Author Archives: will

Making a game?

So…I’ll be honest. I haven’t done a whole lot of work towards my final project outside of the brainstorming phase. I’ve decided I want to try my hand at creating a game, perhaps something involving a science-fiction setting. I want to drive the player to make a choice they don’t want to make, almost a lesser of two evils scenario. I have the concept pretty much down, but the practical side is coming up short. I have essentially no experience with creating games and my one experiment ended rather poorly…so if anyone has experience with choosing a good program/method for game creation, I’d sure appreciate your expertise in this matter.
I’m also searching for some clarity about the format of our presentations. I know its 20 by 20, but is there supposed to be some overarching flow here? Or do we have creative license?

Thanks — Will

This guy doens’t make sense…

So, in response to the request that we post regarding Mr. Galloway’s writings I have produced the following.

I was rather confused by his early remarks regarding the interactive nature of video games. He says on page 3:
“One should resist equating gamic action with a theory of ‘interactivity’…”
I found this especially confusing because video games are inherently interactive by nature. The entire point is to interface with, depending on the game, any combination of enemies, allies, and the games environment. While a players hands may not be directly manipulating anything, the character/avatar they control is interacting on their behalf. The entire point of a video game is that it “plays back”, if you will. This seems like the very definition of interactivity to me. Therefore, Galloway’s insistence that we not apply interactivity theory to video games left me…honestly…dumbfounded.

Baby Einstein not so smart after all

In my searching on the internet, I recently came upon an article surrounding the recent recall of Baby Einstein videos by Disney. The core of the case of against the video series relies on two real cornerstones: they don’t actually teach babies anything, and they foster social problems in children.

http://www.businesspundit.com/after-controversy-dinsey-issues-baby-einstein-recall/

I’ll spare you a boring summary of the article, but this serves to elaborate on our discussion about the essential nature of play. Play provides a “dress rehearsal” for real life and the social situations it entails. Plunking a kid in front of a TV for hours a day, especially at a young age, deprives them of this necessary “social tuning”  and has potential to result in severe social retardation. Video’s and games may be educational, but they will never be a substitute for human interaction. So, not only was baby Einstein useless, but it may have been damaging to the tens of thousands of kids forced to watch it.