Relavant to reading and class discussion:  I likes the different Super Mario brother examples of modding in video games.  I thought it might be interesting to see what other sort of forms pacman, the bread and butter of this video game class, could take through modding.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-pacman

This is a mix of pacman and the first person shooter game Unreal Tournament 3. For more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Tournament_3

I don’t really have anything insightful to add to this, except that it is a very visually entertaining example of a mod for pacman. What I really like about this example is that it is mixing two games, which opens up for a lot of other variations of mixing favorite characters in different games.

Not directly relavant to current reading or class discussion: To quote Jamie quoting a wiki, “every [official] playtester chose to shoot into the crowd of civilians having received no instruction to do so, calling it “human nature.“‘

I suppose this is just a recurring theme in our class, actions in video games being comparable to actions in life, but calling choosing to shoot into a crowd having receive no instruction to do so, was a bit suprising to me.  IF this is the case, whether it be human nature in life, or just human nature in video games, I’m interested to know what happens when we blend the lines even more between the two worlds.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/tags/video+games/default.aspx

“The Human Nature article on Slate‘s cover today is about a military drone-piloting system that looks like a video game but kills real people. You control it with joysticks and buttons. The company that developed it, Raytheon, sees it as a logical progression for recruits who come into the military knowing how to play games like Doom and Halo.

The question is: Will the transition be too smooth? Will these young pilots, reclining comfortably in their “virtual cockpits” in Nevada as their drones fly over Iraq, feel as though they’re playing a game?”

I don’t want to make any judgments because I think this could be a very touchy subject with many perspectives, but it is EXTREMELY thought provoking when we consider that it is our nature to shoot into a crowd of civilians.  Sorry this was so long!