The Sandbox

Found on Kotaku, Disbarment with Extreme Prejudice, that's the recommendation by the Florida Bar, for Jack Thompson. OK, "enhanced disbarment" is the term, but whatever, I'm a violent game designer, and I am trying to immolate your very soul with my overtly destructive vocabulary. Rawr!

So it goes to the Florida Supreme Court, for review on September 2nd: mark your calendars, I'm sure it will be a colorful countdown come late August. It doesn't look good for Thompson, who declared that the reviewing judge did not have the authority to rule over him and walked out on the hearing. "Do too," she said, unecclesiastically.

Reader Ray Shingler emailed me yesterday about an interesting new educational game his company created. I'd like to share the news with you:

"I read your blog in IEEE Spectrum and thought you might like to hear about our video game that teaches engineering, math, and science to kids in grades 6-9. The game is entitled "Time Engineers." We designed the game in the hopes of getting more students interested in a possible career in the civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering fields at an earlier age."

Shingler says his company is now working on a sequel for the game too.

In the wake of this week's Games for Change conference in New York, I begin to wonder if this gulf between academia and the games industry might be closing somewhat. Not only were many of this week's sessions geared toward the creation of social consciousness raising games, but there was a significant emphasis on marketing as well.

Here is the gulf, indeed. In academia, technology as a vehicle for teaching and learning (as opposed to research) creeps along like a stagecoach, while the games industry in general begins to swarm and consolidate into vast money-making machines, squeezing out the little guy with inventive ideas and other agenda than bursting their piggy banks.

So neither gets to benefit from the other's expertise.

It still shocks me to see how many "serious" games out there have very little "theory" behind them to marry their intentions and gameplay to actual pedagogical or consciousness-raising effect. Serious Games seem to be stuck in a loop of pushing the motivational and stealth-educational advantages of information transmission, rather than spurring analysis, systems-thinking, and interactive debate. To be honest, I would rather read a few cogent, concise paragraphs on, say, the situation in Darfur, than to run a character through a grassland looking for fuel wood and dodging space-invader bombs in the form of slaver trucks.

Without serious experimentation and analysis with games as educational tools, however, there is no solid basis from which to convince educators of more than the vaguest of benefits for game-oriented educational activity. It's a catch-22.

Gamespot reports that Disney is merging its game and Internet divisions together. According to Disney CEO Bob Iger, "As console and handheld games become more connected to the Internet, and as Internet and mobile become increasingly robust destinations for games and a range of interactive entertainment, we are taking this opportunity to integrate these activities."

This is a sign of the times. But why stop there? Instead of just merging games/Net, there should be entirely new cross-disciplinary divisions comprising of "experts" from each medium: games, Net, film, books, music, etc. That way instead of just having lame games based on films, the products can be conceived organically together from the ground up.

The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynote is happening right now, and if you care, you're likely looking at this page, or, heaven forbid, this page. But in case you're not, and you're here, and you care, Steve has been touting the gaming functions of iPhone 2.0, and some of the games that will be available through the iTunes Store, presumably once the keynote ends. Sega with Super Monkey Ball, Pangea with Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally, and a few others. Some Guitar Hero clone.

I'm psyched about the live mlb.com app, for game updates. Because I will be, you know, obsessed with that. I will be out to dinner with my wife, and she will brain me with my iPhone after I check it for the umpty-seventh time.

Retro game fans in Europe and Australia have five reasons to boot up the Virtual Console on Nintendo's Wii today.

Nintendo is releasing downloadable (and cheap) copies of serioiusly vintage titles: The Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance and Nebulus (Commodore 64), Ninja Combat and Fatal Fury 2 (Neo Geo), and Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega Master System).

In December 2006, I wrote a cover story for Spectrum on the engineering of Resistance: Fall of Man, the PS3 shooter from Insomniac. One thing the guys told me is how coding for the Cell processor is a work-in-progress. The more they learn, the more they can do.

Now we can see what they've grokked about the PS3 over the past year. Videos are hitting the web of Insomniac's hotly-anticipated sequel, Resistance 2. Check out Kotaku's user-friendly excerpts here.

I had the ultra-cool opportunity to check out Will Wright's astounding new evolutionary simulation game, Spore, not long ago. And some of the most fun was in creating the creatures. Now you can try this out for yourself.

The Spore Creature Creator is now available as a free trial here. When the game comes out this fall, you'll be able to really see your creature come to life - in a unique society and universe.

Prepare to be Spored.

Check out this write-up in ModDB for the growing discussion over user-generated content coming from Will Wright's upcoming game, Spore. As I mentioned before, the free Spore Creature Creator is now available and spawning some, um, provocative creations.

Pix/info are leaking out about the new controls for Guitar Hero World Tour: including this Rock Band style drum pad.

The ultra-cool peripherals made Rock Band a sensation - putting faux musical instruments into the hands of gamers. Now the GH developers are raising the stakes - with cymbals.

Gamespot has a piece about the saucy new "Wiibrator" cooked up by some intrepid geeks. Yeah, it's funny and wrong - but also a portal into the burgeoning underworld of homebrewed Wii stuff. Nitendo has long been one of the more proprietary consoles around, and it's interesting to see the kind of grassroots innovation inspired by its ubiquitous new hardware.

[via 1up] Microsoft may be looking to unload its crushing hardware cost burden onto other folks, and license other companies to produce XBox consoles. As an exercise in expanding the brand, it's a brilliant move: XBox consoles are expensive, and Microsoft has already established a serious presence with the console and with XBox Live. Now they can continue to make the pie bigger by inviting hardware competition in increasing the platform's spread, driving costs down, and hopefully resulting in better quality (not to mention quieter, sheesh) consoles. Let's hope it happens.

One of the best things I like about my Playstation 3 is the ability to watch Blu-ray movies. Now I'll have other other flicks to choose from as well. Turns out, Sony will begin offering movie downloads on the console starting this summer in the US, and later in Europe and Japan.

Neil Young - no not that Neil Young, but the game developer of the same name - has always been an interesting geek to watch. Back in the 2001, he developed Majestic - a mind-blowing but ill-fated title that unfolded in phone messages and faxes (and, oh yeah, computer game stuff too). Majestic pioneered what's now known as "alternate reality games."

Young went on to head up Electronic Arts' LA studio, which sought to bridge the game/Hollywood talent. EALA produced, among other things, the upcoming titles from Steven Spielberg. Now word comes that Young has left EALA to lead ng:moco - a new publisher devoted to mobile games, particularly for the iPhone. Hopefully, he'll bring back a new version of Majestic or, rather, iMaj.