Author Archives: Steve

Munroe on Half-Life 2

Jim Munroe on Half-Life 2 via The Cultural Gutter

As a novelist, I strive for verisimilitude: the appearance of reality. I try to give a sense of place, a person’s life, a situation, not by giving exhaustive descriptive detail but by giving just enough detail to evoke a feeling of realism. The videogame has to do this with the visuals and the narrative, but faces an additional challenge: giving people the illusion of free will.

People sometimes criticize the Half-Life series for being “on a rail” — more or less like a funhouse ride on which you’re shuttled through constructed scenarios. Having tight control like this is a trade-off for a nuanced and complex narrative. In opposition to this, games in the Grand Theft Auto series offer scenarios, rather than stories, and are often referred to as “sandbox games.” While both limit the player’s free will, they employ different strategies of evoking the illusion of maintaining it.

. . .

Half-Life 2 does this through a steady diet of marvels, a lot of them based on how smart the objects are. If, in a moment of panic, you grab a nearby paint can and throw it at a zombie, the zombie will be covered in paint. If you grab a circular saw and throw it, the zombie will be sliced in two (and if you go to look, you will see the saw half-embedded in the wall behind). Shoot someone with a crossbow and they will hang literally pinned to the wall. Physics are used a lot in puzzles — if you weigh down one end of a see-saw with the concrete debris lying around, you can get up to the second level. At another part, the buoyancy of plastic barrels in water comes into play.

Thanks John for the link.

history jokes

All this talk about history reminds me of a Rob Corddry piece on the Stewart Show where he reported in satirical fashion that to teenagers learning history ranks just above eating a plateful of one’s own shit.

Exaggeration, sure. Point made. An exciting area of human study needs a better rap.

thinking at the cursor 2

Let’s say we have a problem in front of us. It’s a simple problem. We’re standing before two closed doors, both mysteries.

This situation is, of course, bunk. It doesn’t “contain” a few requirements. Context, intent, and memory. Let’s adjust the problem.

You’re standing before two doors, both of which are open. One opens into a room hot with fire. Through the other is a room with a still pond in the floor, reflecting the moon, and a table. On the table are greentea cups, bamboo place mats, and chop sticks.

Most people confronted with these two options would choose the latter. The first isn’t all that inviting because we know that it would surely kill or maim. It would hurt; it would blind; it would seer the lungs and boil the eyeballs. The second, however, invites with its mooncalm and its impression of conversation, relaxation, and pause. If the reader can see these two options then the description works. Memory comes rushing in to help solve the problem. I know fire and I know calm. The situation here rounds out with experience.

But I must have come to this fork with some intention, some reason for ebeing here. This question may be resolved by “how” I got to the fork and what lies beyond the fork, some goal, perhaps, or an escape.

The scenario lacks one thing that I may have brought with me (although this is in many ways a programming issue): an orientation. In order to pass into either room I follow a direction, following some orientation. In IF the standard is cardinal orientation: north, northwest, and so forth. In the typical IF environment, I may type nw at the cursor and pass into flame or moonlight, but am I really moving northwest? In IF I move with a dual orientation: nw and through the door, but which one orients the traveler with more coherence or context?

>nw
You are in the moon lit room.

>enter
What room do you wish to enter?

Is nw good enough? This is a rhetorical question because I’m not just moving into the moonlit room, I’m supposed to be entering that room for a reason. But what is the reason? Perhaps in this IF the right room to pass into the hot one?

thinking at the cursor

Chris writes

I’m going to look through some of my material and try to find some details like this for a historical event and try to put something rough together. My largest concern about creating a historical teaching tool is to have it be not only interesting to the student, but also acceptable for use by the powers that be.

I’d suggest that the more way out you get the better. Go with it if you think it’s too crazy. I’d also suggest you bone down on NPC issues. How about a little conversation with Ben Franklin to get things going or Lee on horseback. I’ll have more on this as we go ahead because I’m right in the middle of a space that makes an environment for a student to learn how to consider writing evaluations and to practice the fundamentals of value claims and a lot of thinking has to do with what a student “might” write at the cursor, as in

If this . .

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Then this or that (thinking, what is going to happen and what can I write. Down deep the student of any IF is thinking what is possible at the cursor given what I’ve done and what I need to do, whatever the “inventory” and given a “map.”

The value claim area will deal a lot with “haptics” in the abstract environment, haptics going to the idea of touch and the touch sensation, “reaching out to feel the dry hair on top of” and so forth. Making the abstract a “virtual concrete” space with consequences is a tough deal but fun nonetheless. At the moment the student player is in a room that changes with each step and filled with monitors. I’m working only on paper, writing the possible commands and the scenario and the teaching object all as I move ahead.

At the cursor the next step should always be an analytical decision.

new media teaching

Gonzalo Frasca reports on this position

Information and Communications Mgt Programme at the National University of Singapore (www.fas.nus.edu.sg/icm) is looking for a Visiting Senior Fellow / Visiting Associate Professor in New Media Theory / Interactive Media on a 3-year contract. The position is also open to those who are looking for a sabbatical location (up to 1 year). A PhD in a relevant field is required. Responsibilities would include curriculum development and teaching in the area of interactive media studies, gaming and cyberculture, as well as supervision of graduate students and development of existing research links with other relevant faculties (engineering, architecture and computing).

history and games

What should Otey do next?

1. Compose another dispatch
2. Call in the signalmen
3. Run like hell

>

The above is a possible starter scenario. The object could be to have students build the paths, one of which would reflect events as they are best known. Two approaches are important here that reflect the objectives of the course on the war: to teach what happened (history) and to teach multiple kinds of analysis (the means of examining evidence). We don’t need to think of such exercises as totalities but as small exercises in immersive experience.

The fact is I don’t know what happens to Otey. We do know that Chatanooga is cleared of non-combatants, Bragg returns on the 21st, and Rosecrans tries to figure out how to cross the Tennessee River for an approach to the city from the west.

It;s one thing to say: Rosy had a tough time crossing this massive body of water. It’s another to think at the cursor. The key is “thinking at the cursor” to enliven historical problems.

Digital Ground and new media

Malcolm McCullough’s Digital Ground begins this way

How do you deal with yet another device? How does technology mediate your dealings with other people? When are such mediations welcome, and when are they just annoying? How do you feel about things that think, and spaces that sense? You don’t have to distrust technology to want it kept in its place.

The new field of interaction design explores these concerns. The more that interactive technology mediates everyday experience, the more it becomes subject matter for design. Like the electric light that you are probably using to read this book, the most significant technologies tend to disappear into daily life. Some work without our knowing about them, and some warrant our occasional monitoring. Some require tedious operation, and others invite more rewarding participation, as in games, sports, or crafts. These distinctions are degrees of interactivity.

McCullough’s writing is quick, direct, precise, and reminds me of the writing of Yi Fu Tuan, who I would imagine influenced the writer’s content and considerations of human geography and ecology. It’s a hard book to put down thus far. I’m hooked.

In the Fall New Media Perspectives course we talked a lot about “degrees of interactivity” as a general criteria to describe not just new media but buildings and books. But here’s something of a nice, tight flavor as it concerns “new media”

Software engineers think they know what they mean by design, and so do architects. When information technology becomes a part of the social infrastructure, it demands design considerations from a broad range of disciplines. Social, psychological, aesthetic, and functional factors all must play a role in the design. Appropriateness surpasses performance as the key to technological success. Appropriateness is almost always a matter of context. We understand our better contexts as places, and we understand better design for places as architecture (3).

This sounds exactly what we’ve been talking, writing, and teaching about in New Media Communication.

This one’s for John Timmons and Bill Kluba

The use of the term interaction design instead of interface represents a cultural advance in the field . . . Interaction designers claim to know at least partly what is wrong with information technology, and that overemphasis on technical features and interface mechanics has been a part of the problem. By turning attention to how technology accumulates locally to become an ambient and social medium, interaction design brings this work more closely into alignment with the concerns of architecture (19).

civil war and games

One of the things that continues to work through my interests is history teaching and learning. History and its relationship to memory. I remember distinctly what I have read about the American Civil War, for example. And there are important reasons why. One of them is personality. I remember distinctly reading correspondence, personal writing, and war history relating to campaigns after Gettysburg and the Vicksburg seige, especially as they dealt with the western war in Tennessee and Georgia, the principles being Resecrans (Blues) and Bragg (Greys).

We know that Bragg and Rosecrans spent the ’63 winter (about the time the Spencer repeating rifle was introduced into the conflict) wrestling with supply and command issues. Bragg, a sickly, tortured, and confused general, who gained his reputation in Mexico, had mighty issues with his subcommanders, such as Polk (why do I remember this so vividly), opposed to Rosecrans, who suffered very little conflict with his lieutenants. Rosecrans had all kinds of scuffles under Halleck about supplies, reinforcements, and what was perceived as his slow going through the Cumberland, especially during Rosecrans’ push towards Chatanooga in the summer of ’63. The correspondence and wires between Halleck and Rosecrans are interesting just for their clever and competent writing.

Why do I remember? Because the complex story of the western campaigns can be told around the generals’ personal problems, their tempers, their relationships with brigadiers, presidents, and the foot soldiers, even the weather and politics, the day to day crap that mucks up the machine of war and state. We know that Bragg’s generals expected his orders to be written down on paper, despite the inconvenience of this, while Rosecrans faired a lot better with his men. When confronting choices in planning and writing, the choices made had vast consequences and reminds of the “problem” of choice enmeshed in the stories of Borges. You make the choice and go with it. In the civil war, we reflect on the choices but shake our heads against the inevitable and say, “why that instead of another choice.” It’s one problem in sophisticated study. Why did Rosecrans hang back at the Duck river? What if Longstreet had been in charge in Tennessee? What ifs are a looming consequence of the study of what happened.

Peter Cozzens tells the brief story of competent signal officer Otey of the Army of the Tennessee who identifies Wilder’s approach to Chatanooga.

Glancing toward Raccoon Mountain that Friday morning, he was startled to see his signalman frantically waving word of the approach of Wilder and Wagner. Otey immediately rushed off a message to army headquarters. The report could not be true, came the reply, scouts had sighted no Federals for miles around. Before a flustered Otey could scratch off another message, a shell whizzed overhead and fell into the heart of town, then another and another, and headquarters had its answer. “Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro, and gathering tears and tremblings of distress,” recalled Otey. (source CV 8 no. 3)

Otey might have gotten a more satisfactory reply had someone in authority been at headquarters.

And the tale continues. It happens that this day is a day of prayer, declared so by Jefferson Davis. Command is at church. And Bragg is off sick. The branching of consequences. Can the what ifs serve to instruct?

Or we could put it this way:

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What should Otey do next?

1. Compose another dispatch
2. Call in the signalmen
3. Run like hell

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