Welcome to my humble page for ramblin' about videogames, learning, and learning games!
A quick correspondence on Dwarf Fortress with Moses Wolfenstein
This was a lovely little thread I had with my friend and colleague Moses Wolfenstein. Minor edits for clarification and format, but otherwise…Moses is ACTUALLY THIS SMART EVERY TIME YOU TALK TO HIM.
Let’s overextend a metaphor…JUST FOR FUN!
So I recently just attended an Entirely Fictional conference called that explores the contentious realm of books and learning. This field is attempting to tease out how one might possibly learn something from a media as engrossing and entertaining as a book. Over the last few years it has ignited a whole realm of research, interest, and controversy. However, there are still quite a few people that are slowly unpacking their own biases about how media works. It’s slow going. For example, here are some of the sessions I attended:
Team Fortress 2, Revisited
I’m not going to waste any time attempting to convince you that Team Fortress 2 is great- if you don’t think so, you’re either completely uninterested in the genre of collaborative man-shooting, or you’ve never played it, or you are just sort of hate “good” in any instantiated form. Instead, I’d like to look at a couple of the things that make the game as good as it is. This is also, of course, an old game, so I’ll try and justify the late review by talking a bit about what’s changed since my last visit.
Microtransactions, DLC and Learning Games
DLC. From the Oblivion horse armor to map packs to piles of hats, the existence of post-purchase addon content remains contentious in the realm of commercial gaming. But at the same time, the world of learning gaming is staring at the uncharted territory funding opportunities. The days of massive revenue from software sales in big box stores are long gone, and companies wanting to succeed with innovative learning games are peering at the commercial market and *its* innovations to see if they can be mirrored. How could DLC be engineered into a learning game environment?