Zon: Chinese language learning MMO

 Posted by (Visited 12190 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Jun 042008
 

This is cool: an MMO devoted to language learning via full immersion.

Welcome to Zon! | Enter Zon

Zon is an unique interactive massively multiplayer online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese.

By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.

Not at all the first time this has been tried, of course; at SOE we supported a few college campuses that were doing full-immersion language learning via EQ2, for example.

Wii Fit

 Posted by (Visited 6562 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
May 232008
 

Ah, the irony of writing about Wii Fit while eating a ridiculously sugar-laden donut. Oh well.

Initial thoughts:

For a while there, I thought a balance-board-shaped Clippy was going to be my personal trainer. Someone at Microsoft must be kicking themselves, realizing that after all these years, the equivalent of Clippy is outselling their console.

It’s funny to have my Mii gain weight to match me. Then it’s not.

The balance board is significantly sturdier than any given piece of kit in Rock Band. On the one hand, the balance board is meant to be stood on by people of up to 330lbs. (Not jumped on, they insist, though the game then proceeds to ask you to jump on things.) On the other hand, you are supposed to hit drums repeatedly with great force. I suppose this is a testament to how sturdily the balance board is built…

The biggest problem with Wii Fit is that it’s a grab bag of (pretty good) activities, rather than a training regimen. You seem to have to build your own regimen, and if you don’t feel like aerobics that day, you can just blow them off. It would have been nicer if the game did a little more handholding and told you what to do.

ICED, serious game about immigration

 Posted by (Visited 5852 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
May 022008
 

Here’s an interesting serious game: you play an immigrant teen whose objective is to become a U.S. citizen. The opponents in the game? The system.

Breakthrough.tv | ICED

ICED puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.

This aspect of the serious games movement — specifically, what I generically term games-as-propaganda, but Ian Bogost prefers to call persuasive games — seems to have started to boom a little bit.

Should virtual worlds change the real?

 Posted by (Visited 21383 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Mar 192008
 

I have had a post brewing in my head for days to weeks now, in part driven by some of the reaction to my “High Windows” talk at GDC — yes, the one with the corpse in Darfur, and the whining about how virtual worlds have not achieved their potential, the one I haven’t posted up yet.

Some called that speech inspiring, and others termed it depressing. One of the most interesting reactions came from Prokofy Neva, who has written several interesting posts about the influence of the digerati/tech crowd/game designer on the real world. Her reaction to Jane McGonigal’s turn in the GDC Rant session (slides are here) illustrates the gap that exists:

Then it was Jane McGonigal talking about how game companies were really really good at making people Happy. They had Figured Out what people need to be happy — to feel useful, and a part of something useful (Lenin understood this too! Hey, so did Hitler! And Jane did, too, repeating this exact same PowerPoint exactly the same, twice, once at GDC, and again at SXSW!). Games were so good at fixing stuff they could Fix Reality…

Now, leaving aside the giant culture gap between Prokofy and gamers which makes this commentary inflammatory to those on the other side, there’s stuff here worth listening to.

Edit: just to be clear, I am not at all endorsing Prokofy’s characterization of Jane and her work. It’s ridiculously over the top (and rather rude) to compare Jane to Hitler (!).

While I do think that there are many valid points in Prokofy’s writings on all this, the tone taken is really unnecessary. In writing a post like this, my goal is to try to bridge some gaps, and that means trying to look past the needlessly inflammatory stuff. But that doesn’t mean I should err by omission and fail to comment when a line is crossed. So I apologize for that, particularly to Jane, who doesn’t deserve the mudslinging.

Continue reading »

Report on software for brain training

 Posted by (Visited 5225 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Mar 112008
 

Not “game industry” per se, but games are what drive this market right now. Pretty interesting.

» Report: The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains

5) Over 400 residential facilities for older adults have launched computerized “brain fitness centers.” Sales to the healthcare and insurance provider segment grew from $35 million in 2005 to an estimated $65 million in 2007.6) More than five programs have shown results in randomized controlled trials. Cognitive functions that can be trained include: visual and auditory processing, working memory, attention, and decision-making.

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