From the online adventures of Garrg the Warlock (Shadowmoon server).
Yep, that’s me, the adventurous Garrg. Rejoining my transludic lighthouse quest I have set out across the sprawling world of Azeroth – the picture shows me taking a brief rest from my attempt to swim around the entire continent. Join me, water lovers.
The Digital Arts and Cultures 2005 conference CFP was just put online:
The 6th DAC conference invites critical examinations of the field of digital arts and culture, which challenge existing paradigms. We call for papers which examine both theoretical and hands-on approaches to digital experiences and experience design. Since the inaugural DAC in 1998 much has happened, and research has matured from early investigations into the problematic nature of new media towards questions of emergent dynamics, user centered design and various forms of interactivity. At the same time, the realization has grown that users of digital media not only are active participants, but also have to be taken into account at all stages of the design and production of digital experiences
How do practitioners (programmers, artists, designers etc.) cater for this kind of active and demanding user? What kinds of experiences can we create? How can these experiences inform us? How do we as academics analyse and evaluate digital experiences? DAC has always been interested in exploring the ways in which digital media do things that traditional media cannot. We believe that the focus on ‘experience’ in DAC 2005 will illuminate the possibilities of digital media beyond the functional perspectives of ‘usability’. What are the aesthetic and cultural implications of digital design as experience?
– Read the whole thing
I remember being scared by the Lovecraftian horrors of the original Alone in the Dark game.
Today, film reviewers are scared of the recent adaptation. But for different reasons:
And they say games don’t make for good cinematic material…
See more reviews at Metacritic.
I’m not angry.
Actually, I expected it.
I once spent a multitude of hours trying to cancel my AC2 subscription. It was very, very hard.
And so today, I wanted to cancel my SWG account.
It can’t be done.
It’s not possible.
There is no way to do it.
At the SWG website there are instructions:
– Launch Star Wars Galaxies and log into the game using your Station name and password
– At the auto patcher screen, click on the Edit Account option
– Select the Cancel Subscription option
– A new screen will appear that asks you to confirm your cancellation. Select Yes or No, and then click on Submit
It’s not true.
It’s false.
It’s counter-factual.
So I’ve emailed them. More reports as the war continues.
Carrying on my interest in trust and signaling, I just finished reading Amotz and Avishag Zahavi’s “The Handicap Principle“.
Briefly, the handicap principle is the idea that to send a trustworthy signal one sometimes has to accept a handicap. Taking on this handicap proves to the receiver of the signal that the transmitted statement is true.
For instance, in order to convince a skeptical observer that you’re a world-class swimmer you may have to get wet. You could choose to just say it (“Seriously, I am a world-class swimmer”). But that signal would not be reliable.
Similarly, the Zahavis argue that the male peacock lugs around his beautiful tail (handicapping himself since he is more easily spotted, less agile etc.) in order to reliably signal to the female that he is made of strong genetic material. He could have “told” her in other ways, but the tail is an unfakable signal.
There’s a decent intro to the theory of honest signaling here.
Now, Geoffrey Miller, reviewing the book for Evolution and Human Behaviour said it well:
“Depending on your viewpoint, they [the Zahavis] act like (1) dangerous hyper-adaptationists even more extreme than Steven Jay Gould?s worst caricatures of Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, weaving just-so stories out of thin air, (2) harmlessly entertaining, pseudo-scientific fabulists in the tradition of Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead, (3) classical Victorian natural historians (somehow displaced to contemporary Tel-Aviv University) using the same hypothetico-deductive methods as Darwin himself, or (4) ardent, creative biologists who, whatever one?s qualms about their methods and examples, deliver a revitalizing shock to animal communication theory, sexual selection theory, kinship theory, reciprocal altruism theory, and evolutionary psychology. “
Miller adds, as I would have done from the comfort of my layman’s armchair: “I favor this last judgment“.
Anyway, many aspects of the book are fascinating (as are the author’s regular jibes at colleagues who spend too much time arguing against the “obvious” using fancy mathematical models and too little time in the real world).
But two sections struck me as particularly interesting. My limited understanding of evolutionary biology had it that there are essentially two complementary explanations of cooperation among animals (discounting group selection theories that are frowned upon).
The first is kin selection (and the related idea of inclusive fitness). Here, the idea is that individuals should behave altruistically to the extent that other individuals share their genes (or to the extent that other individuals are likely to share your genes). And what-do-you-know? Parents often care about their offspring.
The second is reciprocal altruism. Here, the individual is expected to be altruistic to the extent that he or she expects this altruism to be reciprocated in the future. So, a vampire bat should share its meal with another bat if it believes that this other bat will reciprocate the favor. And Hallejujah! This seems to be the case.
I was somewhat surprised to see that the Zahavis consider both theories to be flawed. Kin selection, the Zahavis argue, is really just group selection among relatives. It may be true that an individual “would like” to increase its inclusive fitness, but wouldn’t it just be much better if your brother did the work instead of you? So, kin selection is vulnerable to social parasitism (the bane of group selection theories).
Reciprocal altruism, on the other hand, seeks to explain something which does not really warrant such fancy models, the Zahavis feel. Many individuals gain prestige by performing altruistic acts, which increasestheir standing in the hierarchy, which increases their reproductive success. Altruism, then, is a signal of superiority – look!, I can share my food, that’s how strong a bird I am (marry me!).
Very interesting even if I don’t entirely know what to think.
Can you grief a top-down fully competitive racing game?
Would anyone?
Both are trick questions of course. You can grief (practically) everything and someone always wants to.
But how do you grief this one?
Well, playing the game I thought it was a lot of fun to bump into other cars. But the thing was that at one point my car would be disabled with a reference to the “pro rules”. So I was wondering why on Earth the designers would instate this rule against bumping into other cars. But of course: Anti-griefing. Turns out that an earlier version of the game had huge problems caused by some players driving in the wrong direction to wreak havoc. As one player puts it:
“The main reason is to prevent backward driving. It was unbelieveably popular in version 0.86. There were times where one couldn’t find a server where there wouldn’t be 1-2 jerks driving backwards and destroying everyone else’s fun. “
These players did not respect the “spirit of the game” but found it more appealing to go against expectations, found pleasure in causing displeasure or whatever.
The present rules, on the other hand, cause great deals of discussion as they also inhibit playing styles that are not actually meant to be grief (newbies, for instance, find it hard not to bump). On the whole, the solution is quite a good example of unelegant grief control (not that I have any alternative suggestion ready).
In a world of cut-scenes, Steam service, and endlessly immersive gameworld experiences what can be more therapeutic than small cars in a top-down perspective?
Turbo Sliders is free (the demo version) and can be played online. Care to test your driving skills? Drop me a line.
Daniel Pargman’s fascinating PhD dissertation Code begets community is now online.
It was a great piece of inspiration for me when I did my master’s thesis.
OK, I did it. I let myself be logged on to World of Warcraft (EU beta). Just to have a look, purely for research purposes, and with no intention of staying. Taking the form of a purple-haired female gnome I went for a bit of sight-seeing. There’s no denying that this world looks extremely stylish and it all feels awfully atmospheric (in a comic book kind of way). Whether or not it’s actually fun to play (casually) remains to be seen. But I think I’ll continue the wolf-slaying a bit once the actual game opens (late feb). See you there.
