digitaldust

I have kept stumbling over this in the last week via BBC news and various blogs. Its a AI research group out of NCSU called Liquid Narrative.

They are researching various aspects of AI and user interface as they pertain to narative. One of their aims is to create spaces that don’t require human intervention to create narative.

While this is interesting it brings up my loathing of the overuse of the word “narative”. I know that it’s been wrenched from its happy and normal life describing litterature. Its been drafted into the posst modern arsenal of missappropriated words, so that now its used to describe people’s relationship with art and just about any media or mediated relationship. Life is now just an extended narative. I think the usage of the word and concept is bent beyond recognition.

I have this concept of an “experience space” that I’ve been thinking through that should replace narative and it’s thinly stretched applications. It should break us out of the introspective, counting angles philosophies of post-modernism, while keeping a subjective view of media consumption.

My father sent me this link to the Center for Ludic Synergy. It’s reawakened some of my interest in word and mind games, which apparently Ludic Synergy is about. Great sounding but meaningless name.

Anyway… following some links I ended up at some interesting games. Firstly the Game of Kennings, or Konnexions. Also an older game I had heard of before called Nomic, probably heard of it via Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas. (I’ll have to buy a copy and read it or add it to my half read Mind’s Eye and GEB.)

I’m quite interested in Nomic to do with the online community thinking I’m doing at the moment. Nomic is a game of changing the rules, a game purely about that. There are an initial set of rules and players take turns voting to change them. The game seems to me to be a good archetype (probably not the right use of word) for gaming the rules in a community. It could be a good game to play with that would model, on a fast timeline, these rules and their changes.

The Kenning Game I think would be a nice SMS game to play. The designer calls it a game, but to me it seems more like a method to create small poetic puzzles or riddles; a cross between symbolic mathematics and poetry. Beautiful and cunning in their simplicity. The Kenning Chain Idea though is the only one that approaches a true game. That would be nice over email, IM or SMS.

Playstation3 architecture revealed when Sony submitted patents for their new system. Interesting multiprocessor/parallel computer architecture.

Makes sense really, it’s cheaper to get the power from lots of little machines inside a bigger one. Will make it harder to code for though.

It was interesting to read the 2002 vapourware awards from Wired. In the past they’ve been filled with all sorts of operating system gripes and application woes, but this year out of the top 10 there were 5 games and another 2 products that were seriously game related. I reserve my judgement on whether this is the result of one of 3 things; all comercially related software is being produced on time and game developers just dont have their shit together, the only thing people really care about now are games, or the only thing wired now cares about is games. OK… I think it’s all three.

One of my all time favourite games, spin off cartoon series, t-shirt, novelty beer coaster series Sam and Max Hit the road, is getting a sequel. Ten years in the making… or maybe that’s ten years to escape the statute of limitations… we get treated to the follow up game of everyone’s favourite dog and rabbit detective duo.

For a bit of nostalgia here’s the
opening sequence from the original.

What does the kitten say?

Miaow miaow, miaow miaow miaow!

Reading this
BBC news story I started thinking of the similarities between the story of games consoles and the two party political system (under first past the post systems, multiple parties only seem to proliferate in proportional representation).

The Xbox is now beating the Gamecube on sales, which if the trend continues will force Nintendo out of business just like Sega. Similar to the way the Sony dug Sega’s grave by jumping into the game console market.

In the late 80s and early 90s it was all Sega and Nintendo, all the other systems were also-rans. Sega and Nintendo had the market sown up between them. Then Sony came along and revolutionised things, made them have to fight. This led to the eventual end of Sega, it’s last 2 machines merely a desperate clawing at the edge of the abyss.

Back to the two parties of Nintendo and Sony… with a new challenger waiting in the wings. The Xbox.

Maybe with Microsoft’s backing and judicious (and well funded) marketing it will be able to break the back of Nintendo. Revert back to a two machine game.

On the other hand maybe it’s 3 players. As there were always other game systems… there are also the liberal democrats.

I wonder if there is some kind of game theory/mathematical model for 2 party systems, or 2 product markets??

Great stuff… Inflation threatens EverQuest economy. Crafty players are writing macros to make money and then sell it in the real world.

Can the flow of money between real world and game world ever be stopped?

I just checked out Project Entropia again. The MMORPG that is actively promoting the flow of cash between game and real world. Seems they’re back on line again after being shut down for massive amounts of software piracy.

People are still making paper based roleplaying games
Knights of the Rail

And internet distribution means that someone somewhere will play them