4 posts tagged “video games”

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,67142,00.html

As a massively multiplayer online game, many people think of Second Life as little more than a virtual playground. But an increasing number of people and organizations are employing the game in applications that are useful for far more than entertainment.

Second Life was crafted as an open-ended environment that would allow players to fly, drive fantastical vehicles, dress up in outlandish outfits and build just about anything they could imagine. The game's developers at San Francisco's Linden Lab, however, didn't expect it to be used as a way for business school students to test entrepreneurial talents or for abused children to rediscover social skills.
According to a woman who goes by the in-world name of Gwyneth Llewelyn, a British organization called ARCI is using Second Life to help abused children in Portuguese safe houses by bringing them into the game and then working on socialization, collaboration, team building, computer skills and more.

"They easily get in touch with people that they don't personally know," said Llewelyn, explaining how the children, who are forced into hiding to get away from abusive parents, benefit from the game. "This means we seem to break a barrier of socializing."

Another project, called live2give, was undertaken by nine adults with cerebral palsy, and seeks to provide a forum in which they can share in the everyday personal interactions that most people take for granted. The group of nine, who share a single Second Life avatar known as Wilde Cunningham, get to experience being around other people without being judged.

"Many of the real-world challenges are bypassed in Second Life," said June-Marie Mahay, who works with the nine at an adult day-care center in Mattapan, Massachusetts. "Fewer folks have a problem hanging out with them, which is quite the opposite in real life. Also, due to their speech challenges, many would need help understanding them in real life, but in Second Life, I just type what they say and do what they want."

Added Mahay, "They felt stigmatized by their disabilities, (which) kept them from the normal social integration we take for granted. Second Life removes both of these things."

Mahay's charges spend their in-world time on the small island known as live2give. Another in-world island, known as Brigadoon, is a place created for sufferers of autism and Asperger's syndrome to try out the social interactions that are so hard for them in the real world.

To the game's founder, Philip Rosedale, such uses are validation of his desire to create a virtual world in which people of all kinds can find something meaningful to do.

"The generalized uses of the system are really quite powerful," said Rosedale. "The high degree of emotional and personal presence you get in Second Life enables things like you get in Brigadoon, a simulation of what it's like to be in the presence of another human being."

Kevin Werbach, an assistant professor of legal studies at the Wharton School, said he was fascinated by the approach Second Life's developers took "in terms of creating a world that has no objective in the sense of most games, other than interacting with people."

Werbach is coordinating a program for the forthcoming Supernova conference on emerging technologies and business implications that will immerse Wharton students and conference attendees in Second Life. There, they will start businesses, advise some already in existence and compete to see who is most successful.

Along with many other massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOs, Second Life offers players the ability to start in-world businesses selling things like custom clothing, vehicles, housing and more. But where Second Life separates itself from other MMOs is in the freedom to create and have open-ended socialization that it gives its members, who pay a one-time fee of $10.

In Second Life, there are no defined limits to the ways players can interact. They can communicate and socialize through normal chatting or instant messaging, or in clubs or associations.

Other MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Ultima Online, to name a few, dwarf Second Life's 25,000 users. Still, many industry observers feel Second Life offers the best platform for mixing social interaction, play and the opportunity to tackle serious issues.

"There isn't really another platform that is so free of gaming lore," said Ed Castronova, a professor at the University of Indiana and an expert on MMOs. "In Second Life you can make anything."

Castronova cited Second Life's flexibility as the main reason people are using the game for serious purposes.

Werbach isn't the only business school professor employing Second Life. Elon University in North Carolina also plans to take students into the game as a way of building and testing entrepreneurial skills. This comes on the heels of Linden Lab's efforts to make the game attractive to all kinds of schools as a learning environment.

Exploring the Potential of the Digital Game as a Medium for Science Communication

http://www.gamasutra.com/education/theses/20050802/aitkin_01.shtml

Abstract

Scientific culture is not popular because the essential nature of science – the models and practices that make it up – cannot be communicated via conventional media in a manner that is interesting to the average person. These models and practices might be communicated in an interesting manner using the new medium of the digital game, yet very few digital games based upon scientific simulations have been created and thus the potential of such games to facilitate scientific knowledge construction cannot be studied directly. Scientific simulations have, however, been much used by scientists to facilitate their own knowledge construction, and equally, both simulations and games have been used by science educators to facilitate knowledge construction on the part of their students. The large academic literatures relating to these simulations and games collectively demonstrate that their ability to re-create reality, model complex systems, be visual and interactive, engage the user in the practise of science, and to engage the user in construction and collaboration, makes them powerful tools for facilitating scientific knowledge construction. Moreover, the large non-academic literature discussing the nature of digital games (which are themselves both simulations and games) demonstrates that their ability to perform the above tasks (i.e. to re-create reality, model complex systems, and so forth) is what makes them enjoyable to play.

Because the features of scientific and educational simulations and games that facilitate knowledge construction are the very same features that make digital games enjoyable to play, the player of a scientific-simulation-based digital game would be simultaneously gaining enjoyment and acquiring scientific knowledge. If science were widely communicated using digital games, therefore, then it would be possible for there to be a popular scientific culture.

"Playing at Reality: Exploring the Potential of the Digital Game as a Medium for Science Communication" by Alex Aitkin, Doctoral Thesis, Australian National University, 335 Pages,PDF

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/

If WWII was an MMORPG
General, Funny, Gaming
http://www.4guysfromviewpoint.com/?p=76

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0J0: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]: sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: Eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0J0: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler[AoE]: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj paTTon
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF Eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny-tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny-tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy sh*tholysh*thoylshti!!!111
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bullsh*t u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny-tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny-tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny-tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*