[...] I’ve talked in the past about whether games are, because of their inherently mathematical nature, limited in conveying certain types of information. But I think it is also worth asking whether the scope of their models is effectively misleading, or even actively lying, about how the world works. [...]

[...] of Peaches Raph gave a fun, mildly inflammatory talk called ‘Influences’ questioning if games are fundamentally limited in their capability to explore the human [...]

[...] So, for more on the whole "games that aren’t just numbers" thing, I’d recommend you read the speech I gave at Project Horseshoe: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/10/project-horseshoe-influences/ [...]

[...] Blow’s minimalist elf-ninja homepage, I stumbled across this nothing-short-of-brilliant piece that Raph presented last year at Project Horseshoe. I told him as much, brilliant, I said. THAT WAS LAST YEAR! he [...]

[...] you’re a game designer, this transcript of Raph Koster’s talk at Project Horseshoe 2006 is good to [...]

[...] as Art: Project Horseshoe 2006″ on Amped News. It goes into more depth about not just the “Influences” talk I gave, but about many of the broader issues as [...]

[...] I was reading Raph Koster’s “Influences” speech at the Project Horseshoe, where he showed his Andean Bird Demo, a sort of Jonathan Livingston Seagull game. He explained that he wanted to make a game about flapping. Not a simulator, fighting, strategy or any kind of challenge. [...]

[...] Raph’s Website » Project Horseshoe: Influences — "I actually went and looked up on the Web a list of NP-hard problems, and they sure as hell sound like our games." Raph Koster hitting lots of nerves with me. Lots, and lots, of nerves. Tagged as: design play games influence mechanics math computing [...]

[...] Attendee Dan Cook, on Lost Garden, said of Horseshoe, “Sparks were flying. And hay. Don’t forget the hay. … It gave me faith that if you just get the brightest people of our industry off their isolated islands and give them a chance to talk, amazing ideas are inevitable. Experience shared is multiplied, not diminished.” And Raph Koster’s Horsehoe talk, “Influences,” attracted much post-conference comment. [...]

[...] But i think it’s a mistake to perceive the ordinary daily play of games as being the only way to engage with games. In the book I presented a grid of engagement that was derived from this old post to MUD-Dev. I think that even though games may primarily teach you to, well, mvoe through the game, they also encourage engagement in other ways — these days, often explicitly. So I don’t have nearly as negative a takeaway here as the author of this piece does, though I do think that it’s important to consider what limitations games have in terms of how and what they teach. [...]