The Ludologist

Will Wright’s presentation included a sneak peek of Spore.
The sheer ambition of Spore is unbelievable.
You start of as a mutating amoeba, then you become a higher-level creature in the sea, then an action game on land, then a social simulation with a tribe of your own creatures, then a SimCity style city simulation, then an RTS-type game between different cities, then you zoom out yet again and see the entire planet, then the solar system, then the galaxy. All of these levels are unique games.

The only thing really missing is the Sims – the game certainly appeals to the geek in me (from gene to galaxy, hey!), but I feel that the market is slightly smaller than the Sims.

I think we were told not to take pictures, so since I don’t have my camera cables with me, here is a cell phone camera picture of my real camera showing a picture of Spore. This is in planet-mode, a planet in the middle, your flying saucer at the bottom. The game looks great, though you can’t tell:
[Image removed, sorry.]

Just an hour or two left of the Indie Game Jam.

Here’s the title screen of my game, Emotional:

As you may notice, the 3d models are from The Sims – Maxis generously donated the complete library to the game jam.

The games will eventually be available on Sourceforge.

The indie game jam has so far been incredibly interesting and eminently bloggable. But it’s also an event where every minute of programming time counts, hence no updates.

Chris Hecker et.al. have set up a very nice 3d engine suited for the theme of this year’s jam, “people interaction”.
Here’s Chris in the middle of it all, during a briefing:

People interaction is cool because it’s incredibly hard, and the obvious “big step” that everybody?s thinking about. I guess we are around 30 people, and the games include a dance party game, a film noir adventure, a simulation of the Fairmount lobby in San José (the end point of previous Game Developer Conferences).
Everything will be showed at the game design workshop at this years Game Developer Conference – Thursday, I think.

My own game has the working title of “Emotional Chuchu”. That is, it’s a puzzle game, but based around people being happy or sad, and trying to convince the others to come to “their side”. Here’s a screenshot from Saturday morning:

Tasks for today: Make title screen. Tweak gameplay. Implement all sounds. Make sure the player gets what is going on.

Irregular postings for the next 3 weeks – off to the Indie Game Jam (from which I may or may not blog), then GDC (same).

The [Wall Street] Opinion Journal interviews Susan Polgar – one of the two famous chess-playing Polgar sisters.

She airs the idea that Chess is a tool for personal improvement:

Chess is a wonderful tool to increase concentration, self-control, patience, imagination, creativity, logical thinking and many more important and useful life skills

It’s an idea that pops up now and then, that a game can improve you as a person. I would love to see somebody write a history of this, I would guess it can be traced, at the very least, to ancient Greece.

At the same time, whenever you spend years focusing on something specific, I think you always end up feeling that what you learned could be used in other contexts. Video game theory for me, certainly, but it’s just like literary theorists or film scholars for whom their medium of choice is a privileged space for all kinds of existential and philosophical thinking.

Interesting and silly, from a Times article on cows.

Turns out that cows enjoy problem solving:

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also become excited by solving intellectual challenges.

In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph was used to measure their brainwaves.

?Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment,? said Broom.

Just like the rest of us it seems. Other interesting bits about cow psychology in the article, some of which are beyond the scope of this blog.

On CBC news (Canada), Greg Hughes has a viewpoint on The future of video gaming.

“Ludology argues that video games are to be understood only in the context of the interface and rules, nothing more or less. Narrativists argue that video games create what’s called “cyberdrama,” in that thay represent a kind of storytelling that immerses the “participant” in characters and story.

If we believe in ludology, the internet-video game model could just be another distraction, a way to continually stimulate already overstimulated minds. Yet it is undeniable that people find meaning in games like Halo 2 and San Andreas, for while they may be electronic and therefore not as “real” as real people, the stories we tell in video games are becoming more real than movie experiences. Why?

Because this time it isn’t Mario or Donkey Kong firing that barrel on screen at faceless villains ? it’s us shooting other people on screen. We’re directly engaged in the experience, a moving character in a sea of digital code. Only this time, it’s not your buddy from down the street ? it’s someone on the other side of the world.”

First of all, interesting to see how the L vs. N thing gets thrown around casually now.
As Derrida said, words just tend to have a life of their own. To the extent that there is an L vs. N conflict, I would say that it’s ludology that’s about “shooting other people on screen” (it’s the real thing), but cyberdrama that downplays such pleasures in favor of precrafted fictions.
I am considering outsourcing this part of the blog to an AI.