e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

"Correcting the violent video game rhetoric" (CNet.com)

I think this is a great piece of writing that unfortunately will probably have to be trotted out and updated every time a new game like GTA IV comes out. This article correctly takes to task people who will vehemently oppose a game having never played it. Or engage in specious research only to proclaim the pre-ordained results of that research to be sacrosanct. If you listen to these critics' arguments, it is very easy to slip out the words "video game" and insert "comic book" or "rock-n-roll" or even "Mozart" or how about not saying the Mass in Latin?

These are all supposedly signposts for the road to Armageddon. Now GTA IV has already sold a couple million copies so a powerful and violent as this game is, we should be seeing a tsunami of child violence land upon our shores any minute now. But it won't. You know why? Because as powerful as videogames or even games in general are as teaching tools...it turns out that its darn hard to design a game that people will love to play but that has a specific learning objective in mind. The hard lesson is that people do learn in games but what they learn mainly comes from a personal place - a place constructed by their own experiences, background and mental states. So for me a really telling point in the article that kicked off this little rant, is this:

"Blaming video games meant that the shooters were set aside from other violent youth...at whom our get-tough legislation has been targeted. The video game explanation constructs the middle-class shooters as victims of the power of video games, rather than fully culpable criminals. When boys from "good" neighborhoods are violent, they seem to be...created by video games rather than by their social circumstances. Middle-class killers retain their status as children easily influenced by a game, victims of an allegedly dangerous product. The same can't be said for those in "bad" neighborhoods."

Amen. This is why we search and search for the things that "made" serial killers into what they are. Because we can't accept that maybe they just are like that. Like they could actually be walking among us right now and it wouldn't really take anything awful or bizarre to set them off. Same with the kids. Geez. There must have been some External influence that made those kids shoot those other kids (we won't even talk about access to the guns in the first place) because if there was something external, then we don't have to be better parents or a better society, we just have to stop that one thing, like rock or comic books or Mozart. Yes, let's go ask the kids who grow up knowing nothing but poverty and violence in such extremes that becoming a suicide bomber seems like a viable option for them. Lets ask them about the impact of GTA IV on their life.

Oh well....had to get back to work anyway...

The Most Dominant Game Engine - Flash

So got some time to kill, er I mean want to see some creative work in Flash-based games? Take a trip over to Kongregate. Yes, I enjoy The Last Stand but there is also The Fancy Pants Adventure.  The point is that this site is one of those places that can really highlight the range of games that can be created using something that almost all learning/training departments already have on hand - Flash.

That being said -it should also highlight that want you probably don't have on hand is someone who understands Flash from a game creation standpoint. You don't need to pay even $5K for a great game engine and try to figure out how to turn a whole course into a game - you can look at courses and find moments when games would make sense and then turn a couple of young, eager Flash developers loose.

"Online Gaming Web sites Average Nine Visits per Visitor Each Month" (ComScore)

(link)

“With one in four Internet users visiting a gaming site, playing games online is extremely popular. The fact that these websites are pulling in over a quarter of the total worldwide Internet population shows what a global phenomenon gaming has become. The potential of the online gaming arena should be especially appealing for advertisers, as the average online gamer visits a gaming site 9 times a month.”

Passively Multiplayer Online Game (PMOG)

So I guess I first saw this post on Boing Boing but then I clicked over here and got into my first PMOG. You install an extension into Firefox (you are using Firefox aren't you?), and then the extension watches (in a benign way) your surfing habits. You earn XP (that experience points n00b) just by visiting the Webs sites you'd normally visit and you gain levels - the kinds of things you'd expect in an RPG. (Passively Multiplayer home page, PMOG News)

If you aren't satisfied with that level of passivity, you can also engage in "quests" - essentially visiting a series of sites that another player has placed in a certain sequence (I have done the Social Network quest, the Chewy Games quest and the How to Survive the Zombies Quest). You get points for plowing through the quests. You can't just start making quests though...you have to acquire "data points" which allow you to buy "items" such as lampposts which guide people through the quests.

One thing that is different from a traditional RPG however is that instead of picking what class you belong to, your surfing habits place on one of 4 categories; hoarder, destroyer, pathmaker or seer.

I am still puzzling out how it feels to be 'playing' this game. I do however like the idea of being able to involve people in a game experience at a fairly low level of action on their part. I like the way the game can be used to build an identity around something that we do so much  (surf) but around which we never really construct an explicit identity.  Imagine using this in a class (maybe even a widely distributed class) and players (learners) questing (learning), building quests (mentoring) other students or even other classes, using the quest building feature to allow almost-retirees to pass along some of their knowledge in a game environment. There are some intriguing possibilities here.

100 of the Best Legal Free Full Version Games You Can Download Online (PC Gaming Blog)

This is a great list...and the following post is 50 MORE games!

Well there goes one of my main reasons for me not switching to Macs yet...

"Citing that EA customers were moving to the Mac in droves, EA announced that it would once again begin developing games for the Mac platform with simultaneous releases as their Windows counterparts. Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix are coming in July 2007, with Madden 08 and Tiger Woods 08 to follow."

Using Performance Results to Hire

I came across this article (interview with David Perry) recently which discusses the way in which game studio Acclaim and developer David Perry are breaking new ground in building a new game known as Top Secret and allowing an open pool of talent to contribute to the development process and with one lucky winner actually getting a job and royalties. 

Check out this quote from Perry: "I’m also recruiting now from the people we find. I hired a girl called Jill right out of my forums recently, didn’t even ask to see a resume. She’s awesome. So that’s a rule going forward. Everyone is welcome, I could care less about resumes, they’re meaningless, it’s all about who shows up." Did everybody get that? Resumes are meaningless...its about who shows up. Let's ask ourselves, in a world in which resumes are meaningless, what are the impacts on not only education but also training and even certification?

I'd love to hear from some folks like Karl Kapp on this topic, is this a model of hiring that could be used in the learning and training field? This reminds me of a contest that Epic Games held a couple of years back called Mastering Unreal. The idea was that people would use the Unreal Engine to build a mod and then the winner would be granted a license to that game engine (about a $350K Prize at the time).

So as we continue to discuss how everything from technology to methodology impacts performance, then at what point does that emphasis on performance downgrade the importance of resumes, and  transcripts and instead forces us to construct more environments in which people can demonstrate skill?

Stop for a minute and Just Try Some of these Games

If you haven't played flow yet, you should. You should also read The Best Indie Games of 2007 article and play some of the other games there. You should also visit the Experimental Gameplay site and play some of those games as well.

Then when you have done all that. You should come back and we should have a chat about how I feel that as much as people love to carp about mindless violence in games, they are doing so because they lack the will and/or vision to look deeply and find some other examples. We should also have a chat about how I think that we are still severely limiting ourselves in terms of thinking about how games can be used in learning. I think that just now, at this moment, the growth of Web 2.0 technologies, sites and tools is finally waking us up to some of the real possibilities of what e-learning can be.

Oh and you should also go and watch this demo if you feel like there is no way we could still be behind the curve...I think there is still stuff in this demo that we haven't fully gotten to yet.

Games and Activities from Shell

(Link)

Geez. You think for what we pay at the pump, they could have created Unreal Tournament 10 and given it away.