CGW No More… Kinda – Quarter To Three Forums
This caught me by surprise, sort of. I mean, we all know that the print mags have been suffering over the years as online stuff rose in prominence and had the added advantage of timeliness. But the way this is happening is interesting: Microsoft is basically launching a “Games for Windows” magazine, and CGW is going to turn into it. Jeff Green says nothing will change…
Here’s the article, but the short form:
To create an animation, residents simply grab an avatar’s body part and move it in the desired way. The avatar then “learns” the animation and gestures accordingly.
One thing you have to give the Lindens credit for: they actually go ahead and do some of the things that people have been talking about for years but just never got around to.
This just arrived in my mailbox:
Games for Health 2006 Announces Conference Content & Early Registration Third Annual Conference Covering Intersection of Games, Health and Healthcare – September 28-29, 2006 – Baltimore
August 2, 2006 (Portland, ME) — The Games for Health Project today released its content line-up for the third annual Games for Health Conference. The conference takes place September 28 and 29 at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD.
Among the sessions are topics such as “exergaming,” which is growing rapidly in popularity; using games for mass casualty simulation; cognitive exercise; an interesting project called “Pulse!” which attempts to build a full simulation of a hospital; electronci medical records viewed through the lens of games, and more.
As we speak, my daughter has decided to solve the 4 year old Dragonriders of Pern adventure game on the Dreamcast. It’s the first true adventure game she has ever played, and she’s rushing up to me every fifteen minutes to report her progress. And what it reminds me most powerfully of the expertise I once had: of being able to instantly pair any given dragon name with any given rider from any of the books, no matter how minor a character — the product of obsessive reading.
A great article on learning from Scientific American resonates strongly with A Theory of Fun, and uses chess as its central lens of analysis for examining learning.
The main points here are that expertise comes about from serious application to learning: on average, ten years’ worth. That many people settle for a level of knowledge rather than pushing themselves to continue learning. That “talent” is likely an illusion: either just a predisposition to learn certain things, or precocity in learning the subject.
People spent all these years in MUDs and video games fantasizing that they were back in the Middle Ages wearing tights and clashing with swords to fight monsters and save damsels in distress in castles. With SL, they now have the opportunity to actually live in a real guild-like medieval economy, too, and be at the mercy of the artisan class and their mercantile backers.
– Prokofy Neva
Only without any monsters to fight and any damsels to rescue. Instead, what we have for heroism is a quieter sort, and realer, the actions of those like Prokofy who fight for ideals.
