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The other day, I stumbled on a delightful little adventure game called The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge by Jonas Kyratzes and friends. “Delightful” really is the right word, as it suggests something simple and childlike yet elegant and charming. Desert Bridge fits this perfectly, and is surprisingly sophisticated… Read More »
So, everyone knows what r stands for, right? What about v? Or f(x) and f'(x)? OK. How about x, y, and z? If you’re not a math geek of some kind, you’re probably not reading anymore, but just in case you are, the point is that each of these letters has a common meaning in… Read More »
I’ve heard of colour affecting mood, but not performance. Interesting paper in last week’s Science on several studies examining performance and creativity in various tasks when using a computer with different background colours. It seems surprising to me that they were able to get significant differences simply by changing the background colour, not the content,… Read More »
Like most things, games evolve. Modifications arise over time, sometimes by design, sometimes casually – examples include deliberate design, house rules, misinterpretation, and our innate tendency to search for parsimony and avoid unnecessary complexity. Since game designs are socially transmitted between both players and designers, and elements of game design can be recombined to form… Read More »
From a front page article in the Press on Thursday: Despite an estimated $9b of economic stimulus being pumped into the economy from tax cuts and new capital spending, the country’s gross debt is predicted to soar to levels not seen since the Muldoon years of the early 1980s By new capital spending I assume… Read More »
Back in January, I wrote a short post about Micro-finance, the Grameen Bank, and Kiva, an organisation that also finance micro-loans via micro-investments. Unfortunately, at the time, there was a freeze on investments, so I couldn’t make a small investment on behalf of my sister, as I had planned. Now, though, things are back in… Read More »
I finally got around to writing this letter to NZ prime minister John Key as part of Morgue’s “Don’t be a Rodney” campaign. It’s probably a bit long, but, well, I had to get that all off my chest, and the key point is summarized at the end. So far, I’ve only emailed it in,… Read More »
I love moral ambiguity in games. I love characters who struggle with intense yet believable emotions, and who are conflicted by their actions and beliefs to the point that they nearly destroy themselves. I love the simple humanity of this, and I love it when this is set against a bleak, gritty setting that offers… Read More »
It’s been a month and a half since I last posted here – you might wonder where I went. If you’ve been following my other blog at http://aigantighe.livejournal.com, you’ll know it’s because I’ve been moving from New Zealand to the US in order to take begin studying towards a PhD at the University of Washington.… Read More »
I’ve begun to think that I want two different sorts of bookmarking service: For reference links – pages I refer to frequently and that I want to be able to find quickly when I need them, from any computer. Ideally, these should be listed within a drop down menu in my browser. I use Google… Read More »