tevis thompson: Saving Zelda
february 2012 by coldbrain
"A world is more than a space, more than a place; it is something to inhabit & be inhabited by. What you infuse a space w/ to make it habitable, to make it memorable (since memory is profoundly spatial), gives the place its character, its soul…
Zelda would be better if it had no story…no plot to structure the adventure…first Zs barely had any plot…were better for it. With plot, sequence matters too much…early Zs had situations, worlds & scenarios that framed action, gaps to be filled in by player, sequences to be broken. Optimal paths & shortcuts weren’t a given; they had to be earned. Items were the most prominent plot devices, & even they were not unduly strict about order. You could be slow & steady or blast straight through with a little know-how…basic rules of the gameworld were what bound you, not some artificial necessity imposed for the sake of plot."
…a world is not for you. A world needs a substance, independence, sense that it doesn’t just disappear when you turn around."
2012
space
play
openendedness
open-ended
autonomy
exploration
memory
spatialmemory
worlds
worldbuilding
nintendo
videogames
gaming
zelda
games
gamecriticism
gamedesign
via:tealtan
tevisthompson
via:robertogreco
Zelda would be better if it had no story…no plot to structure the adventure…first Zs barely had any plot…were better for it. With plot, sequence matters too much…early Zs had situations, worlds & scenarios that framed action, gaps to be filled in by player, sequences to be broken. Optimal paths & shortcuts weren’t a given; they had to be earned. Items were the most prominent plot devices, & even they were not unduly strict about order. You could be slow & steady or blast straight through with a little know-how…basic rules of the gameworld were what bound you, not some artificial necessity imposed for the sake of plot."
…a world is not for you. A world needs a substance, independence, sense that it doesn’t just disappear when you turn around."
february 2012 by coldbrain
How to Teach Web-Building to Anyone
february 2012 by coldbrain
"I'm making some big shifts in my work in the coming months (read: focusing my energies rather than what's become the scattershot of freelance writing). I'm thrilled to say that this will mean more time for Hack Education, thanks in no small part to a research and writing project I'll be undertaking for Mozilla.
It's part of the organization's larger learning and literacy efforts, and my piece will involve researching practices and pedagogies and interviewing teachers, learners, technologists about tools for teaching programming for the Web. Specifically (or rather, conceptually), I'm asking the question: Do we need a "'Scratch' for HTML5?" All my findings and conversations will be written up here on this blog."
srg
edg
kids
2012
programming
coding
web
webdev
html5
html
audreywatters
via:robertogreco
It's part of the organization's larger learning and literacy efforts, and my piece will involve researching practices and pedagogies and interviewing teachers, learners, technologists about tools for teaching programming for the Web. Specifically (or rather, conceptually), I'm asking the question: Do we need a "'Scratch' for HTML5?" All my findings and conversations will be written up here on this blog."
february 2012 by coldbrain
related tags
audreywatters ⊕ autonomy ⊕ coding ⊕ edg ⊕ exploration ⊕ gamecriticism ⊕ gamedesign ⊕ games ⊕ gaming ⊕ html ⊕ html5 ⊕ kids ⊕ memory ⊕ nintendo ⊕ open-ended ⊕ openendedness ⊕ play ⊕ programming ⊕ space ⊕ spatialmemory ⊕ srg ⊕ tevisthompson ⊕ via:robertogreco ⊕ via:tealtan ⊕ videogames ⊕ web ⊕ webdev ⊕ worldbuilding ⊕ worlds ⊕ zelda ⊕Copy this bookmark: