Year: 2007

It’s available on the web, and it argues that games may be driving gamers to be more conformist — because they teach you to solve the problems presented, not to break out of patterns and truly innovate. As part of the basis for this argument, the author uses my book a fair amount.

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, move 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.

Go here for their statement. Fl0w was one of my favorite games of this year, as it happens… I still play it even though I have “beaten” it so to speak.

Previously: Braid ditches Slamdance.

They’ve been talking about it for years, and now here it is: the Second Life client is now under the GPL. This has big implications for the improvement of the client performance, usability, and distribution. Congrats on taking this step, guys!

“Braid won’t be at Slamdance because of SCMRPG getting dropped,” is the short form. Read on for the details…

As many of you probably know, there’s this game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, an oldschool-style RPG about taking the roles of Klebold and Harris, killing kids in school, then dying, going to hell, and coming to some awareness of what they’ve done. The game is pretty divisive — the creator seems serious in his intent to create an artistic response and commentary about the Columbine shootings, but of course many simply find it to be in poor taste.

Read More “Braid ditches Slamdance in protest”