That’s how I want to learn. Don’t give me a book; I don’t want a lecture, and I don’t want a list of topics to memorize. Give me ample reason to memorize them and a sandbox where I can safely play. Test me when I least expect it, shock me with the unknown, but make sure you’ve given me enough understanding and practice with my tools that I have a high chance of handling the unexpected.

Learning VIM while playing a game

But that’s not to say that gamification doesn’t work. Quite the opposite, in fact. The problem is that it was defined wrongly, not that it doesn’t work. So what is gamification then? That’s easy. Gamification is actually this; adding non-game elements to games. There you go. That’s how you do it. 

"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."

Text-based adventures were written as much as they were designed, employing tantalizing adjectives to create a sense of the world

"“Gamification” is a word and concept invented by idiocrats who confuse humane with manipulative.

Theory about how the mistake gets made

Everybody sees the trend toward simpler, more-focused, better-designed software. Enterprise developers see the consumerization of IT.

You could look at this trend and say, “As software improves, it respects its users more. It works better and looks better, is easier to learn, and leaves out the things that waste a user’s time.”

Or you could look at this trend and say, “As software gets simpler, it gets dumbed-down — even toddlers can use iPads. Users are now on the mental level of children, and we should design accordingly. What do children like? Games.”

Respect

It should be obvious that one conclusion respects people and one doesn’t. It should also be obvious that the first conclusion is correct and the second is incorrect, cynical, and low."

"The Vimeo staff has decided that we are no longer going to allow gaming videos on Vimeo. Specifically, we are no longer going to allow game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game. Videos falling into this category will be subject to deletion as of September 1st; new videos of this type will be removed."

"However, one thing that has become increasingly difficult to find has been anything related to video games. Specifically, indie video games. Vimeo's long been the go-to space for heralded indie titles like Sword and Sworcery to tease viewers with glimpses of in-development games. Yet, indie devlopers are finding themselves running afoul of an edict that forbids video of gameplays for users at the Basic and Plus levels of membership. To have gameplay videos hosted, users must purchase the Pro level at a cost of $199/year. That may not seem like a lot, but considering how many indie games get made by one- or two-person teams with no other source of income, it can be a big difference.

After seeing a flurry of tweets about the Vimeo policy earlier today, Kotaku reached out to Independent Games Festival chairman Brandon Boyer for his take on the situation. His editorial follows:"

"But wait… That wasn’t all they did. They disabled embedding of all content on our site, even the things we had made ourselves. Sure, the videos were still available by going directly to Vimeo.com and going into our account, but embedding was gone, so every occurrence of a video on our site was replaced with a block that said “embedding has been disabled for this site.”"

Over the last few years, I've been collecting examples of metagames — not the strategy of metagaming, but playable games about videogames. Most of these, like Desert Bus or Quest for the Crown, are one-joke games for a quick laugh. Others, like Cow Clicker and Upgrade Complete, are playable critiques of game mechanics. Some are even (gasp!) fun.

In 1991, Klaus Teuber was well on his way to becoming one of the planet's hottest board game designers. Teuber (pronounced "TOY-burr"), a dental technician living with his wife and three kids in a white row house in Rossdorf, Germany, had created a game a few years earlier called Barbarossa and the Riddlemaster, a sort of ur-Cranium in which players mold figures out of modeling clay while their opponents try to guess what the sculptures represent. The game was a hit, and in 1988 it won the Spiel des Jahres prize—German board gaming's highest honor.

Minecraft is a the biggest game of the year, & it was made by a single dude in Sweden, & it's crazy: http://t.co/5oRoh0s
– Robin Sloan (robinsloan) http://twitter.com/robinsloan/statuses/25044178142

The following links will take you to some sample linguistics puzzles. These puzzles are copyrighted by the University of Oregon Department of Linguistics, but may be copied or printed for personal or classroom use.

Many of the iPhone games I’ve played include achievements as well, and they certainly make you look at a game differently: This time when I play, I’ll go as fast as possible to get a "shortest time" achievement. And then I’ll play it slowly to make sure I get all the coins for another achievement. Next I’ll work on killing all the bad guys. Usually the achievements are set up so that there’s no way you can get all of them your first time through -- they require different types of gameplay and strategy, many of which won’t actually move you toward the actual goal of the game.

"My first thought after playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the first few hours was that Nintendo was kind of being a jerk about the whole thing. It's much harder to nail a satisfying game mechanic—whether it's in 2D or 3D—than people understand. Nintendo constantly shows you something amazing and masterfully produced, and just when you've gotten over being amazed at how well it plays, the game throws it away and offers up something else, equally good."

Tom Henderson is the self-described 'mathpunk'. He argues that the world is stacked against the general public's lack of mathematical understanding. He tries to get students interested in maths and foster real understanding and awareness rather than memorisation of formulae: 'the steps'.

He discusses mathematics in the context of things that humans are likely to be interested in: social conflict, sex and beauty.

"Armenia excels at chess. Its top player now has a shot at becoming world champion. How did this tiny country become a giant at the game?"