This new Scientist article caught my eye; it examines a few recent games (namely the Arma2 Mod DayZ) which reintroduce compassion or at least morali decision making into FPS games:
"In one video, for example, two players try to decide whether or not to shoot a third approaching in the distance. "Please turn around, please turn around," one of them says. But the third player keeps approaching, they shoot, and then they talk through their guilt. "I didn't want to shoot them." "Me either! But you know what happens when we don't shoot first."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24325-buttonmasher-the-rise-of-consequences-in-video-games.html#.Um2RWnB7J8E
Other games such as Fable from Lionhead studios and Star Wars: The Old Republic allow gamers to make choices which will develop the character in 'good' or 'evil' directions, but this is one of only a handful of Multiplayer games which force users to question the morality of killing.
Sunday, 27 October 2013
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Alter Ego: 7 Ages of Woman/Man
This 1986 branching expert system was marketed as a game, and is a precursor to The Sims and other non-violent sociological games. I investigated it after reading about it in my history of computer games (citation needed) and saw especially that it purported to contain material from "Dr" Tim Leary.
it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.
Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.
you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html
it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.
Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.
you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html
Friday, 15 March 2013
ANT COLONY SIMULATOR
Watching Planet Ant on the BBC. Have already emailed Andy Hart - will contact Bristol Uni's Ant Lab. Renergised an old idea of mine, inspired by living with Ants, both in India as an 11 year old
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
Monday, 11 February 2013
CoMeCo - Computer Mediated Communication
Subheaded "Social Interaction & the Internet" this is a course book for students of online sociology written by Crispin Thurlow, Laura Lengel and Alice Tomic*.
This book has loads of interesting insights into how people interact with each other via machines.
Companion website resources can be found here: http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/
And specifically a great list of resources online here http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/resources_intro.html
Boy I wish the iPad blogger ap made automatic links!
*she must have the email atomic@aiu.ac.uk or she's missed a serious trick!
This book has loads of interesting insights into how people interact with each other via machines.
Companion website resources can be found here: http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/
And specifically a great list of resources online here http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/resources_intro.html
Boy I wish the iPad blogger ap made automatic links!
*she must have the email atomic@aiu.ac.uk or she's missed a serious trick!
How to get a job in the Game industry
Chet Faliszek from Valve Software on how to give yourself a job in the games industry, at the Eurogamer Expo 2012 Developer Sessions.
Key points: just start - just go with what you have - limit the scope, make a realistic goal - start small
He mentions a game called 30 Flights of Loving: http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/ which I'd love 2 play if I could figure out how to pay ;)
Friday, 8 February 2013
Automatogenesis
I was looking up how to fix the Hexbug that my buddy Hugo gave me (it's going round in circles) when I wandered into the world of early robots (I was looking up the Greek for "someone who designs robots" - Automatodemiurge is the best I can do). Below are some of the Tales of Talos, a cross between Pinocchio and the Terminator!
The World’s First Robot: Talos
by Adrienne Mayor, Wonders & Marvels contributor
Uncanny mechanical humanoids, automatons, robots, and replicants, so popular in modern fiction and film, are usually thought to be inventions of the 17th century (Louis IV commissioned several mechanized figures). But the creation of artificial humans is a very ancient dream—or nightmare. Daedalus, the most ingenious inventor of Greek myth, was credited with making many marvelous mechanical wonders. His well-known experiment with man-made wings ended tragically with the death of his son Icarus., but Daedalus also created the first “living statues.” These realistic bronze sculptures appeared to be endowed with life as they moved their limbs, rolled their eyes, perspired, wept, and vocalized. Such animatronic statues were not just figments of the mythic imagination—they were actually constructed in classical antiquity.
Robots made to obey commands were also engineered by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention and technology. Talos, the gigantic animated bronze warrior programmed to guard the island of Crete, was one of Hephaestus’s creations. Like Hollywood’s imaginary Robo-Cop or the Terminator, Talos was the ancient forerunner of autonomous cyborgs capable of deploying lethal force.
more here... http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/03/the-worlds-first-robot-talos.html
This page contains a good timeline of Robots in History
there's also this Ancient Greek Programmable Robot with instructions! It's very similar to the hexbug, it can go forwards backwards and turn, depending on the winding of string round it's axles, and it uses gravity as an automotive power source. Here's a video from New Scientist about the same device:
Monday, 28 January 2013
The Internet Before the Web: Preserving Early Networked Cultures
http://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/the-internet-before-the-web-preserving-early-networked-cultures
This Event at the New Museum in Nyork marks the first in a series of talks about the art / technology frontier entitled Rhizome: New Silent. It's not obvious if its got an online component, but it would seem doh not to. Btw, rhizome.org is a venerable resource for online artists.
I remember the Internet before graphics, the bbs and unix networks. 1993, The Word, university.
Event ;
my father took me to the Lab, logged me on to play "Adventure", read messages from scientists, told me how the first message on the proto-net was "who left the spanner in the Parking lot?" not realising that everyone in the global scientific community was picking it up.
He wants to tell his story, despite or because of his Parkinson's; of how he & his team helped liberate the Internet from oppressive corporate clutches, in the 80s when no-one except a handful of people realised its potential.
I'm going to do my best to include some of those stories on here, or in a conjoined blog, under the title "Tales from the Telecommunications Frontier" ( or something like that! )
This Event at the New Museum in Nyork marks the first in a series of talks about the art / technology frontier entitled Rhizome: New Silent. It's not obvious if its got an online component, but it would seem doh not to. Btw, rhizome.org is a venerable resource for online artists.
I remember the Internet before graphics, the bbs and unix networks. 1993, The Word, university.
Event ;
my father took me to the Lab, logged me on to play "Adventure", read messages from scientists, told me how the first message on the proto-net was "who left the spanner in the Parking lot?" not realising that everyone in the global scientific community was picking it up.
He wants to tell his story, despite or because of his Parkinson's; of how he & his team helped liberate the Internet from oppressive corporate clutches, in the 80s when no-one except a handful of people realised its potential.
I'm going to do my best to include some of those stories on here, or in a conjoined blog, under the title "Tales from the Telecommunications Frontier" ( or something like that! )
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