ᔥ in Cars vs Giant Bulge and Other Outlandish Vehicular Simulations ()
A dynamic soft-body physics vehicle simulator capable of doing just about anything.
Tag: Games
Find games tagged Bitsy like novena, catching the train, ✨💻ENDLESS SCROLL💌✨, Flirting, UNDER A STAR CALLED SUN on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace.
This game was created by the Financial Times. It is based on real science and reporting — however, it is a game, not a perfect simulation of the future.
The emissions modelling was developed in 2022 by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The scenarios used in the IEA’s “Net Zero by 2050” report were recalculated to track the temperature outcomes for specific pathways used in the game.
These climate outcomes were calculated using the IEA’s World Energy Model (WEM) and Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) model coupled with the MAGICC v7+ climate model.
MAGICC stands for Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change and is used by scientists and integrated assessment models.
Financial Times have created a game based on published scientific research and bespoke modelling by the International Energy Agency to get users to appreciate the challenges required to keep global warming to 1.5C. Along with other stimulus, such as The Ministry for the Future, the Climate Game is a thought provoking exercise and helpful in imagining a different tomorrow.
The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen believes that to understand modern life, we need to understand how games work.
In an interview with Ezra Klein, C. Thi Nguyen discusses how Twitter gamifies communication. He explains the way in which games tell you what to care about and how they are usually about something beautiful or interesting.
In contrast, platforms like Twitter use gamification to funnel our values without giving us space to step back. This manipulation occurs through the use of points. Although this quantification is useful for ‘seeing like a state’, it does not account for choice and nuance. For example, Fitbit can capture your steps, but not your life.
The conversation ends with a discussion of conspiracy theories and what Nguyen describes as ‘game mindfulness’. He basically summarises this as a suspicious of pleasure.
I actually think there’s a tiny hint in how pleasurable games are. And this is going to make me sound kind of awful, but the way I navigate the world right now is I’ve developed a fair amount of defensive suspicion about certain kinds of pleasure. A marker of design game-like systems is that they’re very pleasurable to operate in.
The idea of social media as a game is something Tom Chatfield has also touched upon in regards to play in the digital age.
So in the broad sense you could almost go as far as saying things like Twitter or Facebook are a kind of very clever game because people have a profile which they care about, and they are constantly in the business of trying to make numbers go up, trying to get more followers, trying to get more likes, trying to get more tweets or re-tweets. They are comparing themselves to other people. Again, in Twitter there’s a sort of global scoring system where you can see where you are ranked. And there are these very playful dynamics as well whereby you are free to do anything you like within the rules of the game, within the magic circle there on screen. You can switch on, you can switch off, you can like, you can unlike, you can really indulge whimsy. So that’s one thing.
It is interesting to think about other platforms like micro.blog and what ‘points’ actually count. Also, the way in which such games can be subverted for other means, as is discussed by Ian Guest in his research on Twitter and education.
ᔥ in Winning time – Austin Kleon ()
micropolisJS is a handmade Javascript port of the open-source city simulator Micropolis
Really, Cloud Gardens and Terra Nil aren’t that different from Islanders, Dorfromantik, or Townscaper. They tap into ideas of growth and progress but tweak who or what this should benefit. In a way, these two games are simply logical evolutions of a city-builder genre that Islanders developer Schenepf describes in terms of its closeness to arboreal cultivation. Like that pastime, there are next to no anxieties in these quiet, minimalist variations of their complicated forebears, just the gentle pleasure of watching buildings and plants flourish. “Taking care of something is satisfying to so many people,” says Schnepf. “Just like growing a garden.”
Australia’s national museum for screen culture, ACMI, has released an online digital learning lesson bank — In Game Lessons.
Amber McLeod and Jo Blannin discuss ACMI’s Games Lessons library. These resources are connected with the Victorian Curriculum and can be searched by learning area and year level. One of the challenges posed by with this sort of project is to continually maintain the resource so that it continues to stay relevant. One of the things that I find interesting is the ability to play so many games within the browser these day.
I found an online version of Goldfields today. I remember playing this when I was young at school and once even at Sovereign Hill. Not as complex as I am remember, but still a bit of fun. I also found a modern version, with a bit more nuance.
Bite-sized games you can play on your phone and desktop without installing anything.
Physically speaking I’m attracted to women, but that’s not usually what drives me when I’m rooting through my virtual skin closet to decide what I’m gonna wear to the big bash.
Tyler Robertson discusses how to make a video game with Google Sheets. He talks about using iterative calculations and checkbox buttons. He provides some examples of games he has made, including Autobahn and Snake. I am not sure I want to make ‘games’, but such exercises help show the edges of what is possible with Google Sheets.
In other pieces, Robertson explains how to create a blooming flower as a completion sparkline, use Google Sheets to make an escape room, and how he uses Glitch to make his own blogging application.
We make video games and play them in order to live.
Quinn Norton asks the question, what is literature and where mediums like comics and games sit with this. Quinn explains that mechanics matter in there ability to change things.
Mechanics matter in literature. Apocalypse Now (and the arguably even better documentary Hearts of Darkness about the film Apocalypse Now) reached for the apotheosis of film. Joyce did the same for novels, e e cummings for poetry, Shakespeare for plays, 2pac for rap, and etc., insert your favorite author, or as we call them now, creators, here. Or maybe not your favorite. Maybe your least favorite, because they stick in your soul like a piece of gravel in your shoe, and you’re going to have to stop one day and change everything just to get them out.
That’s literature for you.
She gives the example of Portal 2. Its medium is essential to what it is. A part of this is the very nature of the author.
You couldn’t write a Portal book or make a Portal movie or ink a Portal comic, Portal could only be Portal.
…
For many people, the conceptual problem with Portal and other video games, as literature, is authorship. It can’t be literature without the auteur. How can a team of people be a singular creator of a literary work? But idea of the lone auteur creating from the depth of his singular soul was always a myth.
The ability to bring change comes through the interaction involved in reading and responding.
Literature is made in how it acts upon the world, not how it is pretended to be born fully formed from the head of a single man.
…
You can find literature at every level of the gaming world, from small indie games like Hollow Knight and Undertale, to multi-million dollar budget “AAA” games like Witcher, an open world game of vast detail where moral choices determine everything about the story, and most of the endings aren’t happy. Wide open, generative landscapes in games like Minecraft often let whole communities myth-make together, whether they’re chasing the Ender Dragon or not. What they all have in common is choices that matter, that they contain or build worlds that you make as much as consume, and that have the potential to make you.
It is interesting to consider this alongside Doug Belshaw’s work in regards to digital literacies and the importance of process. I am also left wondering about J. Hillis Miller’s ‘obligation to write’:
As we read we compose, without thinking about it, a kind of running commentary or marginal jotting that adds more words to the words on the page. There is always already writing as the accompaniment to reading.
Maybe when we play we compose?
Social media is a video game and Parler is a map without enemies to defeat. So, no, Parler will not catch on. Just as Gab never caught on. But we can let these miserable con artists pretend for a while! See you guys when we all migrate to the next free speech platform.
Ryan Broderick talks about the move of the right to Parler and suggests that there is no ‘Other to demonize’, therefore it will not last. This reminds me of comment from Tom Chatfield on RN Future Tense podcast.
via Alex Hern
Today i am sharing an illustration around the use of games in learning. It’s not intended to be definitive, but rather a snapshot view of four applications of game dynamics and mechanics: Quests, Rehearsal, Problem Solving, and Engagement.
Unsurprisingly, strategy games tend to only engage with complexity when it can be converted into a military or economic trait, the rest is treated as irrelevant or merely aesthetic. The tendency, when looking at different populations, is to fixate on familiarities, either because something appears similar or because something supposedly essential is missing. Much of anthropology up until the midpoint of the last century could be crassly summarized in the question “how come all these people don’t have a State?”
One story of school that we rarely acknowledge but that runs beneath almost everything we do is that school is a game to be “won.” Here’s how to change that
David Shanske (david.shanske.com)Four Player Chess is played with a standard board with an extra 3×8 section on each side. There are no official rules. Here are my notes based on a little research.
So you’re playing a game. You’re playing a game when run a business. You’re playing a game when you run a project. You’re playing a game when you wake up in the morning and turn on the internet. The question we need to ask ourselves is, is this a game worth playing? Am I getting better at this game? Is this game helping the people around me? Am I glad I am playing this game?
Seth Godin discusses the many games that consume our lives. He encourages us to stop and consider all aspects of life, not just the explicit games. Being in the midst of the Spring Racing Carnival in Victoria, this is an interesting topic to consider. This reminds me of a comment from Tom Chatfield on RN Future Tense:
So in the broad sense you could almost go as far as saying things like Twitter or Facebook are a kind of very clever game because people have a profile which they care about, and they are constantly in the business of trying to make numbers go up, trying to get more followers, trying to get more likes, trying to get more tweets or re-tweets. They are comparing themselves to other people. Again, in Twitter there’s a sort of global scoring system where you can see where you are ranked. And there are these very playful dynamics as well whereby you are free to do anything you like within the rules of the game, within the magic circle there on screen. You can switch on, you can switch off, you can like, you can unlike, you can really indulge whimsy. So that’s one thing.
This is a recreation of the original RTS game,Command and Conquer – Tiberian Dawn, entirely in HTML5 and Javascript. It includes several levels in the single player campaign and multiplayer support using Node.js. The current version is a complete rewrite from scratch with new levels, units, infantry, sounds and explosions and multiplayer.
I remember paying $100 for this game 20 years ago, now you can play it online.