Books: Designing Virtual Worlds

Designing Virtual WorldsDesigning Virtual Worlds, by Richard Bartle.

This is a guest review by Kit Devine. Kit works as a Computer Animation Lecturer at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS).

If you read only one book on designing virtual worlds read this one. Bartle co-wrote the first MUD in 1978 and since then has worked with most of the on-line gaming companies in the UK. In this extremely readable book he covers all aspects of virtual worlds in an erudite, witty and comprehensive way. Bartle has read most, if not all, of the literature on virtual worlds and he clearly summarises the various positions and ideas. For this reason alone, the book is worth reading.
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Published in: on December 1, 2008 at 12:53 am Comments (1)
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Books: Challenges for Game Designers

Challenges for Game DesignersChallenges for Game Designers, by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber.

Bear with me readers, I’m going to try a bold experiment today. I’m about to break with my usual pattern and review an actual game design book written by actual game designers. I know that’s a pretty radical departure from the norm but work with me on this, I think you’ll like it.
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Published in: on November 28, 2008 at 4:53 am Comments (0)
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Regret

I had an odd experience last night: I stayed up very late playing Fallout 3 (very fun) and as usual in such games I died an awful lot. Of course I kept reloading my save game, sometimes kicking myself for not quicksaving more regularly. At a suitable point in my game, in the wee hours of the morning, I saved everything and headed to bed, pausing only to gulp down the glass of wine that had been untouched for hours.

Now I don’t know about you but if I drink alcohol before going to sleep, especially on an empty stomach, I generally sleep for about two hours and am then wide awake staring at the ceiling for the next three or four. It’s one of those things I’ve learnt to avoid doing but there are times, like last night, that I forget. So as I drifted into alcohol-aided slumber, I caught myself regretting the merlot slowly seeping into my veins.

And then a thought occured to me… I had saved just before drinking the wine. If I just restored to that save point I could go back and make a different choice.
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Published in: on November 10, 2008 at 7:11 am Comments (2)
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Alabaster: Make-your-own-adventure

alabasterI’m a bit late to the party on this, but Emily Short is attempting an interesting experiment in interactive fiction construction. Alabaster is a ‘fractured fairy tale’, retelling the story Snow White with a halloween flavour. The interesting thing about the project, however, is its mode of composition.
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Published in: on November 5, 2008 at 2:45 am Comments (1)
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AIIDE 08 Post-mortem

The best thing about AIIDE has to be the industry participation. In my experience, AI researchers are prone to a kind of hubris that expresses itself as “Here is a problem (in games or engineering or medicene) that could be solved using AI. I know all about AI. Therefore, I can solve this problem.” The ’solutions’ that are thus produced are often laughably innapropriate or otherwise bad when examined by someone who actually works in the field.
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Published in: on October 28, 2008 at 5:52 pm Comments (2)
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks to TED

I don’t make a habit of reposting links from other blogs, but when someone as prominent as
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is speaking it’s worth making noise about.

For those of you who don’t know him, Csikszentmihalyi is the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. I have to confess that I haven’t finished reading the book, so I’ll hold off on talking more about it yet.

Published in: on October 24, 2008 at 4:02 pm Comments (0)

Have games will travel

I’m off to the USA next week to attend AIIDE and then visit people at USC. It’s 13 hours flying and I’ve got a great swag of books to take on the plane, so maybe I’ll even get some reviewing done while I’m travelling. And maybe I’ll post a photo or two along the way.

Published in: on October 17, 2008 at 7:51 am Comments (0)
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Books: Halting State

Halting State, by Charles Stross.

It is rare that I find a science fiction book which doesn’t ask me to put my expertise on hold and just “trust in the magic”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as fond of indulging in pseudo-scientific technobabble as the next geek, but rarely does it make me think more deeply about the real science I do day to day. Halting state is different. It paints a near-future fictional world in which all the technological and social changes seem not only plausible, but likely.
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Published in: on at 4:35 am Comments (0)
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The mailman cometh

Last month, while the Australian dollar was still high, I went crazy on Amazon and ordered a slew of new books. The nice thing about Amazon shopping from Australia is that by the time the books arrive, you can no longer remember what you ordered, and opening the boxes is like Christmas. “Oh thankyou, I’ve wanted that book for ages! How did you know?”
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Published in: on October 14, 2008 at 4:00 am Comments (1)

Why is sex fun?

Ian Schreiber writes on the question of “what is fun”:

When a game designer (or student) first starts trying to define why games are “fun” they have trouble even conceptualizing it beyond “I know it when I see it.” Then they encounter Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and/or Koster’s Theory of Fun and have this huge epiphany: Eureka, all fun comes from learning a new skill! Then after awhile, they enter another stage of questioning this: wait a minute, if all fun comes from skill mastery, why aren’t students driven by the promise of fun to get straight A’s in all their classes (even the poorly taught ones), since that involves mastery of the material? Why is sex fun (by some standards), and yet doesn’t involve mastery (ahem, again by some standards)? At any rate, you could think of this as three stages of evolution of a game designer, and different designers are going to be in different stages, and when they encounter one another there will be chaos when they start discussing the nature of “fun.”

I find that Marc LeBlanc’s 8 kinds of fun is a much more comprehensive answer than Koster’s or Csikszentmihalyi’s. He categorises eight different features of an activity that can make it fun. So to answer the question of “Why is sex fun?”:
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Published in: on October 9, 2008 at 2:14 am Comments (4)
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