Quick update - Moldova

I've put my Moldova pictures up on Facebook. You can see them here.

I'll get around to blogging about it as soon as I... can be bothered (oh thats so bad. :( ).

Spore Creature Creator

Okay okay I know I'm getting bad about updating my blog again. I mean I still have loads to tell you about my friends wedding in Moldova, but today I just want to add a short update.

I've recently been playing around a bit with the Spore Creature Creator (who hasn't) and I'm really blown away by how flexible it is. While sometimes it can feel a little repetitive, and just now my inspiration and motivation is lacking, I have created over a dozen unique creatures. There is still quite a lot left lacking however. As flexible as it is with the few parts it gives you (even in the full version), it can sometimes still feel a little restrictive, which is a strange thing since this is possibly the most free form game ever created. Also Maxis / EA's current Spore community system is seriously pants. At the moment there is no way to add friends and very little you can do with your personal page (except see your creatures). This really needs to be developed further so that friends can be added, helping you download their creatures more easily.

Anyway, bellow you can see one of the very cool little tricks of the community which is my Spore Widget. It displays any creatures I'm currently sharing. Feel free to play around. Note that creatures containing parts from the full version currently don't appear to show up, hopefully this will be fixed soon too.

Visit Spore.com

What D&D Character are you?

This seems like a fitting tribute to Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary died last week, aged 69. Without him, the RPG genre may never have been created.

You can take the test yourself here: What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus.

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Wizard (4th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength: 12
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 13
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 17
Charisma: 15

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Personally, I would think I was a lot less dexterous than that. I'd probably also swap the stats for Wisdom and Intelligence, as I'm not wholly sure I have all that much common sense and my atrocious memory means I generally have to fall back on my wits rather than my knowledge.

I'm not really sure how my other stats bear out, I guess others probably know me better than I do. What do people think?

via Narcissism Incorporated

Random Update

Well my insane plan to give up games has been going really rather well so far. Temptations have been many but so far I haven't even played a game on my mobile while waiting for the bus so I am extremely proud of myself. However having said that, I have decided that I'm going to draw this to a close after one week rather than two. As I already mention, I am certainly more than pleased with myself for getting this far, but come 0:00am on Wednesday I'll be happily getting back into AO, Vampire the Masquerade and all sorts of shenanigans.

So what have I learned from my experience? I haven't quite decided whether games are addictive or not. Certainly I've had times where I've been fighting off the urge to play a quick game of Spider Solitaire or some such, yet such urges are short lived and certainly not overly hard to fight through. Furthermore, I personally played a huge amount of games, have studied games, programmed game; up to this point my entire life has revolved around computer games, so if anyone should have suffer a games addiction it would be me, and I would certainly not call myself especially strong willed. Therefore I would have to say the addictive qualities of games are relatively low. Then again, having made the decision to give up on this in a few days could be all that's stopping me from giving in.

One of the things I had been slightly worried about prior to this demented experiment was that playing games was preventing me from getting on with as much work as I should be doing. I can now safely say that this is not the case. I am in fact quite lazy. Perhaps I shouldn't mock, and its certainly an aspect of myself I need to explore and get to the route of, but at least I know now that video games are merely one way I use to avoid my responsibilities and not the reason.

Oh dear that's terribly dramatic, don't worry its not all that bad. My other update is in regards to my research proposal which is now coming along extremely well. I have just a few minor barriers now, including describing a justification for a project that seems obvious beyond words, as well as defining an approach for assessing and quantifying the results of the study. Hopefully I'm but a few weeks from getting this done and once I've begun sending it off to potential universities I'll make sure to stick a copy online for everyone to read.

Lastly I'm marginally more hopeful about getting the funding I'll need to undertake this project, the main hurdle I had been dreading. One of the books I have been reading is a side product of a study of games in a ludological* approach and was funded by a British research council. Feel free to cross your fingers for me, I might actually pull this off.



* I think I just invented a new word! :)

Give Up Games for Lent

Its that time of the year, the second in fact, where people pretend they're going to give things up so that they have something to talk about around the water cooler. Normally I pay it no heed, but this year I've somehow come to the crazy decision that I should give up Computer Games.

Yes me give up Computer Games! That's like Bill Gates saying he's giving up technology for 40 days or something. Well to be honest I haven't set my goals quite so high as 40 days. I've decided rather than doing what everyone else will be doing, setting myself a goal only to realise its too long and give up a few days in. I'm going to start myself with just two weeks, though if I do one I'll be happy.

There are a few exclusions to this, for example any games I need play for work type things, such as work/research (though nothing there comes to mind at the moment), and things such as TNM that I'm doing for other people.

It will however include all types of games including Windows and Casual games. So no Spider Solitaire or Peggle.

Why am I doing this then? After all I've always maintained that I'm not an addict, and while I love games, the evidence does tend to support that. After all I've never made myself late because I've been playing games, and I only talk about games as much as, say, my counselling friends talk about psychology and the like (that's friends at Uni, I'm not collecting counsellors or anything).

But lately I have become really... lazy isn't quite the word, unmotivated perhaps. So I'm hoping that the sheer boredom of not having the instant gratification of games available to me will encourage me to read the books I'm supposed to be reading, get my head around my proposal and get on with the more important things in life.

So am I crazy? Well yes, but am I crazy for trying this? Who knows. I'll try to keep you updated as it goes. Wish me luck.

Been Quiet

So I haven't updated in aaaaages, but I have a really good reason...

OK that's a lie. I've been really really lazy lately so I'm sorry about that. Trying to get back into the swing of things slowly so I've got a small update for today.

Now many that know me know I have fairly open tastes with music. Generally I'll like anything as long as the people who've made it have made an effort. This obviously rules out things like Garage, most remixed House, Techno and RnB.

And then I was listening to the radio today and I heard this song that by all rights I should have hated. Some guy was talking over one of my favourite oldies, not even giving them any credit and selling it off as his own. And yet as I listened... see for yourself:

Too much Research while Researching my Research Proposal...

...for a Research Project no less.

I'm still stuck, and it feels like my head is going to explode.

I've done lots and lots of reading over the past month or so, and I still have no idea of what I want to do. Worse in fact, I now have such a huge overview of game design that I have more ideas than ever.

So a quick run down of the ideas so far:

Semiotics - Representation, signification of ideas through non-linguistic communication. For example, was Pac-man just a junkie pill popper?

Abstraction - Similar to semiotics but more along the lines of how real world elements are abstracted in computer games, such as health meters and HUDs.

Pattern Language - Creating a Pattern Language for Game Design. Pattern Languages are a list of linked problems and solutions with proper grammar.

Culture and Games - How games and culture interact. How different cultures (most noticeably US and Japan) enjoy different styles of games. How games effect real world culture and politics.

Play and Games - How game and play theory interrelate. Important lessons from play theory.

The Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology of Games - Nuff said.

Social Networks and Communities in Games - Particularly forums, clans, MMO societies, etc.

Multiplayer Dynamics - Interaction in multiplayer games, co-operative, competitive and mixed. How we can make multiplayer games more interesting and lesser used dynamics (3 team CTF etc).

Writing for Games - Specifically free form procedural stories, and how to do them well (Façade vs Oblivion).

Interconnected Nature of Design - For example, showing how, good practices in level design can be applied to writing, etc.

Law and Order in MMOs - Theft, murder and worse are all possible in many MMO's, and not necessarily by breaking the rules. How do societies in MMO's deal with these issues?

Currently I do have a favourite, and that is developing emotional ties between players and Non Player Characters (NPCs). On the bright side very few people seem to do this well, off the top of my head I can only name 3 characters who really got to me emotionally, and yes they're all girls (Alyx from Half-Life 2, but specifically for her role in Episodes 1 and 2, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, that moment where she just gives up and crawls into the corner really choked me up, and Imoen from Baldurs Gate, though more for the abuse she has to endure through BG2 at the hands of Irenicus). On the down side very few people seem to do this well, off the top of my head I can only name 3 characters who really... well I think I've made my point. There's just so little out there that it would be hard to find enough information on it.

Gah!

And of course as if this wasn't enough trouble I don't have a job, and on top of all my other expenses I'm about to graduate and going to have to start paying council tax amongst other things. I really need to get this nailed down, find a supervisor and a uni willing to back me, and get funding.

I... I can feel it happening!