Anti Patterns - serious_games

Left With No Money Behind ?

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Tiens, faut croire que les jeux catho ont du mal à se vendre. Left Behind est désormais disponible gratis pour non pas les 100 premiers... ni les 1000 premiers... mais pour les 1 000 000 de personnes qui daignerons le télécharger avant, euh, les autres ! O_o

It's no secret that religious messageware Left Behind: Eternal Forces failed to find an audience amongst gamers (we think it's the whole "prayer is more powerful than guns" thing) so it's with a raised eyebrow and a quizzical look – and maybe even a Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor huhhh – that we greet news of Left Behind Games' "Million Game FREE Giveaway." It's simple: just stop by this website, make your order, and "increase [their] installed base of users to benefit future sales and expand distribution."

[ Joystiq ]

Fat Free ?

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:00:00 +0100

J'avoue, j'adore le travail de Persuasive Games. Chaque nouveau titres non seulement s'attèlent à un problème politique et social, mais le fait de surcroit d'une façon complète et remarquable. Même si il y a un parti pris, le jeu n'est pas pretexte à une illustration monotone et bornée.

Par exemple, Fat World, le dernier en date, s'attèle au problème de l'obésité en essayant de montrer comment nos modes de vies (travail, gestion du temps, culture) impactent notre santé.

De surcroit, d'un pur point de vue industriel, la qualité de FatWorld n'a rien a envier aux sims par exemple !!!

FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S

The game's goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations.

Existing approaches to nutrition advocacy fail to communicate the aggregate effect of everyday health practices. It's one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away.

You can choose starting weights and health conditions, including predispositions towards ailments like diabetes, heart disease, or food allergies.

You'll have to construct menus and recipes, decide what to eat and what to avoid, exercise (or not), and run a restaurant business to serve the members of your community.

FATWORLD comes with numerous foods, recipes, and meal plans, or players can create their own from the foods in their pantry or their imaginations.

[ FatWorld ]

Apprendre non pas par le jeu, mais en faisant le jeu...

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:15:00 +0200

Enseigner les maths, l’histoire ou le Français à l’aide de jeux vidéo n’est pas une idée nouvelle. L’Edutainement est une branche non négligeable de l’industrie.

Par contre, enseigner en apprenant à faire un jeu vidéo est une idée plus récente. Produire un jeu vidéo est un acte créatif qui nécessite aussi bien des compétences littéraires (écriture, rédaction, critique), artistique (design, dessin, image) que scientifique (maths, physique, programmation…).

C’est un art très complet qui peut servir de support à l’apprentissage de ses différentes compétences. Certaines écoles semblent prêtent à faire l’expérience :

« Many find traditional school work to be considerably less pleasant than the average video game (with some exceptions) and so Dayton Technology Design High School deemed it a good idea to incorporate games directly into the curriculum, tasking students with designing an educational game of their own and learning at every step of the way.

It's an interesting idea, to be sure, though it likely has plenty of risks associated with it. A passion for games may very well enable more focused learning, but it could just as easily lead to distraction if it's not finely controlled. »

[ Joystik ]

Saving the World, One video Game At A Time

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 20:35:09 +0200

Je ne suis pas le seul a être intrigué par la vague de jeu ayant pour thème le conflit Israélo-Palestinien, preuve s’il en est que ce conflit – au même titre que la guerre du Vietnam – alimente tout les fantasmes.

Voici ce que le New York Times en dit :

Together they have found some seriously high-powered backers. Last year the MacArthur Foundation began issuing grants to develop persuasive games, including a $1.5 million joint gift to James Paul Gee, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, and GameLab, a New York firm that designs games. Meanwhile the United Nations has released Food Force, a game that helps people understand the difficulties of dispensing aid to war zones. Ivan Marovic, co-founder of Otpor (Resistance) — the Serbian youth movement widely credited with helping to oust Slobodan Milosevic — helped produce A Force More Powerful, a game that teaches the principles of nonviolent strategy. And the third annual Games for Change conference in New York, held earlier this month, attracted academics and nonprofit executives, including several from the World Bank and the United Nations.

“What everyone’s realizing is that games are really good at illustrating complex situations,” said Suzanne Seggerman, one of the organizers of the conference. “And we have so many world conflicts that are at a standstill. Why not try something new? Especially where it concerns young people, you have to reach them on their own turf. You think you’ll get their attention reading a newspaper or watching a newscast? No way.”

Henry Jenkins, an M.I.T. professor who studies games and learning, said the medium has matured along with the young people who were raised on it. “The generation that grew up with Super Mario is entering the workplace, entering politics, so they see games as just another good tool to use to communicate,” he added. “If games are going to be a mature medium, they’re going to serve a variety of functions. It’s like with film. We think first of using it for entertainment, but then also for education and advertising and politics and all that stuff.”

This is the central conceit behind all these efforts: that games are uniquely good at teaching people how complex systems work. “You could have some big theory about society, but these days it’s like, sorry, people aren’t going to read your white paper on it,” said Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the George Institute of Technology, whose book on serious games will be published next spring by M.I.T. Press. “Put it in a game, and they’ll discover what you’re talking about themselves.”

[ N.Y. Times ]

Real War, Virtual Peace

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:30:00 +0200

En ces temps de guerre ouverte à Gaza et au Liban, toutes les initiatives sont bonnes. Voici PeaceMaker, un jeu dont le projet est de sensibiliser au conflit Israélo-Palestinien en essayant de trouver une solution.

PeaceMaker se joue au tour par tour, prenant une approche peut être plus stratégique et politique que global conflits. Huit acteurs indépendants interviennent dans ce processus, et ce incluant le Hamas et l’Egypte.

Je suppose qu’aujourd’hui, il faudrait rajouter le Hezbollah, l’Iran, l’Iraq et la Syrie pour ne serait ce que se rapprocher de la réalité…

Dissaffected ou la dure vie des employés...

noreply@hautetfort.com (Dazibao) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:04:52 +0200

La vie d’un employé de commerce n’est pas de tout repos! Entre les clients mécontents et les petits chefs incompétents, combien de temps pensez vous pouvoir survivre a ce régime ?

Disaffected! - a videogame parody of the Kinko’s copy store, a source of frustration from its patrons. Disaffected! puts the player in the role of employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetences common to a Kinko’s store. From a new series of persuasive games we call anti- advergames.

Disaffected! gives the player the chance to step into the demotivated position of real FedEx Kinkos employees. Feel the indifference of these purple-shirted malcontents first-hand, and consider the possible reasons behind their malaise -- is it mere incompetence? Managerial affliction? Unseen but serious labor issues?

[ Persuasive Games ]