We’ve packed our car
We can see the fire cresting hills in the distance, and I-15 is closed one exit up from us.
No word on evacuations for our part of town yet, but more northerly parts of the neighborhood have been told to evac.
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The Sunday Poem: Davey Flower Becomes a Pterodactyl
“Raaaaak! Awrrrk! Kraaa! Urrgg!” I heard from down the hall,
A piercing, plaintive, prehistoric sort of call.“What’s going on?” I called out, and soon my wife replied.
“Your son’s become a pterodactyl. Seriously. No lie.”Read More “The Sunday Poem: Davey Flower Becomes a Pterodactyl”
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Fires
No, they are not really near us (now, anyway).
But yes, we are directly under the huge plume of smoke. It’s hard to breathe outside. The Santa Anas are gusting really hard, too.
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Gamasutra: Defining Games: Raph Koster’s Game Grammar
Back at AGDC, I did a huge interview with Gamasutra. After much transcribing (and fact-checking) pain, they have posted it up, and I find that it is heavy on game grammar stuff, industry shift stuff, and even a digression on whether or not the patent system is evil. 🙂
Gamasutra – Defining Games: Raph Koster’s Game Grammar
It does seem like in chess, each move is a new game in a way. It changes the whole thing, for one thing.
RK: Right. So I say that all games are iterative. I also say that all games are turn-based. And finally, I say that all games have more than one turn. They’re always iterative. There’s always a starting state, and then you do shit, and then there’s an ending state. And sometimes, the ending state becomes a new starting state. So when you move the pawn in chess, now you’ve got a new chess layout that you have to think about. But then you have the choice of, “Well, which piece am I going to move?” And each piece has its own topological space around it, because they all move in completely different ways.The fact that they move in different ways — that they have different rules — is that content, or is it mechanics? Are landscapes content? I tend to think that landscapes are content, and therefore, arrangements of chess pieces are content. But then when you go forward, they are verbs, and that means they are actions that you take. It gets weird. That’s probably the kind of thing that will make people reading this interview go, “What the fuck? Who cares! This cannot possibly be useful!” (laughs)
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Online is more intense
While both multiplayer and traditional single player video games present a double-edged sword, Smyth’s research found that online, socially integrated multiplayer games create greater negative consequences (decreased health, well-being, sleep, socialization and academic work) but also garner far greater positive results (greater enjoyment in playing, increased interest in continuing play and a rise in the acquisition of new friendships) than do single-player games. The study is published in the October 2007 issue of the bimonthly peer-reviewed journal CyberPyschology & Behavior (Vol. 10, No. 5: 717–721).