-Line)
pulled the plug.
posted by Epenthesis
on Nov 15, 2005 -
40 comments
What do you get when you mix a fiendishly difficult and addictive puzzle game with the feel of a hack & slash RPG set in a cartoonish, slightly tongue-in-cheek fantasy world? That would be
Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD for short). The game is freakin' huge, with 25 levels filled with unique rooms, and it also happens to be free.
posted by speicus
on Sep 22, 2005 -
7 comments
Get your game on with Kaneva. Billing itself as
"The world’s first digital entertainment marketplace!" Kaneva is a beta launch of a concept that maybe interesting to gamers, media creators, and consumers as well. An Atlanta based company, Kaneva.com aims to be an exchange/market portal for game and media creators, who can directly create Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games using the Kaneva Framework, and for digital media creators seeking distribution. The business model is innovative, and has been described as
"a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets eBay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host." The company recently presented its concept at the June meeting of the International Game Developers Association, and back in April
Computer Gaming Magazine had an article. During the beta test phase, the site's tools are free to all comers, and there is already a limited amount of content available for those who just want to play something new.
posted by paulsc
on Jun 18, 2005 -
8 comments
The Most Ambitious Game Ever? At this year's Game Developers Conference, Sims creator Will Wright's upcoming game
Spore drew standing ovations. Not to be outdone, Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Black & White fame) revealed his own ambitious game-like project
The Room. While the top game designers have freedom to play, independents
rail (read Greg Costikyan's amazing bit in the middle) at the restrictions of the publisher system. For those who doubt
games can be art.
posted by blahblahblah
on Mar 15, 2005 -
60 comments
Lemmings! Do you miss sending hoardes of helpless little buggers into pits, and trying to free them from their own suicidal helplessness? Then this is for you!
posted by christian
on Aug 15, 2003 -
24 comments
