Consent systems

 Posted by (Visited 5069 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 272017
 

I was asked on Twitter recently for references for my mention of “consent systems” in my talk on “What AR and VR can Learn from MMOs.” I didn’t have any handy at the time but today I had some free time so I went looking.

Textual antecedents

The basic concept can be found throughout roleplay social virtual worlds such as MUSHes. (For example: Black Ops MUSH, The Lady’s Cage MUSH, Star Wars Omens). These sorts of worlds typically do not have combat systems, and rely heavily on free-form emotes (though the commands there more often have the syntax “pose” or “emit” or the like). Like any other full roleplay environment, of course, fights and conflicts happen all the time.

This description of how it happens in practice is pretty good: Continue reading »

Aug 192017
 

I have posted up slides for the keynote talk I gave at the Foundations of Digital Games conference. It was called “Reconciling Games” and it was about fish tanks. Well, fish tanks as an example of a naturally occurring ludic system that offers up surprising lessons for game design, across many disciplines: internal game economics and systems balancing, but also narrative, community design, and more.

Among the key quotes from the talk (based on tweeted comments from attendees) are

Continue reading »

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Simple Maps improvements

 Posted by (Visited 1973 times)  Misc  Tagged with:
Aug 112017
 

Map software drives me nuts, because it’s clearly designed only by engineers. I think all of these could be done with current data sets:

If current road segment is blue or yellow and next road segment is red: “Watch out, traffic is getting heavy ahead.”

If current road segment is red and next few road segments are clear: “Traffic is clearing up ahead.”

If past road segment is red, current one isn’t, but the one after is, “Don’t get your hopes up, traffic is still bad ahead.”

If current speed is significantly above average for cars in the next road segment: “Slow down, you’re about to hit traffic!” Continue reading »

The Sunday Poem: Made of Moon

 Posted by (Visited 1577 times)  The Sunday Poem
Aug 062017
 

every corner we turned there was the moon
north south east west the moon
full and every corner bigger
until the sky was made of moon

you stood between me and moon
and said i'll take the hit
and you did

now when i see the moon i reach
it is always waning

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