You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...

Wednesday's class was challenging.
We had to do and analyze a lot of puzzles. Of course it was challenging!
I don't do puzzles but am willing to give them a bash. I REALLY wanted to have five minutes on my own in a quiet room with a piece of paper to analyze each one.
To categorize statements. To check for ambiguity. To analyze the assumptions about the system and to look for origins of these assumptions.
Under pressure (yeah I felt under pressure) I got frazzled.
I was running to stand still. A couple of times when task B assumed understanding of puzzle A (that I was just intuiting) I didn't like it at all.

Now, apart from crummy design principles assignments, I've got the week-end to think about the puzzles.

And that I'm looking forward to....

All these...moments... will be lost..in time...

Is there an option in games to capture and replay your gamespace triumphs?
Or for that matter, the moments when it all started to go wrong (for the purposes of postmortem)?
Would/do you get much use out that functionality?

HATE is a strong word

I spend alot of my mealtimes trying to explain to my kids that HATING french beans just represents a waste of energy (they can afford it, they have a lot of energy to waste but that's not the point).
The reason I don't really play games has much to do with HATE and patience.
You see I like to portray myself as not-really competitive. You don't see me get too het up about competition. You can't be competitive if you don't compete. Right?
Nah..
I don't game because I really, really HATE losing.
And anybody to whose heard me snarl at the workstation during the tutorials can see that many aspects of my life already become competitive without games adding additional adrenal gland squeezing tension. In fact I have to take time to dissipate the stuff just to become functional again.
Maybe sandbox games might do it for me. Maybe the option to wander wraith-like through a game before playing might help.

I might see if I can get Chrystal Edge for Android.

Holloway ludologyminitalk

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Holloway ludologyminitalk

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What about strange attractors?

While lamenting the loss of books (stuck in storage behind the sofa and kitchen chairs)
It occurred to me that chaos theory must have a lot to offer games analysis and modeling.
A game might be a system with states that tend to aggregate around attractors (perhaps one of dynamism that would favor the heroes and another of stability that would favor the hoards, schemers and strategists).
If a game could modeled to approximate that sort of system the parameters that need to be manipulated to approximate the desired system of states.
Similarly a game modeled on a system with sensitive dependence on initial factors could be used to to take similar but subtly different inputs to a variety of significantly different outcomes.
I'm sure there's a body of research on this out there and will Google it when I get the chance.

and you burned so very, very brightly Roy.

Jaded idea I know and possibly insulting to some.....
Having achieved a catharsis in gamestate does sometimes life appear a little grey and muted by comparison?
Are you left looking for 11 on the dial?

Yesterday's excercise

Possibly following the reference to Steve McQueen my game yesterday added a physical skill where you flick your rider into the quarterpipe and into one of three foam pits to gain access to scoring/gambling potential. Apart from that it was pretty boring and derivative.And no real playing against others. Buckaroo anyone?
Group work was good but challenging. Our problem for me centered around choosing the game with the most ultimate potential and the game we could deliver on schedule (if it doesn't ship, it doesn't win). I'm glad we picked the one we did.
There was a slightly surreal quality to Veronica's interjected tasks in her game that I liked. Like when when the Jets break into song in Westside Story. Definitely worth another look.