yeah farren I figured you'd like it, but he mentions yuengling twice so that's kind of cheating on my part. I don't think any of his other stuff is like that, he's like a weird folk singer. but he's Don McCloskey and the song's Return of the Freak Emcee

Computational games are games that use programmable computers as a significant element. I should have really defined it because I don't know anyone else who makes the distinction. Sorry 'bout that.  I certainly agree with your point - up until very recently, that is exactly what I would have said. That's the reason I brought computation up. Chess is an interactive game, but it's not usually a computational game. A better example would be a pen and paper role-playing game, which cannot feasibly be translated into a computational game - it's run by a brain, which might be a computer but is certainly not programmable. Similarly, Cricket is an interactive game that can't be computational. So if you want to look at computer games then you need to look at how interactive experiences, virtual sports, etc are created through computation. It's a subtlety, but I think it's an important one. Computer games are a much, much more specific subject than interactivity or games in general. What I'm proposing is, I think, an additional point on top of what you said. While interactivity is important to understanding games and game software, it is not just the essential properties of a medium, be they computation or interactivity or paper, that need to be considered, but also the cultural properties in a given context. Both Cricket and Street Fighter are devoid of meaning without the people that engage with them, but in context they're quite interesting.  But yeah. Just elaborating because this is a subject of great interest to me.

To put it in context, earlier this year I read a paper by this dude called Henry Jenkins that tried to argue that game design can be seen as what he calls narrative architecture. Everyone thinks they're an architect these days, says my sister. His real thesis is that video games are fundamentally spatial, or at least that that's the way they've become as a medium. I decided to investigate this theory by building the most general mathematical model I could that I thought adequately represented computational game. The input and output devices, update rate, etc are all parameters, so in theory the model includes a game that renders its world by mechanically controlling a fake haunted house and getting input from hidden cameras or a chess board controlled by magnets with an AI inside. It was clear from the start that not everything in the model would create space, so I instead started looking at how space is produced and what creates the illusion of space. The facts of it might be obvious to someone with an architecture background, but I'm new to the line of inquiry so I read a lot of different stuff. A few video games articles and a bit of philosophy, but I didn't get much about how to represent space in my model from the phenomenologists. People have a lot of different ways of looking at spaces, but what struck me most is that (as a whole bunch of people pointed out ages ago, apparently) space is culturally constructed and so are our representations of it. So our representations of space have a lot to do with how spaces are. This is as true, I think, for the spaces that show up in video games as it is for the spaces in real life. I still haven't figured out how to talk about space in my mathematical model. The easy answer would be "using polygons in R^3, silly!" but clearly that misses the point. There's a spot somewhere between abstract space, commodity, are and physical location that's inhabited by all sorts of software entities like irc channels, facebook walls, and forums. I think that interactivity is a good hypothesis as to how this software produces the illusion of spatiality. What I'm trying to come across is how software can produce spatiality in general. Or at least try to catalogue the ways it does in practice. But you could rip off another game's engine ant make a totally fascinating commentary on games. Like I think that Vanit's Final Fantasy 7 remake unintentionally does this. It reveals the nature of the final fantasy 7 engine by perfectly replicating the content in a different technical framework.

In my game making, I am obsessed with controls at the moment so if this nifflas guy is good at them then I will definitely look into him. I think I got NightSky in my indie bundle the other day but idk if it works on Linux yet since meat boy segfaults.

Welcome back Farren!

oh. if I understand the point correctly (I still don't understand everything you've said here, as I'm not a programmer and I'm really a games amateur) the interactive/computation difference is between types of games, rather than types of media/types of spaces. that is an interesting way of looking at it, and I see how it expands upon the idea of interactivity, though I suppose I was thinking of the programmable elements being included in interactivity. I was attempting to pinpoint the artistic/experiential difference between eg a painting, a film and a game, but I guess it's really the difference between a painting, a film and a space--I was using games a synonymous with space, as in combining the function of time a film holds over a painting with the function of interaction introduced by a user. that CAN be a game, but that's not the limit of a game. if I understood correctly, that is some interesting stuff. you or someone should write it in layman's terms and it can be another spacechat, though maybe you or someone want to wait until ed's site is finished cuz he's gonna need salt-style content

and I don't know if nifflas did anything revolutionary with controls, and I didn't mean to imply that he did. his games apply more to the idea of interaction with the game-world = the game's artistic experience that I was discussing in that post. though in the games of his that I've played, he was at the very least cognizant of controls/interaction. I haven't played NightSky though he totes ripped off my style for that one (ragnar must have given him the screenshots), I was talking more of his first big game, knytt, as well as knytt stories and within a deep forest

i finished my ludum dare game and am too disgusted with the result to bother making a topic about it so here's a link http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/adventure/drill-killer/6799/ blink once and its gone....
 

this is good!! the last part is the only one I'm not sure about

The thing is, you can say Ron Paul could never get anything implimented, but most of the political lobbyists and business leaders are deeply religious neo-conservatives who want to reduce federal control and lower taxes, because those prostitutes aren't going to fuck themselves, right Jimmy Swaggart? And to be fair, Ron Paul looks like he needs help going to the toilet, so I can't see him being that hard for them to manipulate.
The Republican party also has close links with the endtimer movement (several evangelists would call up goerge bush every week, but then again the dude did admit to hearing god, so them crazies can stick together), which conscidering how volatile Israel is lately, can only be a bad thing.
Besides, remember the fucked up shit Reagan did? He could do whatever he wanted due to the red scare.

My guess is it's because this place is familiar, has history, and most of their buddies are still right here- a sort of digital "Cheers" if you will. But that's only a guess.

this is it for me. I looked at glitchworks and its alright but not everyone moved there and people coming back are coming here right?

oh. if I understand the point correctly (I still don't understand everything you've said here, as I'm not a programmer and I'm really a games amateur) the interactive/computation difference is between types of games, rather than types of media/types of spaces. that is an interesting way of looking at it, and I see how it expands upon the idea of interactivity, though I suppose I was thinking of the programmable elements being included in interactivity. I was attempting to pinpoint the artistic/experiential difference between eg a painting, a film and a game, but I guess it's really the difference between a painting, a film and a space--I was using games a synonymous with space, as in combining the function of time a film holds over a painting with the function of interaction introduced by a user. that CAN be a game, but that's not the limit of a game. if I understood correctly, that is some interesting stuff. you or someone should write it in layman's terms and it can be another spacechat, though maybe you or someone want to wait until ed's site is finished cuz he's gonna need salt-style content

I have part of something done so far that tries to explain it a bit more carefully but I'd definitely have to wait until I have reached an actual conclusion that isn't just that space is a slippery thing that's related to interaction somehow. Do you know if ed's site is approaching done yet? There's heaps of stuff in this area that I could make articles of should he need it. I could obviously do a much better job of explaining the various bits in a way that makes sense to other people / elaborates on the implications and maybe writing in an article format would be a good way to do that. I'm not usually the most coherent writer when I'm talking about something I find fascinating.

and I don't know if nifflas did anything revolutionary with controls, and I didn't mean to imply that he did. his games apply more to the idea of interaction with the game-world = the game's artistic experience that I was discussing in that post. though in the games of his that I've played, he was at the very least cognizant of controls/interaction. I haven't played NightSky though he totes ripped off my style for that one (ragnar must have given him the screenshots), I was talking more of his first big game, knytt, as well as knytt stories and within a deep forest

oic. I played a bit of nightsky yesterday anyhow and controls are very definitely a theme. You're right in that he doesn't so much introduce new control schemes but rather expose the role of control in game interactions. Idk if that's consistent with the ones you played, but nightsky has a way of using control constraints to make the player think about how he or she influences the game environment. It makes some clever visual allegories to pinball and the such. It seems like he's very explicitly discussing controls in nightsky. I'm not that far in though.

yeahhhhh saltworld representing on ludum dare front

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18787702/Survive%20The%20Desert.swf

heres mine, its pretty bad

i finished my ludum dare game and am too disgusted with the result to bother making a topic about it so here's a link http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/adventure/drill-killer/6799/ blink once and its gone....

this is a lot better than you'd led me to believe!! i liked it. especially the art.. of course..

The thing is, you can say Ron Paul could never get anything implimented, but most of the political lobbyists and business leaders are deeply religious neo-conservatives who want to reduce federal control and lower taxes, because those prostitutes aren't going to fuck themselves, right Jimmy Swaggart?

I see a little bit of this changing in the field I'm working in which is actually growing and will probably fucking boom over the next year if my assumptions are correct. The oil industry in the united states is really growing and expanding but at the same time companies are adapting and becoming more ethically and safety driven, its been that way since I started but it keeps getting stronger and stronger as time passes. This is important. Because these people CEOs, rig supervisors, captains, environmental engineering, and environmental safety organizations are really pulling together and turning drilling for oil into a practical and reletively environmentally friendly pursuit. But you do have hiccups, the BP and haliburton fuckup is one but shit like that has been happening all over the world and in much much more dangerous fashions especially the north sea. Companies are forced to be like this because of government regulations, concerned citizens, and companies founded on checking the oil industry. So alot of shortcuts or halfassed attempts at saving money or cutting corners, if found. Could, can, and will ruin the businesses and reputations of multi-billion dollar companies. Even when it comes to employees I have never seen a company protect its employees rights, families, and health like I've seen out here. Personal lawyers paid for by the company, full healthcare with dependents paid for, and pursuit of higher learning and education. I know it sounds like I'm jumping on some bandwagon but honestly this is a good example of what we need. Yes alternate fuel sources are a dire necessity but until the technology is developed to a point to take over, we need oil man. My mom was actually renting a room out with an ex-marine engineer (he does what I do cept with engines) and he actually switched to a shore based job developing and installing equipment for alternate power sources. And I actually think that through developing technology for these fields both oil and alternate we'll soon figure out better and better ways to handle this shit.

I think something like this is what we need for our pharmaceuitical and weapons development industries, really any industry in the united states.

oic. I played a bit of nightsky yesterday anyhow and controls are very definitely a theme. You're right in that he doesn't so much introduce new control schemes but rather expose the role of control in game interactions. Idk if that's consistent with the ones you played, but nightsky has a way of using control constraints to make the player think about how he or she influences the game environment. It makes some clever visual allegories to pinball and the such. It seems like he's very explicitly discussing controls in nightsky. I'm not that far in though.

yeah, I kind of remember that being a theme when I was looking at the previews for nightsky. I guess wadf would be the other one that does some different stuff with controls and the environment. the knytt games are more about interactions with the environment using fairly standard but simplified controls. same with saira, I forgot about that one

yeahhhhh saltworld representing on ludum dare front

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18787702/Survive%20The%20Desert.swf

heres mine, its pretty bad

I like it. how do you guys make those dithered/cross-hatch textures

MS paint has a black and white option in its settings and its just cool crosshatch and dot effects

I have the flu, IT FUCKING SUCKS HUGE ASS! I wish I had a cold, that would be bearable, the muscle ache in the back of my neck and my headache make it so much worse, colds don't have that. Still, it shouldn't last to much longer. also, WOT's patch server is broken from way too many people trying to download, so now I can't download it, how selfish there being, grrr what pricks .
 P.s. never had the flu before.
p.p.s I realise i'm being hypocritical, that's the point.

EDIT: Why the hell do you have a picture of jackie chan? kim Jong is a fat person, not a hot shit martial artist, or was it some kind of joke that i didn't get?

it's a good game dicko, i tried to destroy capitalism but was crushed like an egg
 
im diggin those biggles posts too!! biggles post more...
i definitely think a distinction between videogames and a more general sense of games is an important one to make. computation is an interesting approach but i think the central thing is the fact that it's not the players crunching numbers - the actual operations are happening somewhere else while the players are kind of responding to the output function of some internal structure which generally stays hidden, which is mediated through control setups or aesthetics or borrowed context or whatever. playing the game means starting with all this output junk and trying to work backwards from it, trying to divine some structure that holds it together and make it understandable. or at least developing a working map of that structure which you are generally expected to internalise so you can jump through the hoops that the developers want you to. maybe a little bit like constructing a piece of consumer electronics from a poorly translated japanese manual so that you can watch shitty action movies on it?? the end result and motivation is generally pretty bad (Movies U Can Play...) but the process of construction seems like it still has the possibility to be exciting.
 
or maybe not but thinking of the stuff in games i actually enjoy (byzantine abstracted letter roguelikes, zelda wastelands of ambiguous function, glitched pokemon ghosttowns, tomb raider crypts full of mechanically useless sidetracks and 'noise', other strange spaces which its hard to fit into a coherent idea of what the game IS or what it expects from you) there's always this sense of trying to decipher a strange, elusive object or artifact, experimentally poking at it from different directions to figure out whats happening. mystery zones...
 
so yeah idk about general game theory stuff buttt judging from the way that most of the actually interesting pieces of game design seem to be things which try to bypass the inherent crudeness of computation for the complexities naturally arising from human interaction (eg "Johann Sebastian Faust", Terry Cavanagh's "At A Distance", probably some terrifyingly intelligent german boardgame stuff) (i havent played any of them yet fyi) i'm not sure that actually trying to apply gamedesign principles to digital things was ever going to be anything but pretty unsatisfactory to everyone and that a possibly more productive avenue could be based around the process they involve of coming to grips with this sort of opaque computational gestalt which resists all argument and interpretation, the process which most games try to minimise entirely to help you become Totally Immersed in killing blacks.
 
anyway im generalising a lot but thats my current thoughts about vidogames well thank for reading B) B) B)
 
~~ kotaku dot com

What compass?

that's dicko's game!! >:| get your faqs straight..

oooh, chanukah? *sigh* i haven't done a thing for that in a very long time, the best bit of it had to be the donuts ​, well that and the games like the dradel thing, not that i remember how to play it.

I forgot christmas is so close even though the galley is all tricked out with a pretty nice tree and shit because its like 85 fucking degrees outside.