Gameology 2.0

Persuasive Games' recent title, Airport Insecurity, pokes fun at the infuriating list of things not allowed on airplanes when one goes to an airport in the USA. While in real life we are prevented from bringing shaving kits on a plane, in Airport Insecurity, we are prevented from bringing pants on a plane.

The gameplay reminds me of Simon combined with loose elements of Tapper. Your avatar this time around is an airport security agent who has to screen passengers and prevented them from bringing certain items onboard. Intially, there is only one restriction at a time, but this eventually increases up to five. The list of items is meant to be satirical, but with the way things have been going lately (no liquids on flights), one can never be to sure. Some of my favorite items not allowed on a plane were the chastity belt, the PSP, and the all important snakes.

As some of you might know, I graduted from SCAD with a BFA in Game Design & Interactivity. Although I'm not currently working in the industry, I thought some of you might enjoy a blog I did for our Senior Project II class back in early 2005 in which we had to work in a group to develop a game. We developed it using tools such as Milkshape, 3D Studio Max, and the Torque engine. I worked as a Blogger/Assistant Producer/Technical Director on the project.

This might be of interest to people who are teaching a game design class or for those looking for a student-oriented look at the game design process.

Here's a clip.

Just ran across a brief, but interesting, article about Brock Dubbels, an English middle school teacher at Northeast Middle School in Minneapolis. It mentions how he incorporates video games into education and how he teaches a course during the summer at the University of Minneapolis on how educators can use video games.

Here's a clip:

Students do still read books in class and link the books to the games in surprising ways.

"He was talking about Sonic the Hedgehog and he said, 'It's much like "The Odyssey" Mr. Dubbels. Sonic has to get home just like Odysseus.' I was like, 'Tony, this is great!'" Dubbels said.

Just was browsing the BBC website and ran across a video article they had about a Microbiology Professor in England who uses a podcast version of his lectures as a resource to students. I think this is a really good idea, especially for upper level courses. Beats the hell out of tape recorders.

Check out the link to the video article in the lower right hand corner after the jump.

BBC News Technology: University lecturer plans to podcast lectures

So the other day I was browsing around Kotaku and stumbled upon an entry describing a fan-game someone made based on the infamous Columbine Massacre using a hacked version of the popular PC Japanese program RPG Maker. At first I rolled my eyes at the concept, but after reading the excellent follow-up interview on the site with a survivor of the massacre who actually played the game, it made me want to try it out.

Using a mix of SNES-style super deformed anime graphics and photos, as well as a MIDI score using several alternative rock songs from the mid 90’s, the game feels like an actual SNES RPG. The frequent grammatical mistakes make it clear that English isn’t the first language of the designer, but one can still understand what is being said. Gameplay starts off with a few somewhat buggy puzzles, with the biggest game design flaw being a lack of clear goals leaving the player wondering where the hell do they need to go next to advance in the game.

Here's a short review of the David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ. I am very vague in the review itself because I don't wish to spoil anything related to the plot. Suffice to say, the movie is worth a rental if you at all interested in virtual reality on a metaphysical level. The whole movie feels very much like a Phillip K. Dick short story in tone.

David Cronenberg is one of those directors who often tackles dark subject matter in a way that makes audiences queasy. While his films tend to deal with organic biological structures, undulating flesh, and psychology and often take repeated viewings to fully understand them. When I learned that eXistenZ was a Cronenberg flick from 1999 that dealt with virtual reality, I rushed out to rent it. It was a movie I had meant to rent for years, but was turned off by its generic cover art.

Since we're all posting our thoughts on this, I thought I'd put up my blog entry on it from my personal blog. I wrote it more like a magazine article, though.

Rockstar Games‘ Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise has always been one of controversy, even when it started as a PC game back in the late 1990s. It’s when the series really became popular with GTA III for the PS-2, which featured 3-D graphics and huge environments players could explore with open-ended gameplay, that the public really took notice of it. When playing through the required missions, players had their avatar conduct various missions for various mafias in Liberty City. But that’s not the only way the game could be played; if they chose, players could explore the city and not commit any acts of violence, though it was often more fun to do so.