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Psychology Today -- Children Educate Themselves IV: Lessons from Sudbury Valley by Peter Gray

'The Sudbury Valley model of education is not a variation of standard education. It is not a progressive version of traditional schooling. It is not a Montessori school or a Dewey school or a Piagetian constructivist school. It is something entirely different. To understand the school one has to begin with a completely different mindset from that which dominates current educational thinking. One has to begin with the thought: Adults do not control children's education; children educate themselves. -- The school does not interfere with students' activities. Students are free, all day, every day, to do what they wish at the school, as long as they don't violate any of the school's rules. The rules, all made by the School Meeting, have to do with protecting the school and protecting students' opportunities to pursue their own interests unhindered by others. -- The most important resource at the school, for most students, is other students, who among them manifest an enormous range of interests and abilities. Because of the free age mixing at the school, students are exposed regularly to the activities and ideas of others who are older and younger than themselves. Age-mixed play offers younger children continuous opportunities to learn from older ones. For example, many students at the school have learned to read as a side effect of playing games that involve written words (including computer games) with students who already know how to read. They learn to read without even being aware that they are doing so. Much of the students' exploration at the school, especially that of the adolescents, takes place through conversations. Students talk about everything imaginable, with each other and with staff members, and through such talk they are exposed to a huge range of ideas and arguments. Because nobody is an official authority, everything that is said and heard in conversation is understood as something to think about, not as dogma to memorize or feed back on a test. Conversation, unlike memorizing material for a test, stimulates the intellect. The great Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued, long ago, that conversation is the foundation for higher thought; and my observations of students at Sudbury Valley convince me that he was right. Thought is internalized conversation; external conversation, with other people, gets it started.'

children conversation play simulation learning education
22 days ago by adamcrowe

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Psychology Today -- The Varieties of Play Match the Requirements of Human Existence by Peter Gray

'#Pretend and sociodramatic play: We are the imaginative animal, able to think of things that are not immediately present, and so we have fantasy play, or pretend play, which builds our capacity for imagination. In this type of play children establish certain propositions about the nature of their pretend world and then play out those propositions logically. In doing so they are exercising the same capacities that allow us, as adults, to think about things that are not immediately present, which is what we all do when we plan for the future and what scientists do when they develop theories to explain or predict events in the real world. We are an intensely social species, requiring cooperation with others in order to survive, and so we have many forms of social play, which teach us to cooperate and to restrain our impulses in ways that make us socially acceptable. Children in sociodramatic play are also practicing the art of negotiation. As they decide who will play what roles, who will get to use which props, and just what scenes they will enact and how, the players must all come to agreement. Indeed, a basic rule of all social play is that everyone must agree. Anyone left unhappy by a decision will quit, and if everyone quits there will be no game. Since the motive to play is strong, the motive to keep the other players happy is strong. That is true of all social play, but it is especially apparent in the negotiations that are observed in sociodramatic play. Keeping our companions happy, so they stay with us and continue to support us through life, is surely one of the most valuable of human survival skills, and children continuously practice that skill in social play.'

roleplay play negotiation emotionalintelligence improvisation simulation learning children
22 days ago by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- The Landlord's Game

'The Landlord's Game is a board game patented in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as U.S. Patent 748,626. It is a realty and taxation game, which is considered to be a direct inspiration for the board game Monopoly. Though many similar home-made games were played at the beginning of the 20th century and some predate The Landlord's Game, it is the first of its kind to have an attested patent. Magie designed the game to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood.'

games boardgames economics simulation landlordism georgism geoism
9 weeks ago by adamcrowe

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Terra Nova -- Life c. 2000: The Massively Single-Player Game by Edward Castronova

'The assumption that people want to have community, indeed that they would agree to be forced into it, is denied by tale of the suburb. Housing prices are highest in the suburbs, places that often look very village-y but are in fact built to provide each person with solitude. Soft barriers protect suburban residents from too much interaction. Yet unlike residents of rural areas, suburbanites are not completely alone. Suburbanites are alone together. Over the past decade, online game communities have evolved from forced grouping models to alone-together models... We've moved from massively multiplayer online games to massively singleplayer online games. Our virtual worlds are becoming like suburbs – places where most people, most of the time, are doing whatever they please and having no effect or interaction with anyone else. Protected from others, but not separated. The massively singleplayer outcome is perhaps a very solid equilibrium between the competing tensions freedom and community. ...it spells doom for all kinds of social engineering projects. The New Urban neighborhood? The Global Village? The online game that purportedly makes people into good citizens? These will all remain as empty as the dead little towns that dot the rural landscape, or as decrepit and bully-plagued as the once-vibrant urban neighborhoods that dot the cities. In the end, people just want their space.'

simulation communities nearfar virtualworlds globalvillage space
february 2012 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The Designer's Notebook: Introducing The Blitz Online

'The collective object of the game is to keep morale high so that Hitler abandons his strategy of civilian bombing. The more lives and buildings that the players save, the sooner Hitler will give it up. Even if morale drops, The Blitz Online will last for a maximum number of days... The game will include commissions ("quests") as well as ad hoc challenges... Players will perform certain routine duties more than once, but I expect these will feel different as the continuing bomb damage throws up new obstacles to completing them. There will always be too much to do, and failure to get something done will have consequences -- determined mostly through the mechanics rather than a prefabricated plot. I want the game to feel like one giant common enterprise, in which the players have individual responsibilities but all contribute to its success. I want The Blitz Online to feel as if no place is truly safe.'

gaming mmorpg war simulation triage from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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Mssv -- The Pursuit of Perfection

'While I can set myself some tasks in Chore Wars to scrub the garden table and mop the floors, no amount of repetitions will get rid of the nasty stain on the table or the bits of dirt ingrained into the floor – unlike in game worlds, where perfection can always be realised given enough effort. It’s hard to see how the conventions of games – conventions designed to be fun and relatively easy to code – can cover all these contingencies without becoming as complicated and subtle and unpredictable as, well, life itself. Gamification holds out the promise ... that if you play the right games with enough enthusiasm and persistence, then you can have a perfect life and make a perfect world – at least, according to the game, if not necessarily in reality. We all need to be careful about games that promise to change our lives. Just as the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined game is not worth playing.'

criticism thegamingofeverydaylife ludotopianism simulation simulacra themapisnottheterritory from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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Psychology Book Club Podcast -- The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

'The last decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of infants and young children. Scientists used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Recently, they have discovered that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined. And there is good reason to believe that babies are actually cleverer, more thoughtful, and even more conscious than adults. A new baby's captivated gaze at her mother's face lays the foundations for love and morality. A toddler's unstoppable explorations of his playpen hold the key to scientific discovery. A three-year-old's wild make-believe explains how we can imagine the future, write novels, and invent new technologies.' -- Discussion on imaginary friends and the mecosystem.

psychology childhood simulation holodeck mecosystem :-) from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling, and Procedural Logic by Jason Mittell

'One of the central elements of games, especially those centered on simulations, is replayability... Instead of viewing each of The Wire's seasons as a singular book within an epic novel, we could view them as one play through its simulation game. Season three offers a replay with some changed variables and strategies for all sides: What if drugs are decriminalized? The characters, while quite human and multidimensional, are as narrowly defined in their possibilities as typical video game avatars. They each do what they do because that is the way the game is played: Bubbles can't get clean, McNulty can't follow orders, Avon can't stop fighting for his corners, and Frank Sobotka can't let go of the glory days of the docks. The characters with both the will and opportunity to change, like Bell, D'Angelo, or Colvin, find the systems too resistant, the "boss levels" too ... impervious to change, and yet the players keep playing because that is all they know how to do.'

storytelling narrativearchitecture possibilityspace probabilityspace simulation gaming vernacular TheWire from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Guitar Hero taken off the market cuz no1 buys it any more

'Don't really understand the appeal of video games when u can play 'the game of life' every day.'

HipsterRunoff simulation mimesis temes toys thegamingofeverydaylife
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Edge Perspectives with John Hage -- Alone Together - An Important New Book by Sherry Turkle

'The technology has power because it addresses psychological vulnerabilities that many of us have. We want connection, but many of us fear the consequences of connection. True intimacy can be very scary. ...this is particularly true of the narcissists: "In a life of texting and messaging, those on that contact list can be made to appear almost on demand. You can take what you need and move on. And, if not gratified, you can try someone else.” This can set into motion a vicious cycle. As Sherry points out: "...if we ask, “What does simulation want?” we know what it wants. It wants – it demands – immersion. But immersed in simulation, it can be hard to remember all that lies beyond it or even to acknowledge that everything is not captured by it. For simulation not only demands but creates a self that prefers simulation. Simulation offers relationships simpler than real life can provide. We become accustomed to the reductions and betrayals that prepare us for life with the robotic.'

psychology tethered self technology behaviours virtuality simulation simulacra quantifiedself financialization numbers numbing dissociation ambientintimacy ambientimmediacy augmentationistsvsimmersionists SherryTurkle from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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STANFORD Magazine -- Digital Immersion

'Psychiatrist Aboujaoude says that immersion in gaming runs the risk that a player begins to believe that behaviors acceptable in a game might also pass offline: Heavy gamers may develop an offline persona with the swagger and bravado of their avatars. "It also becomes easier to lose perspective on one's divergent priorities: the need to perform well as a favorite game character or as an accomplished player versus the need to function as a responsible adult. It's all one big life with one big 'cumulative' score, the faulty justification goes, and if we are breaking records in an online game, we may feel, in aggregate, responsible and productive enough, and thus allow for some gross negligence elsewhere in life." -- "Addictions happen when people are trying to control their emotional state. You find something that makes you feel better and then you want more of it, but then there is emptiness in the payoff."

psychology technology temes virtuality simulation behaviours extensionsofman centralnervoussystem control feedback addiction reflexivity grandiosity thegamingofeverydaylife from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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Listverse -- Top 12 Most Controversial Games
games gaming violence trauma reenactment simulation from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- VPRO - Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street

"It's a combination of the sublime and the ridiculous." -- Numbers numb -- Praxeological epiphany at 28:22: "I don't think you can use quantitative methods to explain markets... history doesn't repeat itself."

praxeology markets numbers finance financialization simulation algorithms blackboxes opacity simulacra virtuality documentaries from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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Cult of Mac -- Computers In Schools Are A Failure, Says Computer Pioneer Alan Kay [Apple in Education]

'“When I look at computers in schools, this is what I see. It’s all Guitar Hero.” ... it is not a necessary thing that people will eventually come to use the computer as a real intellectual amplifier and world changer. This is because the level of distraction is much great (including a torrent of non-important but glittery stuff that can be made on computers). Americans were not able to get any perspective on television that would allow them to resist it, and this seems similar for consumer computer technology. One of many things about media design (where x ranges from from art, theater, writing, teaching, to interactive computer interfaces) that most people don’t understand, is that the main purpose of “great x” is to act as a kind of “magic mirror” which reflects the beholders own intelligence back out at them so they both “remember things they have forgotten”, and that one of these things is that they can learn how to think and learn.'

media themediumisthemassage computing education simulation opacity criticism learning wisdom from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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School Library Journal -- Gamers in Training: Global Kids hosts games-based training for educators, librarians

'So does Crawford, who believes that if her students excel at game design they can apply those lessons throughout their educational career. “Gaming literacy is just a matter of breaking down the problem into little pieces,” she says. “And you can apply that to everything from math to art.”'

gaming thegamingofeverydaylife simulation learning teaching scientificmethod
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Virtual reality tackles tough questions

'A Spanish team has designed a trial that allows men to step inside the body of a woman subjected to violence. "I want to know whether you can use virtual reality, not just to transform the place you are in, but also to transform your very self."' -- I woke up. The pain and sickness all over me like an animal. Then I realized what it was. The music coming up from the floor was our old friend, Ludwig Van, and the dreaded Ninth Symphony. Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep for ever, and ever and ever.

virtualreality abuse simulation behaviorism brainwashing clockworkorange trauma MK mindcontrol sadism from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- TED: Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that, Milo?

virtualworlds avatars artificialintelligence replicants toyfriends nurturance simulation virtuality voigtkampf from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Fullbright -- Specific Violence

'I argue that video games rob violence of its power by making it lightweight... The killing by the protagonist of those without identity devalues human life in the work, and thereby robs the violence of meaning... And so a metric for games comes to mind: violence performed by the player in a video game is only legitimate if the victim is a unique and specific individual. If every character the player interacts with is a unique and specific individual, then any act of violence committed by the player is invested with some amount of meaning: individuals have families, homes, jobs, friends, and most importantly, relationships with other characters in the game. The player's act spiders out from the individual to those that surround them, even if that social web is for the most part only implied. There are no more broad swaths of generic violence, then; there are only discrete acts of specific violence, each of which has the potential to matter.' -- A psychopath wants to extend his range

gaming gamedesign violence predation simulation psychopathy from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The Chemistry Of Game Design

'Upon the click of comprehension, a natural opiate called endomorphin, a messaging chemical in the brain similar in structure to morphine, is released. Players pursue skills with high perceived value over skills with low perceived value. Play is, perhaps counter intuitively, a deeply pragmatic activity. Our impulses to engage in play are instinctual, selected for by evolution because it provides us with the safe opportunity to learn behaviors that improve our lot in life without the threat of life threatening failure. We play because we are built to expect the eventual harvesting of utility from our apparently useless actions. We stop playing when we fail to find that utility. Our brains never evolved to deal with modern games. The existence of a set of skills that are tuned just to entertain us and that never actually lead up to a real world skill is something new to the world.'

gaming gamedesign gamemechanics skills simulation virtuality
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Jon Radoff -- History of Social Games

Tree diagram: 'Chess may have been originally thought of as an abstraction of military conflict, used to teach military strategy to generals. Over the years, it grew in popularity, and during the Enlightenment was thought of as a way to train the mind. Benjamin Franklin wrote a famous essay called the Morals of Chess, which he believed taught caution, circumspection and foresight. Similarly, other games had begun to emerge that were designed to teach moral values, including Leela, a game from 16th century India which was the model for the modern game Chutes and Ladders. Also during the late middle ages, one finds a profusion of card-games, starting with Tarot Cards, originally intended for use in games (although they later became associated with fortune telling). Games of chance, like luck, seem to be perennially associated with the occult.'

gaming simulation archetypes puzzle mystery
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- The Sims Buy An Electric Renault

'With the Electric Vehicle Pack, the Sims not only get a shiny new electric car but solar panels and a windmill for generating clean electricity. “Electric vehicles are additionally going to appeal to younger, more socially conscious prospects and especially early adopters,” said Stephen Norman, Senior VP of Global Marketing for Renault. “This is the heartland of the Sims 3 community and it thus provides a great innovative way to build the Renault Brand just ahead of the Renault range of affordable electric vehicles themselves.” While Renault says the gasoline bills for Sims families are expected to decrease, we expect that players will also have to remind their Sims to plug in the car.' -- So if the car functions as a status object that allows you to express your sense of virtue to yourself and to others in the virtual world, by purchasing the vehicle there, have you exhausted your sense of virtue such that you'd have little motivation to purchase the 'real' thing in the 'real' world?

thesims virtualworlds virtualgoods advertising statusobjects narrativeobjects objects signalling consumering simulation virtuality thegamingofeverydaylife
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Viceland Games -- The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City

'Vince guy spent four years building a totalitarian Sim City hellscape called Magnasanti, racking up a population of six million and claiming to beat an otherwise unbeatable game. "There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time."'

gaming simcity architecture cities dystopia sadism simulation thematrix
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The Designer's Notebook: Selling Hate and Humiliation

'The most successful F2P games (monetization-wise) in China all give their paying customers HUGE advantages. Rich people lead poor people to fight with other rich people via clans. It is much better than rich people killing poor people all the time. Creates a highly dynamic social system with better balancing. Maybe this is popular in China. Apparently people there will pay money for it. Perhaps when they want to escape from their day-to-day lives in an oppressive centralized regime, that's what they fantasize about: being peasants forced to fight for a brutal overlord, in an oppressive decentralized regime. As if all this weren't depressing enough, Mr. Ye explains how game designers can make money out of hate and humiliation in social environments: Conflicts are good. Conflicts make the game world more energetic and live. More importantly, conflicts trigger emotions. When people are emotionally unstable, they are more likely to make purchases. Is this what game design has come to?'

thegamingofeverydaylife gaming socialgaming mmorpg simulation feudalism china escapism fantasy status hierarchy power sadism functionalitems virtualgoods ludocapitalism ethics
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Amazon -- Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet by Sherry Turkle

"Simulation games are not just objects for thinking about the real world but also cause to think about how the real world itself has become a simulation game. The seduction of simulation invites several possible responses. One to accept simulations on their own terms. This might be called ’simulation resignation’. Or one can reject simulations to whatever degree is possible. This might be called ’simulation denial’. But one can imagine a third response. This would take the cultural pervasiveness of simulation as a challenge to develop a more sophisticated social criticism. This new criticism would not lump all simulations together, but would discriminate among them. It would take as its goal the development of simulations that actually help players challenge the model’s built in assumptions. This new criticism would try to use simulation as a means of consciousness-raising. [This might be called 'simulation consciousness'.]" — Simulation and its Discontents in Life on the Screen, pp 71

technology media simulation opacity transparency literacy SherryTurkle thegamingofeverydaylife
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Rushkoff: Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

"If you are not a programmer, you are one of the programmed."

realityprogramming simulation media literacy DouglasRushkoff
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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New Scientist -- We feel your pain: Extreme empaths

'"When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction," Barrett says. "I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply." She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to "extreme empathy". Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings - whether it's the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can't help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations. Compulsive imitation: Put simply, this means that at some level we mentally imitate every action we observe, whether it's a somersault or a look of disgust. The popular theory has it that this imitation allows us to put ourselves in the place of those around us, to better interpret their behaviour. "How empathetic we are seems to be related to how strongly our mirror neuron systems are activated."'

psychology neuroscience trauma pain mimesis mimicry simulation empathy
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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HuffPost -- Couple Let Baby Starve To Death While Raising Virtual Baby Online

'Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and Choi Mi-sun, 25, would feed their three-month-old baby only when not at 12-hour-online sessions in a local internet café. The pair were obsessed with raising their internet child, called Anima, resulting in the neglect of their unnamed real daughter. After one such session in September the couple found their daughter dead and called police. An autopsy found the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. "It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter."' -- Push button parenting.

virtualworlds virtuality surrogacy parenting nurturance simulation feedback thegamingofeverydaylife subsistenceclicking
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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Are Video Games Evil? by Chris Suellentrop

'... video game players are more likely than nongamers to consider themselves knowledgeable, even expert, in their fields. They are more likely to want pay for performance in the workplace rather than a flat scale... -- Brooks summarized the love-the-power worldview of the Organization Kid like this: “There is a fundamental order to the universe, and it works. If you play by its rules and defer to its requirements, you will lead a pretty fantastic life.” That’s a winner’s ideology: Follow orders, and you’ll be just fine. -- [The structure of] video games teaches players that the best course of action is always to accept the system and work to succeed within it. “Games do not permit innovation,” Koster writes. “They present a pattern. Innovating out of a pattern is by definition outside the magic circle. You don’t get to change the physics of a game.” Nor, when a computer is the referee, do you get to challenge the rules or to argue about their merits.'

thegamingofeverydaylife gaming simulation opacity conformity
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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PBS FRONTLINE -- Digital Nation: Interviews: Sherry Turkle (1)

'We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made. The economy isn't going right; there's global warming. In times like that, people imagine science and technology will be able to get it right. Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are. -- I think when you have a generation that doesn't see simulation as second best, doesn't know what's behind simulation and the programming that goes into simulation, but just takes simulation at interface value, you really have a set up for a very problematic political, among other things, set of issues. ...things are built out of simple programs to more complex programs, and these programs are cultural creations, cultural constructions... Education has dropped that out of the curriculum. -- We're becoming quite intolerant of letting each other think complicated things.'

technology temes hyperreality simulacra simulation culture opacity hegemony goodthink conformity SherryTurkle
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Global Guerrillas -- THE FOOD GAME

'Synthesis: The MMO + Permaculture Bootstrap: One of the first things to do, is build a simple Farmville type social game that helps people learn permaculture design principles: #Conservation. Efficiency of inputs. #Repeating functions. Redundancy. #Stacking functions. Multiple uses for the same thing. #Reciprocity. Outputs of one part of the system are inputs for another. In other words, cascading processes maximize the energy yield of the system. #Local scale. Minimal organizational overhead. Match production to local need. #Diversity. Lots of different ecosystem participants increases resilience. -- As the game grows, it could move to a much higher level. For example, gaming software that offers the ability to add connections to the real world (satellite imagery/topography of actual plots), has high end graphics (for more immersive and detailed plot design), and provides models/simulation (to test new configurations).'

gaming simulation permaculture virtualworlds ideas resilience
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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CLASS WARGAMES -- Ludic subversion in the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption

'After watching this movie, opponents of spectacular capitalism will understand the importance of studying The Game of War. By playfully competing against each other over its board, they are learning the strategic and tactical skills required for success in the deadly struggle against the global bourgeoisie. In our film of Debord's game, Class Wargames has divided these teachings from the battlefield into five sections: terrain, combat, cavalry, arsenals and lines of communication. Analyse their insights with great care, fellow workers. As the crisis of neo-liberalism intensifies, you will need this military knowledge to thwart the wicked schemes of bankers and bureaucrats.'

gaming psychogeography situationalism simulation strategy war spectacle ludology thegamingofeverydaylife GuyDebord
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Lost Garden -- Three False Constraints

Mystery (play) <---> Puzzle (game) 'Conclusion: #Human emotions are simple to evoke with games. Make multiplayer games. #Authorial intent is expressed through systems of rules. Create rules that empower players to co-create meaningful content. #Reaching larger numbers of players is easy. Integrate games into the player's everyday life.' -- 'Comment: yanamal: ...if you remove all these "arbitrary" constraints at once, you don't really get game design anymore - you get throwing a bunch of people together and telling them to play with the contents of their pockets...' -- Comment: Danc: 'If you really want a player to gain a deeply meaningful understand of the human condition, you need to put them in a system where they can fail and experiment. ...the act of playing a game [is] a process of learning [how to] effectively manipulate a system. [The question to ask is:] Are the skills I’m learning meaningful to me outside the magic circle?'

gaming ludology readerlywriterly gamedesign experience design possibilityspace narrativeenvironments improvisation simulation emergence play casualgaming ambientgaming thegamingofeverydaylife improv
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Games 'permit' virtual war crimes

'Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts. Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime. The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings. It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.' -- How? By making a video game that simulates them instead? Oh, wait... -- '"[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."' -- Virtual Human Rights Act? LOL

gaming thegamingofeverydaylife virtualworlds simulation war ethics censorship thoughtcrime
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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‘Are video games too violent for humans/do they inspire I.R.L. violence?’ -progressive journalism in the 90s

'Feeling confused. At the beginning of this post, I thought video games were terrible for humanity, but then by the end of my internet research, I determined that there are positive uses for video game simulated technology. I feel like we need to promote human connections, but it would also be acceptable to round up the major threats to society, and allow them to get most of their life experiences in a simulated version of a violent reality. -- Do yall know of any video games that are safe/violent?' -- Hehe

HipsterRunoff gaming violence simulation virtuality
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Times Online -- The driving force behind Grand Theft Auto

Houser: “The game is set in a world that is like the world would be if it were the way the media says it is.”

gaming mmorpg sandbox virtualworlds GTA sociology simulation verisimilitude spectacle
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- 2011: Obama’s Coup Fails Injects Politics Into Strategy Game

'“We detest Republicans and Democrats alike.” The site was cooked up by Libertarians, but Lodispoto says United States of Earth employees are both Republicans and Democrats. “We allow the right and left to come up with [game's] scenarios, the first being the 2011 Obama Coup one made by right-wingers but tempered by us Libertarians. This scenario came out first to capitalize on the various anti-constitutional acts of our current president. The Bush scenario comes out next and I’m sure we will be attacked for being anti-Republican then.”'

thegamingofeverydaylife gaming simulation politics discourse libertarianism argumentation
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

'Designers say the new game explores the endless paperwork, routine patrolling a modern day soldier endures in photorealistic detail.' -- True.

TheOnion gaming realism simulation simulacra virtuality militaryentertainmentcomplex boredom lulz satire
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- New York opens school of gaming

'...the school is only taking on sixth graders at first, but will increase in size on an annual basis. ...it's not just going to be about sitting around playing commercial titles - the school has its own board and card games, and will also use software packages like Maya and Flash to teach modeling and programming skills. It must also meet the educational requirements of any normal school, which means traditional maths and english lessons won't just disappear from the curriculum. ...the school is going as far as to adopt gaming structure and terminology: "Each of the 20 to 25 children per class will have access to a laptop and, rather than studying individual subjects, will attend four 90-minute periods a day devoted to curriculum "domains" like Codeworlds (a combination of math and English) and the Way Things Work (math and science). Each domain concludes with a two-week test that is called—borrowing from video parlance—a "Boss Level.""' -- Codeworlds. I like that.

gaming education learning simulation codeworlds ludotopianism
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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CTheory.net -- Media Dopplers

'When we deal with this condition of outformation, we concern ourselves with rates, flow, vector, flux, and its messaging types [unicast, multicast, broadcast, or anycast]. We deal with paths, closeness, link, connectivity, signaling, entropy, self-similarity, throughput, and latency. It doesn't matter what the content is. Rather, the critical standpoint deals with its entropy, its signaling, its rate, flux density and messaging type. -- The requirement for citizen-actors on reality television reflects not nearly the need for such vocations of entertainment, rather, it is the construct of computer networks and software algorithm attempting and stuggling to learn to mimic the bizarre banality of a society dwelling in the afterburn of failed capitalism. It is not staged idiocy, it is pre-school for the machine screens comprehensively looping the simulation of the western debt class.'

* internet networks cybernetics feedback technology temes collectiveintelligence hivemind puppetry culture #storage #ubiquity extensionsofman centralnervoussystem immunesystem themediumisthemassage data information outformation simulation simulacra matrix selfservers avatars bots doppleganger virtuality debt economics financialization hologram via:charlesfrith media
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Los Angeles Times -- Beijing loves IKEA—but not for shopping

'Welcome to IKEA Beijing, where the atmosphere is more theme park than store. Every weekend, thousands of looky-loos pour into the massive showroom to use the displays. Some hop into bed, slide under the covers and sneak a nap; others bring cameras and pose with the decor. Families while away the afternoon in the store for no other reason than to enjoy the air conditioning. Visitors can't seem to resist novelties most Americans take for granted, such as free soda refills and ample seating. Purchasing anything at Yi Jia, as the store is called here, can seem like an afterthought. "We want to be modern. I think IKEA stands for a kind of lifestyle. People don't necessarily want to buy it, but they want to at least experience it." -- A group of university graduates recently donned caps and gowns for photographs by the checkout aisles as if to capture the moment they matriculated to the middle class.'

china IKEA experience sampling consumerism shopping narrativeobjects objects narrativeenvironments simulation windowshopping themepark retail publics
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Hipster Runoff Exegesis -- "Do teens RLLY ‘drink coffee’?"

'... Taste buds that never learn to disguish sweet from sour from bitter but that only register abstractions like "fun" and the taste of pleasure. A tongue that tastes only emotions rather than physical properties of consumed substances. These physical properties become even more unknowable to the mind, the food-in-itself a lost dream to the consumer, who can only consume her own expectations. "What does coffee taste like?," Carles asks, "what does beer taste like?" We can never know. Our perceptions of these things are purely self-referential. -- Once perception becomes a matter of interfacing with brands rather than our sensory organs, a trademark synesthesia ensues to the point where sound and taste are no different from one another... ... the brand is written [into] our bodies, which are written and overwritten over and again like any other media storage device, which is that to which we have been reduced.'

marketing branding experience synesthesia mimesis simulation simulacra fake theadvertisedlife RonHorning
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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CNReviews -- China SNS Gaming Applications: What’s Next?

'Gaming provides a different avenue for establishing new “relationships” with their real world friends. Our focus group participants expressed a great desire for role-playing games set in historic periods. In China, the Three Kingdoms period is an enduring favorite as evidenced by recent video games, television shows and blockbuster films, such as John Woo’s Red Cliff, that depict the glory of Chinese military history: "I want more strategy games based on China’s long military history. I want to wage war and form alliances with friends to build a new empire."' -- Hmm... on so many levels.

china socialnetworking socialmedia socialgraph guanxi gaming rpg roleplay simulation reenactment thegamingofeverydaylife
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- Six Theorists Explain What TV Is Doing To Your Mind

'#Simulations, by Jean Baudrillard ...when the world is so saturated by media that people have seen fake versions of things before seeing the things themselves. If you've played thousands of combat videogames, then go to war, are you no longer capable of grasping the truth of what you're experiencing? If you've seen hundreds of "dates" on reality shows, can you ever make a genuine connection with a person you go on dates with? Or will your mind be so fogged by simulation that you are unable to access your true feelings and experiences? Though Simulations is about more than just television, Baudrillard's fears about a media-created reality seem especially relevant to TV (and, today, the internet).' -- Nice discussion on McLuhan in the comments.

media tv theory theoryobjects objects simulation simulacra fake reality reflexivity circumscription themediumisthemassage kipple television
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari by Brian Massumi

'The simulacrum is less a copy twice removed than a phenomenon of a different nature altogether: it undermines the very distinction between copy and model. The terms copy and model bind us to the world of representation and objective (re)production. A copy, no matter how many times removed, authentic or fake, is defined by the presence or absence of internal, essential relations of resemblance to a model. The simulacrum, on the other hand, bears only an external and deceptive resemblance to a putative model. The process of its production, its inner dynamism, is entirely different from that of its supposed model; its resemblance to it is merely a surface effect, an illusion. A copy is made in order to stand in for its model. The simulacrum affirms its own difference. It is not an implosion, but a differentiation. The resemblance of the simulacrum is a means, not an end.' -- It's simulacra all the way down

philosophy simulation simulacra liminality liminalobjects objects copying representation diffusion replication reproduction evolution realtiy copy
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The History and Theory of Sandbox Gameplay

'"Sandbox" sometimes challenges traditional narrative, but it always puts something new in its place. ...[it] transforms predetermined narrative into dynamic, responsive narrative. ...the sandbox game distinguished itself by making the responses more significant and meaningful. -- ...a common challenge in sandbox design: player commitment to open story. ...that game design is so fun in itself that, if properly packaged, it can well be reinterpreted as gameplay itself. -- Sandbox play is essentially amoral/non-moral, in the sense that real action is often governed by the hypothetical: "What happens if I run this guy over?" ...until GTAIV, the PC personality was something of a narrative problem; the hero was a bi-polar thug for whom nothing was truly out of character. Such a character is not terribly interesting... With GTAIV, however the scarred warrior turned ironical and embittered anarchist justifies much better the peculiar range of action of a GTA hero.'

* meta gaming play gameplay gamedesign design sandbox possibilityspace space narrativeenvironments virtualworlds simulation simcity spore GTAIV puppetry augmentationistsvsimmersionists storytelling framing probabilityspace narrativearchitecture causality contiguity continuity morality realism psychology motivation narrativeacts emergence existentialism
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Corrupted Blood incident

'The Corrupted Blood incident was a widely reported virtual plague outbreak and video game glitch found in World of Warcraft. The plague began when an area was introduced in a new update. One boss could cast a spell called Corrupted Blood, which would deal a certain amount of damage over a period of time and which could be transferred from character to character. It was intended to be exclusive to this area, but players discovered ways to take it out, causing an epidemic across several servers. During the epidemic, some players would help combat the disease by volunteering healing services, while select others would maliciously spread the disease. - One aspect of the epidemic that was not considered by epidemiologists in their models was curiosity, describing how players would rush into infected areas to witness the infection and then rush out. This was paralleled to real-world behavior, specifically with how journalists would rush toward a problem to cover it, and then rush back out.'

virtualworlds mmorpg gaming emergence glitch worldofwarcraft virus disease plague infection epidemics leaky spread hysteria panic voyeurism rubbernecking journalism #socialization #ubiquity terrorism! epidemiology modelling simulation thegamingofeverydaylife
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Borders -- Are writers sane?

"Writers – like actors — have a kink in the brain. It’s a kink that means we are at the same time deeply and intimately involved in the process of being human while standing outside that process watching it happen. It means that we can never truly be at one with our own lives because we can’t ever totally lose ourselves in the unconscious moment. A part of us is always conscious, always watching, analysing, pulling the moment apart so we can put it back together again as fiction.Writers are blessed – or cursed – with the kind of imagination that turns ‘what if’ into an automatic reflex. A magazine cover, a funny cloud shape in the sky, an overheard snatch of conversation – every single thing we see and hear and feel and touch and taste is a potential catalyst for a story. Nothing is ordinary. Everything has the potential to become huge, sweeping, epic."

psychology writing acting simulation imagination
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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The New Yorker -- Cocksure: Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence by Malcolm Gladwell

'...this is what competition does to all of us; because ability makes a difference in competitions of skill, we make the mistake of thinking that it must also make a difference in competitions of pure chance. This is what social scientists mean when they say that human overconfidence can be an adaptive trait. “In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning.” “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.” Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. From an individual perspective, it is hard to distinguish between the times when excessive optimism is good and the times when it isn’t. All that we can say unequivocally is that overconfidence is, as Wrangham puts it, “globally maladaptive.'

psychology control bluffing confidence reflexivity delusion hubris simulation gaming bridge MalcolmGladwell
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Dubious Quality -- A Lesson In Revolutionary Politics From Video Games

"It was at that moment that I understood, more fully than ever before, why revolutionaries succeed and then fail. It's because they're switching genres. They take over the country in a third-person (or first person) action game, but then they have to play an RTS to govern the country. That's an entirely different gaming skill set. It's much easier to wreck than to build, and not only do they have to build, they also have to stop all those first-person action heroes who want to lead their own revolution."

gaming politics simulation thegamingofeverydaylife via:infovore
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- If Politicians Read Science Fiction, We'd Have Avoided The Cold War And Other Disasters

Ben Bova: "If our political leaders had been reading science fiction, we might have been spared the Cold War, the energy crises, the failures of public education and many of the other problems that now seem intractable because we were not prepared to deal with them when they arose. We could be living in a world that is powered by solar and nuclear energy, drawing our raw materials from the moon and asteroids, moving much of our industrial base into orbit and allowing our home world to become a clean, green residential area." -- Yeah?

sciencefiction futurism utopia simulation
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games

'What if games could make kids exceedingly likable and fashionable? A wave of new games for tween girls seeks to do just that, serving up innocuous gameplay designed to let players become perfect little princesses. Aimed at that lucrative, Hannah Montana-fueled intersection of childhood and adolescence, these games might give 8- to 12-year-olds their first experiences with fashion, make-up, popularity … even boys. The weird thing is that you can view these “wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA’s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?' -- 'Man points' vs 'Bitch points'

gaming teens girls women fashion virtualgoods shopping gossip popularity snark simulation thegamingofeverydaylife
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Cracked.com -- Exploring the Mysteries of the Mind with the Sims 3

"I moved them into the burned-out, haunted remains of my old facility to recreate our grand experiment. What happened next is a true story: the clone rummaged through the trash for exactly 25 hours, then ran to the pool to sink and die. It’s like the first thing he did after being created was remember what I had done."

sims psychology simulation abuse sadism lulz thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Technium -- As If

'Metaphors become real when we act as if they are real – whether or not we intellectually "believe" they are real. This behavioral definition of "real" means that metaphors are tools. In this way the role and power of metaphor is rising in our culture. Our modern digital world is a metaphoric world. We make things real by first constructing them as a metaphor, an "as if" type. Then we slowly deepen the metaphor, adding more layers of meaning and realism, until metaphor slowly passes whatever invisible barrier lies between the real and fake, and it becomes "is" -- it becomes "real." Pinocchio is at last a real boy, earning the love of his mother. We have made as-if realities, which someday may be felt as real. We are making as-if communities, as-if democracies, as-if intelligence, as-if life. ...we are beginning to act as-if there was a global brain. We ask Google expecting it to know the answers to all our many questions. We assume a global awareness...'

verisimilitude virtuality simulation simulacra fake evocativeobjects liminality liminalobjects relationalobjects objects KevinKelly
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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OnFiction -- The Indirectness of Art

'People were randomly assigned to read Chekhov's story or the control piece. We measured their personality traits and their emotions before and after reading, and we found that those who read Chekhov's story changed more in their personality traits and emotions than those who read the non-fiction-style control version. The changes, moreover, were mediated by the emotions that readers experienced while reading. The changes of personality that we found were small, and they were all in different directions. So we think we can say that they were in each individual's own direction. Our view is that as one reads a piece of literary fiction—as one runs the simulation in one's mind—one is affected by it. People who read a lot of fiction may be able to use their fictional reading, in small ways, to imagine their selfhood into circumstances other than the usual, and thereby to extend their sense of themselves: in their own way.'

psychology fiction reading emotionalintelligence simulation multitude self
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Alice and Kev: The story of being homeless in The Sims 3

"This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over." -- @Baudrillard The desert of the real estate?

sims homelessness recession america simulation simulacra storytelling productnarratives narrativeenvironments virtualworlds machinima liveart art thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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New Scientist -- Virtual body parts take the guesswork out of medicine

'Doctors could soon be testing medications or surgery on your virtual twin before you get to undergo the real treatment. Researchers around the world are creating different personalised simulations of living body parts, so that bespoke therapies can be tested and optimised without risk to the patient. Models of individual body parts could eventually be integrated to simulate a patient's entire body.'

virtualization virtuality prosthetics body modelling simulation simulacra doppleganger
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- 7 Virtual Reality Technologies That Actually Work

'Here are seven VR technologies that work, and that may yet point the way to truly successful virtual reality. #Multiplayer Online Gaming. One result of virtual-reality research is the existence of entirely separate virtual worlds, inhabited entirely by the avatars of real world users. These worlds are sometimes referred to as massively multiplayer online games, and the World of Warcraft is the largest virtual gaming world in use now, with 11.5 million subscribers. Another example is Second Life. The world of Second Life can't really be classified as a game, since the goal seems really just to be to wander around and interact with people, much like the real world. There is even a Second Life Shakespeare Company that performs Shakespeare's works within Second Life. #Project Natal. ...a system that requires no keyboard and no controller, where a user's voice and motions serve as their method for interacting with the system.'

virtualreality mmorpg roleplay worldofwarcraft augmentationistsvsimmersionists simulation interface design wii controllers gestures projectnatal xbox virtualworlds
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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GameSpot -- The Sims 3 Review for PC

'The Sims 3 balances its rewards well, not just within aspirations, but within career and financial progression as well. Like real people, your sims will always want better stuff, a nicer house, and a prettier yard. You'll start with meager means, but as you progress down your chosen career track, you'll earn more money and work less, giving you more time for the fun stuff. Like before, you won't actually guide your sim through the workday, but you will be able to select something to focus on during the day, such as getting to know your coworkers or pursuing independent research. Doing so earns extra benefits; for example, studying music theory will increase your logic skill, letting you kill two birds (a paycheck and an improved skill) with one stone. Thankfully, managing your basic needs--hunger, bladder, and so on--takes less effort than before, giving you more chances to take advantage of these occasions.

sims virtualworlds simulation work thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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IGN -- The Sims 3 Review

"Imagine if EA could make everyday work as interesting as everyday life in The Sims? You could experience challenges trying to earn a paycheck. Or perhaps the designers could embed adventures and mysteries within the world for you to uncover? Maybe there could be some MMO-style quests that NPCs could grant? The potential is here to create a much grander and richer experience, and it'll be interesting to see what route EA takes with the expansions going forward."

sims virtualworlds gamedesign gamemechanics simulation thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- 4 Ways Virtual Reality Living Could Suck

'In Rudy Rucker's novel Postsingular, nanomachines (called "nants") turn the world in to a virtual simulation, called "Vearth." And it turns out that Vearth is kind of a sucky copy of the "real" Earth, because it takes up too much bandwidth to create a decent version. "The water, clouds and fire were never quite right. In any case, the nants didn't always try that hard; they often settled for shortcuts as crude as representing a tree by a cookie-cutter flat polygon." And then the Big Pig, the super-intelligence that runs the simulation, comes up with an economy, where if you pay a monthly fee, you get rendered at a higher resolution. There's only so much room to live in Vearth's highest resolution and best-simulated zones, so most people have to live in tiny apartments or in worse areas. Eventually, there are terrorists and computer viruses that wipe out tons of people. And the Big Pig realizes that people can get along without their subconscious minds, so it takes those away.'

virtualworlds cocooning behaviours simulation simulacra virtuality mirrorworlds
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired.com -- 4 Ways to Make the Most of Sims 3’s Massive Upgrades

'For the first time, you’re also able to design your Sim’s personality. There are 63 different traits to choose from that will determine how your characters behave. As you play, your Sims will earn Happiness points by staying in a good mood and completing the occasional mini-objective, determined by their traits. Happiness points can be cashed in for prizes that can make life a bit easier... For Sims who like to stay occupied, there are a number of careers to choose from, with success determined by your ability to work hard, stay in a good mood and make friends. [All] work and no play makes a depressed, unproductive Sim... So be sure that your Sim goes out and makes its mark on the world: You don’t want to have spent your entire virtual life wasting away in front of a computer screen, right?' -- ;^)

* gaming virtualworlds sims avatars personality emotionalintelligence simulation happiness thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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OnFiction -- Moods and Stories

'Benzon's proposal derives from the finding that memories are often mood dependent: people tend to recall autobiographical memories of when they were happy when they are happy once again, and they best recall memories of loss and failure when they are sad. Benzon says: "My argument is that this communal experience of stories helps us to create neural circuits that give us the ability to recall a wide range of experience without our having to be in a neurochemical state approximating that which mediated that experience. Without the constant experience of emotionally charged stories, our memories would be captive to the current mood."' -- Findings from the "Sarah Cole" study: 'When angry one thinks forward from a slight or injustice towards possibilities of what to do about it, including possibilities of vengeance. When sad, one backtracks mentally from the loss or mistake to what might have caused it.' -- And it should be precisely the reverse.

storytelling fiction cognition multitude enactment reenactment experience simulation memory recall mood emotion emotionalintelligence reflexivity circumscription retcon
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- The Complex Universe of Games and Puzzles, Simplified

Awesome! Diagram/Map: "The Emigmatrix: In the universe of puzzles, codes, and games, everything is connected. Here's how." -- Full size map on flickr: http://bit.ly/ePBlF

* ludology gamemechanics gaming games puzzle mystery fantasy magic simulation gametheory mathematics algorithms cryptography patternrecognition tropes storytelling narrativeacts maps visualization
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Un-games

'Sullentrop: “The Path does at least try to present an interactive way for game players to experience empathy rather than to exert agency—to walk in the footsteps of young girls without trying to author their stories for them.” But if the goal is to let go and do nothing, why buy the game at all? Why not “let go” and shut off the computer? We could sit in a park and watch real live people who we can’t control rather than fake, computerized ones. What is good about games, I think, is that they can be immersive, they can hone the ability to focus because they reward paying attention and practicing. Or they can serve as a total distraction... But The Path seems designed to frustrate those functions; it seems to want to work like a hallucinogenic drug, flashing some trippy visuals and prompting some meandering introspection while making you unfit for any serious concentration. ...there is no one with whom to empathize in [a] computer simulation.'

gaming gameplay play simulation empathy
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- How Game Design Can Revolutionize Everyday Life

'Turn the world into a game, they argue, and it works better. Give people a competition, and it can transform a dull-but-important task into something exciting. "Games create drama and excitement," as Jane McGonigal, one of the leading thinkers in the field, told the crowd at this year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. "We've done that for years with videogames, and now we can apply that thinking to the rest of life." Games can change behavior by taking bad behaviors and making them visible, so we can no longer ignore them.' -- Numbers numb.

gaming games design gamemechanics work simulation numbers thegamingofeverydaylife CliveThompson
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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CTheory.net -- Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism

'It is from simulation that virtual games emerged, broke loose only to be reintegrated into the assemblages of world capital, as a means of inducing the "flexible personality" demanded by digital work, war and markets. As this hacker innovation was captured by the game factory, it has continued to generate surplus know-how that escapes complete capture in the commodity form. Some commentators see such "autoludic" activity as automatically empowering and democratizing. We, however, insist on what Paolo Virno terms "the ambivalence of the multitude." We ask of digital play what Félix Guattari asked of collective humanity: "how can it find a compass by which to reorient itself?" His response, by "remaking social practices," was grounded in a reading of transformations already underway. To speak of games of multitude is to assert that the possibilities of virtual play exceed its imperial manifestations, and the desires of many gamers surpass marketers' caricatures of them.'

* culture media gaming virtualgoods mmorpg RMT ludocapitalism work seriousgames affectivelabour immateriallabour virtuality simulation play theory praxis activism multitude cognitivesurplus alternativerealitygaming transformation design socialsoftware gamemechanics recuperation ideology hegemony carrierobjects objects militaryentertainmentcomplex hackersvsvectoralists globalization empire thegamingofeverydaylife nickdyerwitheford via:jullandibbell "capitalism"
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Google Tech Talks: The Next Fifty Years of Science by Kevin Kelly

Deep Science: Simulation : Measurement : Hypothesis

science subjectivity simulation collectiveintelligence evolution #complexity #bandwidth #storage KevinKelly
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- The Onion: Software Indicates Missing Child Likely A Prostitute By Now

"Today Now! utilizes computer technology to show a mother how rampant drug use and prostitution has ravaged her little girl's body."

tv news entertainment grief exploitation realityprogramming simulation television
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- The Onion: Warcraft Sequel Lets You Play A Character Playing Warcraft

"World Of World Of Warcraft's amazing level of detail makes players feel like they are actually in a cramped, dark apartment playing World Of Warcraft."

worldofwarcraft mmorpg simulation simulacra regression lulz
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- The Onion: Are Violent Video Games Preparing Kids For The Apocalypse?

"Panelists debate whether games like Fallout 3 and Gears Of War 2 are teaching children skills they'll really need in the End Times."

war simulation thegamingofeverydaylife lulz
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Jean Baudrillard -- Two Essays: "Simulacra and Science Fiction" and "Ballard's Crash"

"There are three orders of simulacra: #1) natural, naturalistic simulacra: based on image, imitation, and counterfeiting. They are harmonious, optimistic, and aim at the reconstitution, or the ideal institution, of a nature in God's image. #2) productive, productionist simulacra: based on energy and force, materialized by the machine and the entire system of production. Their aim is Promethean: world-wide application, continuous expansion, liberation of indeterminate energy (desire is part of the utopias belonging to this order of simulacra). #3) simulation simulacra: based on information, the model, cybernetic play. Their aim is maximum operationality, hyperreality, total control."

simulacra simulation JeanBaudrillard
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

'It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now. #Sandberg: People are more worried about deletion [than adding memories]. We have a preoccupation with amnesia, and are more fearful of losing something than adding falsehoods. The problem is that it's the falsehoods that really mess you up. If you don't know something, you can look it up, remedy your lack of information. But if you believe something falsely, that might make you act much more erroneously. You can imagine someone modifying their memories of war to make them look less cowardly and more brave. Now they'll think they're a brave person. At that point, you end up with the interesting question of whether, in a crisis situation, they would now be brave. We can't trust our memories. But on the other hand, our memories are the basis for most of our decisions. We take it as a given that we can trust them, which is problematic. We have authentic fake memories, in a sense.'

psychology drugs memory editing experience authenticity self perception realityprogramming reality virtuality fake illusion delusion simulation philosophy
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Flickr -- Lucifron

'As you can see, the screen is dominated by instrumentation.'

dashboard data interface virtuality numbers simulation virtualworlds worldofwarcraft
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Telegraph -- 'We don't need a Twittericulum'

'"Think of a princess, a beautiful princess locked up in a tower. Think about how she must feel, yearning to escape. Now, imagine you are reading a book about that princess, engrossed in what is to become of her. You feel for her, you care about her, you want her to escape. Yes?" she asks. Ah, yes, I suppose so, I nod, wondering where we are going. "You see," she says flashing her trademark, wide-mouthed smile. "Don't tell me youngsters playing a computer game in which the princess is locked in the tower give a stuff if she gets out or not. They don't. They don't because those sort of computer games aren't about empathising with or understanding her plight. She is just there as a goal. The game is all about getting her out of the tower because that means they win. Game over. It's all so meaningless. In the truest sense of the word," she says shaking her head in exasperation. "It… means… nothing," she says slowly, drumming her red fingernails on her desk to emphasise each word.' -- True

* psychology thegamingofeverydaylife gaming behaviours augmentationistsvsimmersionists immersion imagination empathy emotionalintelligence simulation numbers points continuouspartialattention attention concentration intermittentvariablerewards feedback addiction virtuality reality children learning education socialmedia twitter boredom
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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New York Magazine -- How Michael Osinski Helped Build the Bomb That Blew Up Wall Street

'I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds. I never would have thought, in my most extreme paranoid fantasies, that my software, and the others like it, would have enabled Wall Street to decimate the investments of everyone in my family. Not even the most jaded observer saw that coming. I can’t deny that it allowed a privileged few to exploit the unsuspecting many. But catastrophe, depression, busted banks, forced auctions of entire tracts of houses? The fact that my software, over which I would labor for a decade, facilitated these events is numbing. Is capitalism inherently corrupt? I don’t think the free flow of goods in and of itself is the culprit. No, it’s the complexity masked by thousands of unseen whirring widgets that beguiles people into a sense of power, a feeling of dominion over the future.'

economics finance securitization derivatives risk control #complexity prediction software numbers simulation virtuality blackboxes
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Nicholas Carr -- Technology's Prophet: It's Jean Baudrillard, not Marshall McLuhan

Quotes Baudrillard's The Vital Illusion: "#Ecstasy of the social: the masses. More social than the social. #Ecstasy of information: simulation. Truer than true. #Ecstasy of time: real time, instantaneity. More present than the present. #Ecstasy of the real: the hyperreal. More real than the real. #Ecstasy of sex: porn. More sexual than sex … Thus, freedom has been obliterated, liquidated by liberation; truth has been supplanted by verification; the community has been liquidated and absorbed by communication … Everywhere we see a paradoxical logic: the idea is destroyed by its own realization, by its own excess. And in this way history itself comes to an end, finds itself obliterated by the instantaneity and omnipresence of the event." -- Carr: "What we see today is not discontinuity but continuity. Mass media reaches its natural end-state when we broadcast our lives rather than live them."

socialmedia twitter realtime hyperreality simulacra spectacle psychosis simulation language ecstasy communication #bandwidth #socialization #storage #ubiquity JeanBaudrillard via:charlesfrith
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Outsourced motivation

On services that... 'attempt to transform everyday life tasks into games by assign values to them and keeping score. ...a world in which collective experience is systematically abrogated, a world in which only competition can “unite” us and corporations reap the profits from our combat. We end up sharing only the ideal of measured achievement: how many more points we can score, how many people are reading our updates, how many more things we can own or add to our list of experiences. Services [that] meet the need we now have to have our social experiences more rigidly structured by an outside party, a referee, some sort of mediator. We seem to have worked ourselves into a corner where we must outsource our ability to be motivated. We need outside parties to generate motivational schemes and point systems to drive us through life activities that were once rewarding enough in and of themselves. ...nullifying the quality of experience and reducing it to a point value.'

criticism experience service games design gamemechanics control measurement experiencepoints points numbers rewards status hierarchy simulation motivation feedback existentialism solipsism self selfservers quantifiedself thegamingofeverydaylife #bandwidth #complexity
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Yahoo! Finance -- Inside the world's biggest hedge fund

'Does Dalio think of himself as one of the world's great investors? "No," he says, shaking his head, visibly agitated. "First of all, I don't know what the definition is of 'one of the great investors.' It's a totally irrelevant question. I have the fear of messing up. And that fear drives me to ask, 'Well, could this thing happen? Could that thing happen? If it happened in Japan, how do I know it won't happen to me?' Dalio describes himself as a "hyperrealist," in the sense that he is driven to understand the processes that govern the way the world really works, without bringing subjective value judgments into the equation. "I think the thing that makes him different is an intolerance for the inadequate answer," says Bob Prince, 50, Bridgewater's co-chief investment officer, who has been with the firm since 1986. "He'll just keep peeling back layer after layer to get at the essential truth." -- Read on for Dalio's 'radical transparency' workplace practices

economics investing simulation practice feedback transparency management work
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street

'Asked to compare her work to physics, one quant, who requested anonymity because her company had not given her permission to talk to reporters, termed the market “a wild beast” that cannot be controlled, and then added: “It’s not like building a bridge. If you’re right more than half the time you’re winning the game.” There are a thousand physicists on Wall Street, she estimated, and many, she said, talk nostalgically about science. “They sold their souls to the devil,” she said, adding, “I haven’t met many quants who said they were in finance because they were in love with finance.”' -- 'Nigel Goldenfeld, whose company sells derivatives software: "Because the math is really complicated people assume it must be right."' -- Numbers numb

economics finance mathematics derivatives risk modelling simulation simulacra numbers nonholonomic systems reflexivity
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Scott Brown on Dark Superheroes and Childish Action Figures

"...like any movie that boasts men in latex, with its release come the action figures. The trouble is, these new angsty comics flicks aren't for kids, so why are the toys they spawn? The reason, besides the slim possibility that parents did some actual parenting and steered their kids away from The Dark Knight, might be psychological: Deeply damaged characters in figurine form deny youngsters those first tender forays into cruelty—that compulsive subconscious release so critical to the concept of "play"—by arriving already effed-up. Children are adept at defacing, even deconstructing, the fantasies McPackaged for them. Adults, on the other hand, need help."

psychology toys relationalobjects objects abuse play repression simulation parenting heroes
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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