The Ludologist

The latest news.com story about how video games are good for surgeons (and their patients by extension).

Doctors were measured on their performance of the “cobra rope” drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound.

Researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not. Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task–indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.

The article mentions Super Monkey Ball, but is not clear whether that was the game used in the test.

Super Monkey Ball is becoming something of a favorite for clinical studies though.

Congratulations to local developers Runestone who have just launched their new MMO, Seed.
To quote from the page:

What Seed is all about
– Sci-fi MMORPG
– Personalized stories
– Social/political gameplay
– Believable NPC’s
– 3D comic book graphics

What Seed is not about
– Combat
– Character classes
– Standard quests

Oh, cosplay already. Could be worth a go:

News.com piece on collectors of vintage pinball machines.

And things just were sliiiighty better in the old days:

“(Pinball machines) are mass produced now–cheap,” complained Hal Erickson, a regular at the secret pinball “arcade.” According to Erickson, today’s pinball makers “buy licenses and time releases to the crest of a fad, like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or ‘Nascar.’ They’ve gotten slicker, but the designs are not as creative and individual.”There’s a huge difference in the way the game is played, too. “It’s really grueling, higher speed and intense movement…You can burn yourself out on new games,” said Erickson, who said he was ranked among the top pinball players in the world in the early 1990s. “Older games are more sane.”

The article also has links to pinball emulation sites.

Nintendo’s announced the new name for the console what used to be called Revolution: Wii.

More at the Wii website, still called revolution.

Lots of advertising-speak, “Wii has a distinctive “ii” spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.

Glad that’s out of the way. Silly name, but then I have graphics card called GeForce, probably symbolizing something with speed.

Aki Järvinen was one of the first video game researchers I ever met, and now he is finishing his Ph.d. thesis with a new big theory of video games on his Games Without Frontiers site.
He invites us to read his chapters as they progress and to send comments.
Chapters so far:

• Chapter 3, Introduction to Game Systems, Game Elements, and Simulation.
• Chapter 4, Theory of Game Elements: From Game Systems to Their Contexts.
• Chapter 5, Key concepts in Psychology in Terms of Ludology.

An excellent way of making sure the thesis hits the market with no usability issues, while improving playability!

With digital distribution actually happening, including Steam and Greg Costikyan’s Manifesto Games, as well as the casual games downloadable market, one of the imagined futures of the games industry seems to have become quite real.
Another thing that has been discussed incessantly is episodic content, so behold the trailer for Half-Life 2, episode one – each episode apparently priced at $19.95, which I find reasonable enough.
On a tangent, I think it was Gabe Newell who at the GDC talked about how much better the quality of life as a developer was making episodic content. (Couldn’t it be due to do with other factors than the episodicness itself?)

You may have noticed three new blogs linked in the right panel:

• Phil Steinmeyer’s blog is about casual games, and plays a role in his development work, such as with the creation of Bonnie’s bookstore and some prototypes he recently asked his readers to rate.
• Storytron News is Chris Crawford’s blog chronicling the development of Storytron.
• Finally, Click Nothing is Clint Hocking’s (of Splinter Cell fame) blog.

All three are developer blogs – suddenly, developer blogs all over. What happened to secrecy?

To say a bit more about the 400 project: For years, this has been an idea stated on a web site plus a few rules in Game Developer Magazine, but with the March 16th update, the 400 project has turned into a valuable resource with the current rules master list.

112 so far, not 400 (which according to Noah Falstein is a random number anyway).

I think it is not as much a list of 112 things that you have to apply to every game in the world (give or take a few conditions for which rules trump which), as it is a list that can inspire any given game design. A few examples:

3	Maintain Level of Abstraction	Immersion is easily disturbed — don’t make the player re-calibrate his “suspension of disbelief” and lose touch with your game	Psych	Hal Barwood
108	Provide Score Feedback	In a game where score is important, provide direct audio and visual feedback every time the score changes – like a sound and floating numbers.	Feedback	Steve Meretzky

Of course, you knew perfectly well to maintain the level of abstraction and to provide score feedback. But did you really do this in your current game? I think the list is for that type of realization.