The developer behind Canabalt has written an article about tuning the game to achieve the feel that players expect. The post includes details about the selection of aspect ratio, the hitbox and the player’s motion. If you don’t own it already, the game is a fun one to have around on your iOS device when you need to kill a few minutes.
Video games in the classroom explores the use of games as a teaching tool.
Salen’s theory goes like this: building a game — even the kind of simple game a sixth grader might build — is equivalent to building a miniworld, a dynamic system governed by a set of rules, complete with challenges, obstacles and goals. At its best, game design can be an interdisciplinary exercise involving math, writing, art, computer programming, deductive reasoning and critical thinking skills. If children can build, play and understand games that work, it’s possible that someday they will understand and design systems that work. And the world is full of complicated systems.
For a generation growing up immersed in technology, it offers a great opportunity for cross-curricular learning. Implementing a broad program like that could be problematic with the compartmentalized subject structure found in most schools. There would also be issues in an educational system with standardized testing, where you pretty much have to teach to the test. Regardless, it’s an interesting approach that has a lot of potential.
Can videogames be journalism? A brief look at Newsgames: Journalism at Play, the new book from Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer.
“Games allow us to address systems instead of stories,” Dr. Bogost said in an interview. And, in some ways, they can offer more depth. People often search for simple answers to broad topics like the Gulf oil spill or the 2008 financial crisis, but in reality both were the result of a confluence of failures and events. Games can help to convey that complexity. “In particular, they can offer this experience of how something works rather than a description of key events and players,” Dr. Bogost says.
The story behind Madden NFL and how it became a video game dynasty (via marc). EA saved more than $35 million by reverse engineering the SEGA console, and signing a deal that guaranteed they wouldn’t give the technology to competitors.
Hawkins assembled a team to reverse engineer the console — that is, figure out a way to make EA’s games run on Sega’s hardware without its technology or approval as a way to avoid licensing fees altogether.
The game has evolved far beyond it’s modest roots, and can be somewhat daunting to play for the first time. I find the same thing when I try to sit down with one of the newer incarnations of the NHL series, compared to the console game. In the versions I played as a kid, you could pretty much just shoot, pass and check. I imagine most of the EA sports games are like that these days, drifting more towards simulation than arcade style play.
Let the Game Continue, for those that were curious where Tetris pieces originated. The graphic is from a t-shirt by Eduardo San Gil at Threadless.
Rithmomachy is a complex, Early European, mathematical board game. The literal translation is “Battle of Numbers”. It’s similar to chess, but the capture of pieces depends on the numbers on each piece. Rhythmomachy Basics provides a few more details than the Wikipedia entry.
Satoru Iwata discusses the Mario brothers with Shigeru Miyamoto. The interview is quite revealing — many of Mario’s trademark characteristics were due to design and programming restraints at the time, including the moustache, the hat and the overalls.
Da mystery of chessboxin. RZA, Wu-Tang producer extraordinaire, and chess fanatic has started up a chess site.
Eightface is a weblog by Dave Kellam. It's largely just a collection of links to things I find interesting, with some attempts at pithy commentary interspersed.