So, we definitely have a bit of debate going on here about the merits of games that have a level of violence in them. I think it is interesting that the “sides” of the debate seem to show the gender difference; we have Shawn and Eric strongly defending the value of the games, and Noelle, [...]

I also wanted to comment on something that Shawn wrote on 10/30/00. I agree that the word “violence” does get thrown around a lot. In light of recent, over dramatized, coverage of school violence I suppose that it’s understandable. I wonder if some people aren’t just over analyzing “kids today.” Perhaps games like Quake 3 [...]

Boy, it’s getting harder and harder to read through all these posts. Anyway, I just want to comment on something that Sharon posted on 10/30/00. In regards to the article that she talked about, I wonder if some people aren’t just going overboard in having stores begin to card people before selling a “violent” game. [...]

Here is an article recounting the history of First Person Shooters. It begins with the original FPS, Castle Wolfenstein 3D, moves onto the now infamous Doom and finishes with a look to the future of FPSs.

In response and addition to the issue of violence in games and research on those that play such games, the Eric Digest has a great article with a wealth resources on violence, recommendations, ratings and so on in the following article: Video Games: Research, Ratings, Recommendations. -Dan

Hi all. Tom Sloper, a self-proclaimed game design guru, has an interesting article on the trials and tribulations to entry into the game design industry. He talks a little about required skills and more about story lines and the designer’s internal struggle to tell a story throughout the game. Interesting reading, if not a little [...]

I found a link to an article on gamings “Triumphs and Tragedies“. It’s good if you need some history, including the first game ever developed.

Last week, I had to sub in a 6th grade classroom (simply because I have a student teacher and was the only warm body available) and they had to read Scholastic News, an educational publication based on current events. It had an article on game violence. It read that major stores are going to begin [...]

I am responding to Noelle’s question regarding what I meant when I wrote that children who are interested in violence choose violent games. I did mean what i wrote, but I do feel that some clarification of what I mean is needed. Violence is a very strong buzzword and saying that some people are interested [...]

To my surprise there is a site called Game-Interviews.com

This might be interesting to the team that deals with violence and games. Recently, a group of prominent Americans, including current and former public officials, issued a statement decrying violence in entertainment that they called an “Appeal to Hollywood“.

Hi Team and others interested, We are looking into the relationship between age and game appeal. I came across the attached research study that was conducted by the AARP. AARP surveyed over 1,000 of its members to assess their learning styles. http://research.aarp.org/general/lifelong_1.html

While I was looking at some evaluation sites, I came across this very interesting article that indirectly relates to game appeal: “Application of Multiple Intelligences Research in Alternative Assessment” (Proceedings of the Second National Research Symposium on Limited English Proficient Student Issues: Focus on Evaluation and Measurement. OBEMLA, 1992). In this article, the author (Joseph [...]

Holly, Gulcin, Yu-chan & anyone interested in gender and computer games. I found this really interesting site. The authors evaluate 4 popular “girl’s” software programs. Most other articles I’ve read about these programs/games have been all positive, but this article disagrees and details why. Check it out! http://cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/Projects/gender-gap-in-education/index.htm

Now many people may already be aware of this site. It may have already been shared in class. But in any case, I just found it for myself and found it useful. http://www.gradingthemovies.com This site gives reviews not only on movies but on video/computer games as well. What a great resource for parents who want [...]

The more research I do on game violence, the more I find on gender differences in game selection. I think an interesting future topis might be: Who is choosing the violent games and what are the different effects they the game are having on the different genders? In my very preliminary research it is appearing [...]

I am on the game violence team and I want to thank Shawn for the interesting comments. I enjoyed reading another perspective. I was confused by one point, and maybe I was reading it wrong. I understood that you believe that children who are interested in cars will choose a car game. Those children who [...]

I just thought I would post a little response to Sara Pehrsson who said the following on 10/30/2000 8:17:36 AM: “What do they get out of [games like Doom]?”. As a gamer, I feel somewhat qualified to answer this. 1) The best Quake (sequel to Doom) player in the world, Dennis Fong, has turned his [...]

I’m not in the group dealing with violence with games, but I have to admit I find the topic quite interesting. I have to put a disclaimer up right now; I am an avid gamer, so my opinions are quite biased. I find it interesting that so many people are ready to decry games for [...]

Looking at Yu-Chan cheng’s post about women in computer careers… many of the reasons listed struck a chord with me. Particularly “the narrow focus of the job”, where women would prefer to apply CS to broader issues, and the “solitary, myopic fascination with obscure technical details.” I’ve noticed that I feel alienated by technical discussions, [...]

CYC is a long-term effort started at MIT, I believe, focused on creating a computer program with “common sense”. CYCCorp commercializes this effort. Check it out. http://www.cyc.com

The team working on the Game Industry will particularly enjoy this link: Developer Diaries. It’s an offshoot of the Games Domain site and consists of one-page interviews or journals written by people hard at work at the next generation of games. It’s interesting to go through the pages and note the different roles that people [...]

An interesting article regarding pitfalls of data analysis. It contains the subtopics such as the problem with statistics, sources of bias, errors in methodology and problems with interpretation. If you are interested in further reading, you can find it on the following URL: http://www.execpc.com/~helberg/pitfalls/.

Other intersting article on gender issues is that Girlware: Software companies are targeting girls, but is their marketing on the mark? http://www.electronic-school.com/0697f1.html

Here is other article on gender issues in game design from U.S. News ” Girls don’t hate computers. They just don’t like the games boys like” http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/25girl.htm

Hi, I am working on gender issues in game design as a part of game appeal project. This weekend I read the article “We Have Never-Forgetful Flowers In Our Garden: Girls’ Responses To Electronic Games’. http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~inkpen/Papers/Girls/girls.html Aim of this study is to investigate whether and how electronic games can be used to increase girls’ interest [...]

The Geeker Sex ( http://www.theinspiracy.com/argeeker.htm) Responding to the question, “why are game players mostly male?”, the author, Noah Falstein, points out some common misconceptions and debates them by providing justification. The misconceptions and debates are as following: Misconception1: No one has ever tried making games specifically for women. Debate: 1. The fabled Epyx Barbie game [...]

Women and Computer Careers( http://vest.gu.se/vest_mail/0846.html) Women are leaving or avoiding careers in computers because of the following factors: 1. Discrimination by male co-workers 2. The narrow focus of training This training tends to emphasize technical expertise rather than practical application. However, a higher percentage of men are concerned with technical details itself while a high [...]

Patterns I’m a kindergarten teacher and I thought I knew what a pattern was. Let’s see, It solves a problem. It is a proven concept. The solution isn’t obvious. It describes a relationship The pattern has a significant human component Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a [...]

Here is my first attempt at stating a pattern.. Pattern Name: FeedbackThroughChallenge Some game systems allow open ended responses without providing feedback therefore allow users to challenge each other on the correctness of a given response. Principle involved: Learners must be provided with timely feedback regarding their performance and learning. Sample Situations: Scrabble, Boggle In [...]

Now on to some thoughts for our webquest. Defining patterns seems to me like more than just saying “spinners are a way of randomizing numbers.” It is more a matter of looking at the game from a designers point of view. For example: As an educational game designer I might want to focus on facts [...]

I now understand what Chris meant by brain overload. I have been reading about patterns for the last hour and a half. My understanding is moving from a deep fog to an opaque film. Here is what I have so far: A pattern describes both the context of a problem and the solution. It also [...]

Game violence is obviously a very hot topic. There is a lot of argument over how much exposure children and teens should have to these games. A lot of violent crimes committed by teens where violent video games have said to have a direct influence on the crime, showed that the person committing the crime [...]

While doing some research on the Internet about video game violence, I came across a very interesting article on the marketing of these games. One I guess you could call strategy that the gaming industry uses is to make plastic action figures that replicate the main characters in many of these games. What they then [...]

Hi everyone… I have been doing some reading and research on game violence. One commonality that exists across all of the articles that I have read is that there is an overwhelming agreement that violence in video games has a direct influence on children’s behavior and has increased violent behaviors among children as well as [...]

For those of you out there who may be madly preparing for comps (like myself) – I have an interesting web source for you. It can be found on the gender webquest site, under New Players, New Games by Brenda Laurel. It is a manuscript of a talk she did in which she discusses a [...]

Found some info that may be useful to the design group. Brenda Laurel, who is listed on the gender webquest site, has done some research on the architecture for computer-based interactive fantasy and fiction. It didn’t really give any more details, but if you’re still looking for something….

Hi everyone! I’m working on game designers and the game industry with my group. I found an interesting web site in my search to find out about the history of game design and the designers. It’s about game testers and it discusses the process of game design from idea to fruition. Kind of interesting and [...]

Okay, I’m going to combine some thoughts on violent games, gender, and bots (I’m in the bot group). One of the links for my group goes to a website that provides lists of various types of bots that exist. At first it brought me to the “games bots” list, and I began to think that [...]

Speaking of violent games, I just read that they’re doing a remake of RollerBall, a classic movie from 1975. The new movie takes place in 2005 and describes a game so violent that its players often die on the field. The release is set for Memorial Day weekend next year, but there’s already a website [...]

Noelle asks… “Do you feel that it should be the parents’ responsibility to censor and preview their child’s entertainment or do you think these tyoes of games should be censored from the get go and not even be out on the shelves, thus eliminating the role of the parent as the bad guy?” As the [...]

As a parent and a teacher, I have real issues with violence among our youth. But, are video games the problem? That’s what I am supposed to work on. It is much meatier than I thought it was going to be. And my group has a very, very, wide variety of opinions on this matter. [...]

Hi everyone. Okay, I just resized my screen and lost all of my inital “musings.” So far, I’m 0 for 6 on using this medium. I hope it gets better….. I guess that just emphasizes some of what I’ve been uncovering in my web quest on gender issues. From the report – Educating Girls in [...]

I am a teacher but not a parent and many of the articles that I have been reading on game violence have suggested that parents need to take the blame for the violence of children, not the games. They are saying that parents need to take more care in checking for ratings on the game [...]

In one of the readings that I did for my group project on game violence, I found an interesting observation. This writer was commenting on how in each decade there is something that gets attacked and blamed for the troubles of the current society. As much attck as these things seem to fall under, most [...]

Calling the gender group once again!!! I’ve got another one for you. Again, it may already be on your list but Computer Games and Violence: A Child’s Friend or Foe? also look at the differences in genders. It is also on the process page for the violence group. I hope that in some way these [...]

While going through the suggested readings for my webquest project I found one that might fit into another topic. My group’s topic is that of game violence. Those of you out there looking at gender issues might want to take a look at SALON: The shooters and the Shrinks, which is on the prcess page [...]

I guess I hadn’t really realized how much of a different light I am beginning to see games in until our game was put to the test. We had people try playing it and really enjoyed it but didn’t like the negative outcomes. They thought we should just leave them out of the game. We [...]

You know how you feel when you read a bunch of information that you can decode, but you have no clue as to the content of what you’re reading? New words (as of the last ten minutes) that do NOT mean what you think they mean in English when relating them to concepts about patterns: [...]

This reading on patterns is interesting, but I’ve yet to come across anything that specifically relates to game design. I am noticing, though, that some people should take lessons on web page design before they throw something on the Internet. Some of these pages that I’m coming across are an absolute eyesore (and, they have [...]