Category: Computer Games

Castronova: A midsummer nights virtual world

Newsmaker: A midsummer night’s virtual world is an interview on CNET news with Edward Castronova about the MacArthur Foundation grand he got to develop an online game, “Arden: The World of Shakespeare.” The game is not about the world Shakespeare lived in – it is a world based on his plays and it will be designed to study the social science of game worlds. Interesting … I wonder if it will work as an idea.

Thanks to Bart for this.

Feature: Columbine RPG Creator Talks About Dawson Shooting – Kotaku

Columbine RPG Creator Talks About Dawson Shooting is an interview with Danny Ledonne about Super Columbine Massacre RPG and the Kimveer Gill incident. Thanks to Robert’s comment on my previous entry for pointing to this.

I’m of two minds reading this interview. On the one hand Danny Ledonne seems sincere and thoughtful, on the other hand, he doesn’t really explain why he had to create a game about Columbine just because it was such an important event. Probably like most of us he had mixed intentions (and didn’t think to hard about them in the moment) and now is trying to justify what he did retrospectively. Ultimately, of course, all he did was create a game, not shoot anyone, so lets not confuse levels of responsibility. That said, it seems that everyone who wants to justify their creations resorts to claims about deeper messages that are overlooked.

Canadian Game Studies Association

On Friday I attended the first Canadian Game Studies Association meeting at York University. It was organized by Jennifer Jenson and Suzanne de Castell.

In the morning I heard two great papers, Martin Picard spoke on “Machinima: the New ‘Machinations’ Behind Video Games.” One question raised was how machinima is different from animation and what does it have to do with games. The second paper by Derek Noon, “Sneaking Mission: Technoculture and Metal Gear Solid” was a short documentary on Metal Gear Solid prepared for a media studies class at Western. The documentary showed how MGS played with the fourth wall, addressing the player (as player) and raising questions about what was real or not in the game.

In the afternoon there was a workshop on “Cooperating With AI” organized by Bernard Perron, Bart Simon, Carl Therrien, and Dominic Arsenault. Simon started the workshop talking about how the others we play against are designed to lose and to make us feel superior. Often they are not really controlled by what a computer scientist would call AI – they are often scripted to seem intelligent enough. Perron and others showed short video clips of game play and collaboration between the player and buddies. Perron pointed out how, if the design works, you really form an attachment to the buddy AI that collaborates with you.

U of Illinois: Gaming Collection

Gaming Screens

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has started an inspired UIUC Library Video Game and Gaming Collection to support courses and gaming research. I like how they have created a one-stop page to connect together the library resources with classes, groups, research and news. Note also that they are asking for donations of games.

Thanks to Jeffrey for this.

Montreal attack and video games

Another horrible shooting at a school and once again there is a reported connection to a mix of blogs, goth culture and videogames. The Globe and Mail has a story about how the Blog of accused killer reveals dark character (Scott Deveau). The blog, which is still (as of posting) accessible, now has 233 comments on the last entry posted an hour before Kimveer went.

As for the videogame connection, Montreal gunman called himself ‘angel of death’ is the title of a CBC story that quotes the blog,

“Work sucks ‚Ķ School sucks ‚Ķ Life sucks ‚Ķ What else can I say?” he wrote. “Metal and Goth kick ass. Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime.”

The Globe and Mail article quotes more from the blog on the subject of videogames,

Among other things, he says his likes were: “First Person Shooters” and “Super Psycho Maniacs roaming the streets.” He also says he likes his knife, guns, and “Crushing My Enemies Skulls.”

Among his favourite video games are several first-person shooting games, including Super Columbine Massacre RPG, which has players mimic the infamous high school killings in Columbine, Colo., the morning of April 20, 1999, through the eyes of the teenage killers. The shootings at Dawson College on Wednesday are a chilling echo of those events.

Mr. Gill also lists Postal as another of his favourite games. The purpose of that game is to get through as much of the game as possible without going berserk and gunning people down, or, failing that, to avoid getting caught and being thrown in jail.

He also complained that Postal 2 was “too childish.”

‚Äúi want them to make a game so realistic, that it looks and feels like it’s actually happening,‚Äù he wrote in his blog.

Setting aside the question of who would create a game like “Super Columbine Massacre RPG”, I find it hard to believe that videogames didn’t let Kimveer model his violent fantasies.

Now I’m going to go back to the 233 comments on that last post. A snapshot of reactions from anger to concerns about how goth culture will be portrayed.

Second Life Activities

I’ve noticed a number of interesting activities that are using Second Life as their virtual site. The Infinite Mind in Second Life is a web page about interviews with people like John Maeda and Kurt Vonnegut that were broadcast (took place?) in Second Life. (You can see photos and read agout it also at The Infinite Mind blog.)

CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion is a law class about argument outside of court and on the net. The class is by Harvard prof Charles Nesson and his daughter Rebecca Nesson. There is a trailer video that explains the class and how you can join through Second Life. There is an interesting moment when you shift from the video of Nesson to video of his avatar in a recreation of the same space.

Note how video is the way virtual encounters are being documented.

Thanks to Johnny for the Infinite Minds link and Peter for the Harvard link.

GAM3R 7H30RY

GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1 is a networked book in progress by McKenzie Wark. It is hosted by The Institute for the Future of the Book as a “thinking out loud” project. They have an interesting interface for creating a structured book (chapters with paragraphs as cards). There is a syndicated version, search, comment area and documentation on the interface. I’m not sure why they didn’t use a wiki with plug ins and will have to think about what is missing from wikis other than a stack of cards look.

Most Influential Gamers?

MTV News has a nice story about the Most Influential Gamers? (June 21, 2006) by Stephen Totilo. The news story assembles 10 influential gamers for debate like U Michigan prof Peter Ludlow who was kicked off the The Sims Online for running a newspaper in the game. Another is Patrick Wildenbord who found the sex-game buried in Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas which causes a fuss.

Are top gamers becoming the sport stars of the net?

Thanks to Jean-Guy for this.