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"The Schemaverse is a space-based strategy game implemented entirely within a PostgreSQL database. Compete against other players using raw SQL commands to command your fleet. Or, if your PL/pgSQL-foo is strong, wield it to write AI and have your fleet command itself!"

"Since 2002 Global Kids has been a leader in the use of online games to promote global awareness, engaged citizenship, and 21st Century Learning Skills. Through the Playing 4 Keeps program, Global Kids trains urban youth to develop games about important social and world issues. Global Kids played a founding role in the creation of Games For Change, which is committed to supporting individuals and organizations to use digital games for social change, and Global Kids advises other institutions, such as IBM, on the creation of games and games-based learning curricula. In addition, Global Kids, staff and students speak and write regularly about this work in academic, non-profit and philanthropic settings. "

A badge awarding service for web apps.

" Film maker Adam Curtis joins us to talk about his latest project, 'It Felt Like a Kiss' and has some brilliant theories on all of Shift Run Stop's favourite subjects: humour, games and the computer age."

"What are noticings? Noticings are interesting things that you stumble across when out and about. For example: perplexing pavement markings, a discarded photo, and a ceramic space invader are all noticings. Players are awarded points for things like spotting the first thing in a neighbourhood, or noticing something every day for a week. How to play You play Noticings by uploading your photos to Flickr, tagged with 'noticings' and geotagged with where they were taken. We've got some instructions to help you out. Each turn is a day, and at 3pm GMT every day photos from the previous day are imported from Flickr and the scores calculated."

As @ssethi put it, "Google XMPP-powered mini apps announced. Each is XML file with all HTML, CSS, & JS files packed together."

"“It might only take 5 days of World of Warcraft to create Wikipedia,” considering the vast number of players. “There’s no reason why we can’t take real world work and real world problems and seductively conceal it in a game world. Gamers have no problem doing work and doing collaborative things, you just have to figure out how to make them care about it.”"

"Ruben & Lullaby are lovers having their first fight, and whether they break up or make up depends on you! A new kind of entertainment called an “opertoon,” Ruben & Lullaby is part comic, part game, part musical instrument, and controlled with motions and gestures which enable you to shape the feelings of the characters." -- the next time you're having a fight of your own, stop and ask who is shaking or stroking the iphone you're in...

"Games don't separate learning from assessment. They don't say "Learn some stuff, and then later we'll take a test." They're giving you feedback all the time about the learning curve that you're on. So, they're not the only solution to this problem by any means, but they're a part of the solution of getting kids in school to learn not just knowledge as facts, but knowledge as something you produce; and in the modern world you produce it collaboratively."

"where this thing really scored is in an element I've not noticed in a lot of the talk about play - fairness. And kids are utterly, utterly obsessed with fairness. It's the most important element in any game. And human rule-enforcement is automatically deemed unfair. There is no referee, umpire or god-like grandparent that can escape being seen as unfair at some point, for some decision. But the commanding voice of Cosmic Catch escapes all that. The relentless, ineluctable judgement of the RFID machine brooks no argument, is prey to no human frailties and biases and is immediately seen as fair. Or actually Fair. Or even FAIR."

a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. This analog version of Pac-man is being developed in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, in order to explore what happens when games are removed from their "little world" of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger "real world" of street corners, and cities.

"aim is to provide simple, fun, competitive games that help children learn and gain confidence with Maths, English and other key skills and knowledge"

five chapters, loosely based on Denny Rydberg’s “Five Steps to Building Community.” Introducing new games to your youth group or conference will work best if your timing is right—if you choose games that fit the level of community already attained and nudge the group on to the next level. Following this introduction is an outline of the “Five Steps.” We have relied on this system to explain how community develops in YRUU settings at continental trainings, and we consider it whenever we plan programming for a YRUU event. Before each chapter are a few hints and suggestions for planning youth programming for that particular stage. In the game descriptions themselves, we tried to alternate between masculine and feminine pronouns, in order to be grammatically and politically correct. Don’t let it confuse you!

"One of the things I like about small children is watching them learn, experiment, and figure out the world. With older babies, and younger toddlers, they sometimes look like someone playing a text adventure: >TAKE LION You take the stuffed lion. >DROP LION Dropped. >TAKE LION You take the stuffed lion. >DROP LION Dropped. >TAKE LION You take the stuffed lion. >TAKE EGG You take the plush egg. >I You have: A stuffed lion A plush egg >PUSH LION Nothing happens. >PULL LION Nothing happens. >PUSH LION Nothing happens. >USE LION WITH EGG You can't use those two items together. >USE EGG WITH LION You can't use those two items together. >USE LION WITH EGG You can't use those two items together. >DROP LION Dropped. >EAT EGG You can't eat that! >EAT LION You don't have the lion. >GET LION You take the stuffed lion. >EAT LION You can't eat that!" via: yoz

Opening Ceremony for the 2008 games

hilarious—trying to understand the physics/cosmology of WoW based on empirical evidence.

Rescue: the beagles is fantastic

You and your partner each think of a word or phrase -- typically a noun, but it doesn't have to be. Ready? Count to three together, then say your words at the same time... Now you each have to think of a new word or phrase that somehow relates

if at the end of a quarter they needed to boost revenue... order all pets in a certain geography or in a certain number series to “get sick.” When customers take their pets to “see the vet” and purchase medicine.

describes some of the essays in the book

New human computing site (image aesthetics, tune tagging, and more) out of Carnegie Mellon.

recap of serious games

collection of game ideas with associated flickr groups

Buckminster Fuller proposed an alternative to war games, called the World Game. He saw the world operating at a 4% mechanical efficiency and asserted that, if we could operate at 12% efficiency, we could accommodate everybody – humanity would be sustain

open source platform for designing sprite-baaed games

Flickr re-released GNE, the foundation upon which Flickr was built, for April Fools. Awesome, but who knows how long it will stay... (via: Preoccupations)

version of rules for Mexican Train is based on the original, “official” rules, rewritten for clarity with suggested alternatives

action-video-game playing is capable of altering a range of visual skills

computer games that can help players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world.

Though similar in many ways to modern tennis, Jeu de Paume is a far more complex and technical sport. Played on an indoor court featuring angled walls and netted windows, the game favors precision ball-placement and mental strategies akin to a fast-paced

Popular accounts of the Serious Games movement have often fallen back on the image of the computer as a "teaching machine" that "programs" its users - for better or for worse.

"Applying game mechanics to functional software" Decent collection of ways that games can influence other designs.

"The more humanlike his robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. If an android become too realistic and lifelike, suddenly people were repelled and disgusted."

searches through the 172,823 words of the ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon) Scrabble word list and determines the best word to play at the best position on the board.

reaching out to stakeholders, including researchers, corporations, government, the video games sector, to help us create a better future for all Americans

an online game to teach people what it's like to be a marine biologist who is tracking sharks.

Dr. Nowak identified the conditions when it can arise with a simple equation: B/C>K. That is, cooperation will emerge if the benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio of cooperation is greater than the average number of neighbors (K).

ludic fallacy (or "uncertainty of the nerd") is the "manifestation of the Platonic fallacy in the study of uncertainty; basing studies of chance on the narrow world of games and dice.

The collection goals include creating an archive of vintage and contemporary games; collecting secondary and supplementary research materials to facilitate investigation of gaming; and investigating ways to capture the output of campus gaming initiatives,

assessment and analysis tools and classroom management features, like class pages, calendars, and grade books

What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated?

online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit

an addict breaks free from WoW

At the start, there are twelve men in the image. After the two sections change places, there are thirteen men. The puzzle is figuring out where the thirteenth man came from.

Here's a short -- and totally idiosyncratic -- list of some of my favorite free games, each of which innovate one thing cool and new

Soldat is a unique side-view multiplayer action game. It takes the best from games like Liero, Worms, Quake and Counter-Strike and gives you fast action gameplay

tic tac toe in fractal form

At elementary schools, kindergartens, and preschools all across Japan, kids are losing themselves making hikaru dorodango, or balls of mud that shine.

Personal best = 1335