2 posts tagged “research”
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6098
In a more reality-based fantasy scenario, the Japanese government has gotten in on the idea of using serious games as tools for education. The software in question; Zaimudaijin Ninatte Yosan o Tsukurou! Yosan Sakusei Game, or “Let’s Become the Minister of Finance, and Balance the Budget! The Budget Drafting Game,†is rather self-explanatory. The free-to-play browser-based game launched in early July, quickly becoming the most popular area of the Japanese Ministry of Finance website. Presumably the aim of this serious game is not only to educate the population about the current state of Japan’s 781 trillion yen debt (US $7.015 trillion), but also, through its difficulty, to take some of the heat off of the ministry itself for its inability to resolve the debt in a timely manner. Predictably, almost every outcome suggests that the budget problems will continue for at least another generation. Wouldn’t it be something if the ministry of finance were actually monitoring the results of this game in order to choose the budget that would make the most sense to the public?
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/
The New Scientist is carrying a report into an unusual experiment in
artificial intelligence being conducted by a number of European
universities. The project intends to use simple AI in an online
environment to simulate the evolutionary development of a society, in a
manner clearly inspired by MMO games. Unlike games though, the idea is
to give AI agents a simple set of rules and abilities and then watch
them interact, working out how societies might spawn from simple laws.
However, Edward Castronova of Indiana University told New Scientist.
"We have real human societies that grow up on their own within
computer-generated fantasy worlds. The most sensible research project,
it seems to me, would be to study these societies directly, rather than
conjure artificial ones." Mr Castronova perhaps misses out on the idea
that only by studying emergent AI in action are we ever going to be
able to make use of the AI itself. These studies are, after all, in
addition to, and not instead of studying human MMO cultures. Perhaps,
if academic research like this provides insight for practical
programming applications, we'll one day see online worlds in which
humans interact with convincingly evolving AI cultures, making the
experience a lot less stiff and inflexible than online worlds are today.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7674
Some other stuff I ran across while looking at the above
http://www.verystrangesims.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walsweer/16607907/in/pool-living_in_wow/
Terra Nova: Fifteen new papers on virtual worlds
Fifteen new virtual world research papers are now linked to the on-line syllabus for the course “Games for the Web.” Written by thoughtful undergraduates at Trinity University, the papers explore topics ranging from sexual practices in virtual environments (PDF) to ways that MMOs might be used to ease the suffering of children with cancer (PDF). (Note:As some curmudgeons have correctly noted, the title "Games for the Web"is a misnomer that glosses over the distinction between "the web" andother TCP/IP-enabled services. The explanation can be found in theappended comments.)
Students met throughout the semester to discuss milestone worksrelated to gaming and virtual worlds, and they supplemented thesetheoretical conversations with ongoing fieldwork in the virtual worldof Norrath (Everquest II). The class played primarily on the Antonia Bayle role-playing server, where they were welcomed by the guild The Vindicators. In a completely unplanned twist of fate, the guild leader (Bandel) turned out to be the legendary game designer Scott Adams.
As they became more familiar with both the theoretical and thevirtual landscapes, each student articulated a narrowly definedquestion that could be answered with qualitative methods. They paidclose attention to ethical concerns and the importance of informedconsent, and all students were required to pass a test on researchethics before collecting a single scrap of data. All of the classresearch projects were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Trinity University.
