I've never actually watched _Community_, but the stuff about them firing Dan Harmon as showrunner was interesting, and this article about Dan Harmon's 'Harmontown' show is super interesting.
Monday, March 04, 2013
Saturday, March 02, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Pillowdrome, an ad-hoc game
Scott Simpson shares a game he calls Pillowdrome where you chase someone around an obstacle while balancing a pillow on your head:
http://yourmonkeycalled.com/post/56089253/pillowdrome-extended-family-vacations-with-their
This reminds me of how much fun I've had with my daughter playing our invented game 'Duck Dash', which is tag where you have to hit the other person with a stuffed duck. It's basically tag for adults who don't want to run so very much.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
A software tool for designing games: Ludi
This was a neat find from metafilter.com: an article on BoardGameGeek about a game called 'Yavalath' that was designed by a computer program.
First the hook: the game Yavalath sounds interesting. It's played on a hex map (a hex of hexes); two players take take turns placing pieces in two colors; you win if you get four in a row of your color ... but you LOSE if you place three in a row.
The Ludi program uses a sort of evolutionary programming process ... it scrambles a bunch of game rules to make rule sets, then simulates playing the games and uses some kind of heuristic to decide which games would be interesting to human players.
Further, the humans working on the project then had people play the top-ranked games (Ludi generated 1048 games and ranked 19 as interesting to humans). The people's choice, Yavalath, was actually #4 on Ludi's list.
Other details show that clearly the algorithm for predicting human interest isn't perfect. One of the highly-rated games had rules too complex for people to like. But so what? Think of this thing as a game design tool, a way to test and iterate options. Because isn't that the problem with game design -- one can imagine many rule choices, but it's expensive to try them all.
The story I read about the famous German game Setters of Catan is that the author, Klaus Teuber, spent months playing the game with his family every night, testing out various rules. That's fantastic, and supports the widespread popularity of the game, but few people can make that sort of testing happen. I know I've played many a game that didn't seem like it had been playtested nearly enough.
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Heroes of Science action figures
When I first saw this, I feared it was real, and I would need to own all of these...
http://datazoid.deviantart.com/art/Heroes-of-Science-Action-Figures-337514889
...however, they're actually all customized versions of other figures. :)
http://datazoid.deviantart.com/art/Heroes-of-Science-Action-Figures-337514889
...however, they're actually all customized versions of other figures. :)
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