gaming archive at Information Innovation Exchange

Archive for the 'gaming' Category

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers

Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008 in video games, books, reading and gaming. 0 Comments

“You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”

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Gaming Symposium: Complex Games Lead to Complex Thinking

Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008 in libraries, American Library Association, library services and gaming. 0 Comments

Modern games aren’t trivial, and librarians who dismiss them as such do their patrons a disservice, presenters told some 215 attendees of the second annual ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. Held November 2–4 in Oak Brook, Illinois, the event was replete with examples of how the complexity of modern games prepare young people for their futures. The oft-mocked Pokémon series, for example, has more than 500 characters, each falling into one of 17 types that may be particularly strong or weak against other types.”

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Video: Gaming at Oak Park Public Library

Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008 in libraries, video, library services and gaming. 0 Comments

During the summer and autumn this year, Oak Park (Ill.) Public Library has held monthly teen gaming tournaments. This is a video (3:15) of sights and sounds from the September tourney, as well as an interview with Young Adult Librarian Monica Harris, who explains why and how the library got into gaming and the benefits it offers the library and the community.

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Microsoft and Universities Will Study Using Games to Teach Middle-School Students

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in education and gaming. 0 Comments

Microsoft is teaming up with a consortium of universities to study how best to use computer games to teach middle-school students math and science. The interdisciplinary research project, which is to be announced today, will involve New York University and a consortium of other institutions — the City University of New York, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Parsons the New School for Design, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Columbia’s Teachers College and NYU’s Polytechnic Institute are also involved. In middle school, many students “become discouraged or uninterested and pour their time at home into gaming,” said Ken Perlin, an NYU professor of computer science, in a statement. “We think gaming is our starting point to draw them into math, science, and technology-based programs.”

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Microsoft Lets Xbox Live Users Build and Sell Their Own Games

Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008 in Microsoft and gaming. 0 Comments

Microsoft said it’s opening up the popular console to games created by gamers using the company’s XNA Game Studio software. “We’re creating an opportunity for aspiring developers to start their careers on the world stage,” said Chris Satchell, chief technology officer at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment unit, in a statement.

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Game Maker Tries to Legitimize Facebook Scrabble

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in Facebook and gaming. 0 Comments

As Facebook has blossomed into a hot Internet hangout, its users have passed countless hours playing Scrabble with friends — or at least, an unauthorized version of the word game that Scrabble’s owners have tried to shut down. Now a video game maker will try to legitimize the activity.

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American Library Association Receives $1 Million Grant from Verizon Foundation to Study How Gaming Can Be Used to Improve Problem-Solving and Literacy Skills

Published by rwatstein July 5th, 2008 in innovation, American Library Association and gaming. 0 Comments

The American Library Association (ALA) will launch an innovative project to track and measure the impact of gaming on literacy skills and build a model for library gaming that can be deployed nationally. Funding for the project will be provided by a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation. “Gaming is a magnet that attracts library users of all types and, beyond its entertainment value, has proven to be a powerful tool for literacy and learning,” said ALA President Loriene Roy. “Through the Verizon Foundation’s gift, ALA’s gaming for learning project will provide the library community with vital information and resources that will model and help sustain effective gaming programs and services.”

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Internet Pinball Database

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in web sites and gaming. 0 Comments

This site (originally compiled as part of the Pinball Pasture site in the mid-1990s) is “a comprehensive, searchable listing of virtually every pinball machine ever commercially made. It is an ad free, popup free, registration free resource. [The site does] not buy or sell games.” Listings include details such as the pinball machine’s manufacturer, machine type, notable features, images, and user ratings and comments. Also provides a glossary, player guide, and other supplementary material.

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Whole-Body Gaming

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in gaming. 0 Comments

The massive success of the Nintendo Wii proved the appeal of motion-controlled gaming. Now Softkinetic, a company based in Belgium, is working to let video-game players use a wider range of more-natural movements to control the on-screen action. Softkinetic’s software is meant to work with depth-sensing cameras, which can be used to determine a player’s body position and motions. “You don’t need a controller in your hand,” says CEO Michel Tombroff. “You don’t need to wear a special outfit. You just come in front of the camera in your living room, and you start playing by moving your entire body.”

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Our Public Libraries Are Being Turned Into Video Arcades

Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008 in libraries, video games, library services and gaming. 0 Comments

Dave Gibson writes, “A recent article in my local newspaper (Virginian-Pilot) about libraries “efforts to woo teens,” caught my eye. Apparently, the works of such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain have been replaced with the Xbox and Nintendo Wii. It is little wonder that our nation’s literacy rate continues to decline. According to a 2007 Syracuse University study, 7 out of 10 U.S. public libraries now provide gaming to teens and pre-teens. Jenny Levine of the American Library association told the Virginian-Pilot: “It’s going to go from a trend to being mainstream. Kids really understand the gaming and the fact that the libraries are embracing something that is important to them, that really speaks to them.” Libraries are now offering video games and movies to children. Paula Brehm-Heeger, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association said of the new entertainment available: “Librarians are really trying to respond to teens and to keep the library relevant in their lives. Gaming programs can draw in teens that librarians don’t otherwise see.” I suppose that literary classics, poetry, geography, and great American novels are no longer “relevant” to teenagers! ”

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All the Internet’s a Game

Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008 in internet and gaming. 0 Comments

The experience of surfing the Internet could be improved if users were given more guidance and camaraderie, says Merci Victoria Grace, COO and cofounder of the startup GameLayers, based in San Francisco. Users surf alone, wandering through piles of data without enough chance to interact with it, or with each other. To make surfing the Web a more social and lighthearted experience, Grace and the company’s other designers are grafting a massively multiplayer online game on top of ordinary Web browsing. Players rack up points as they visit sites, devise themed missions that lead other players through sets of websites, and leave notes for one another–all of it invisible to nonplayers.

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Gaming and the School Curriculum

Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008 in education and gaming. 0 Comments

Brian Mayer writes: “Games engage students with authentic leisure experiences while reinforcing a variety of social, literary, and curricular skills. When an educational concept is introduced and reinforced during a game, it is internalized as part of an enjoyable experience and further utilized as one aspect of a strategy to attain success.” To prove his point, Mayer matches up specific New York State learning standards with selected games.

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Art Games: Digital Artists are Using Game Technologies to Create Bold New Works

Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008 in art, digital and gaming. 0 Comments

Digital art takes many forms: installations; Internet art; virtual-reality projects that use devices such as headsets and data gloves to immerse participants in a virtual world; software coded by the artist; or even “locative media” art that uses mobile devices (such as cell phones) to turn public spaces like buildings or parks into a canvas. Digital photographs, films, and videos have been common in the arts since the 1990s; even paintings and sculptures are now sometimes produced with the aid of digital tools. But projects that use digital technologies as a medium in themselves–and that, like their medium, are interactive, collaborative, customizable, and variable–still occupy the margins of art institutions and find their audience mostly at new-media art festivals or on the Internet.

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YALSA Gaming Extravaganza

Published by rwatstein February 18th, 2008 in video and gaming. 0 Comments

Librarians at the Young Adult Library Services Association Gaming Extravaganza, held January 11 at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, share how they’re developing gaming in their libraries and the importance of creating a “safe place” youth, while librarian/gamer/author Eli Neiburger runs a live tournament and explains the secret of getting 115 boys to come to his library on a Friday night.

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‘Guitar Hero’ Contest Gets Youths into the Library to Try Their Skills

Published by rwatstein January 12th, 2008 in libraries and gaming. 0 Comments

As the plastic guitars are checked and the contest bracket set, Brandon Baxter, 12, is standing near the back of the room with his parents. He’s nervous, he says, explaining that he usually plays the video game “Guitar Hero” only at the level called “medium difficulty.” In front of him, library book carts usually filled with novels instead hold projectors, speakers and PlayStation 2’s. Library tables are pushed to the side, and the shades are drawn. The conference room in the Central Resource Library has been transformed into a gaming haven.

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Confessions of an Online Scrabble Cheat

Published by rwatstein December 29th, 2007 in Facebook and gaming. 0 Comments

Dear Scrabble Word Finder: We have to break up. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, FWIW (sorry, I know you hate it when I use abbreviations), it’s the way we are together. Back when I first added Scrabulous — Scrabble plus fabulous, get it? — to my Facebook page, I didn’t even know you existed. It was one of the most popular applications on Facebook, and I was just one of hundreds of thousands of people playing social-network Scrabble.

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Parsons School Opens Lab for ‘Serious’ Games

Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007 in education and gaming. 0 Comments

A new research lab at the prestigious Parsons design school aims to develop video games with a conscience — called “serious games” — and study whether playing them can be a force for social good. The games, which aim to educate, appeal mostly to a niche market and are used to train public officials, students and professionals in various fields.

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Vivendi to Merge With Activision

Published by rwatstein December 9th, 2007 in corporations and gaming. 0 Comments

Like all companies invested in the volatile but lucrative videogame industry, Vivendi went looking for a hero. The French conglomerate, which owns a mixed bag of businesses, from Moroccan phone services to Universal Music Group, sought to add to its small but successful gaming division that includes Blizzard Entertainment’s 9.3-million subscriber “World of Warcraft.”

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