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.

Pathway – Wikipedia Visualization

Pathway ScreenPathway is a small custom application (just for Max OS X) that creates a visualization while you browse the Wikipedia. It is not a general pupose browser, it is just for the Wikipedia, but it includes some nice features for reflecting on the “path” you take through the wiki. I should note that paths are a feature Vannevar Bush talked about in “As We May Think” (Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.)

This comes from Matt.

TiddlyWiki

Shawn recently introduced me to TiddlyWiki, which Stéfan Sinclair has also blogged. It is a web page (with over 5000 lines of code) that acts as a wiki if you have write priviledges to the file. It is an extremely smart and simple tool that I don\’t really think of as a wiki since it really is more like a web page application for private and local use. You can use it to keep notes on your local computer just by saving an empty page.

I have the feeling there is a principle to technologies like TiddlyWiki – simple objects that are both application and data, documents that carry the smarts needed so you don\’t need a separate application (well actually you do need a browser.) Reminds me of the document-centric view of OpenDoc that Apple tried unsuccessfully to promote. What other TiddlyWiki like doc/apps can we imagine:

  • A Curriculum Vitae that one can add items to and reorganize in different views.
  • A Bibliography that lets you maintain references and then export them.
  • A Analyze Me TiddlyWiki that lets you paste in data (or text) to study and then lets you run analysis on it to get results that become part of the document

Nielsen: F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

Pattern in Reading Web PagesThere is an F-Shaped Pattern to the way users read the web according to one of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox columns on usability. The Alertbox reports on a study that used eye tracking to see where users looked on a web page.

The study has implications for writing for the web if Nielsen is right that viewers typically scan a page in an “F” pattern where they scan a couple times horizontally and then vertically down.

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.

digg labs

Swarm Screendigg.com is a social networking site whose tools are showing up in more an more spots. They have some neat visualization tools in their digg labs, including Swarm (see picture to the left.) On their About page they describe digg thus:

Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.

What can you do as a digg user? Lots. Every digg user can digg (help promote), bury (help remove spam), and comment on stories… you can even digg and bury comments you like or dislike. Digg also allows you to track your friends’ activity throughout the site ‚Äî want to share a video or news story with a friend? Digg it!

Thanks to Matt for this.

Forking the Wikipedia

Larry Sanger forks the Wikipedia reports on an initiative by one of the founders of the Wikipedia to create an alternative by taking the content and setting up an editorial system with more control by expert editors. The alternative would be called the called the Citizendium.

The Wikipedia is an important example of a social knowledge network that has stirred up a lot of controversy this year. There is a literature now about the Wikipedia and its discontents. See, for example the Request for Comments (RFC) by Alan Liu about student use of the Wikipedia. He sees 2006 as a threshold year when students started using the Wikipedia like never before.

Is it a sign of maturity when web phenomena like the Wikipedia don’t just get reported with that “gee whiz, isn’t this neat” tone, but are being really debated?

Unicode 5.0.0 is almost out

Unicode 5 CoverUnicode 5.0.0 is about to be released by the Unicode Consortium.

For those of you who don’t know about Unicode, it “provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no mater what the language.” (My emphasis) In other words it replaces ASCII as the standard for character encoding to support multilingual computing across platforms.

For more information see What is Unicode? or Useful Resources.

I also note that the Unicode site has a Chronology Of Unicode Version 1.0 along with information about contributors/members over time. Xerox, for example, seems to have been a major player in the early years, but is no longer a member. I also note that there are two governments that are institutional members, India and Pakistan (they joined a year apart) and one university, Berkeley. What a strange trio of institutional members.

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.