Gaming and the Web

Been very busy recently but finally getting around to re-thinking about dconstruct 2008, yes that is some lag but I fully expect to have completed writing up my thoughts by September of 2009 ;). Actually lots of people complain about information over-load etc. etc. my favorite way of coping with that is simply to put aside quite long periods of time for just reviewing and going over things I have squirreled away. Making connections between old and new is also hugely useful.

The first talk at dconstruct2008 that came to mind is actually the second, it was presented by Aleks Krotoski, at the time it was probably the talk that made the least impact on me although looking back I find it much more interesting. Reviewing material from Dconstruct is easy now since eventually both podcasts and transcripts have appeared for all the presentations.  

The main gist of the presentation was that web developers and game developers do not mix although they have a lot to learn from each other, maybe the web has borrowed some ideas from the games industry but the flow of information in the other direction has not been so great. The thing that sparked my mind into reviewing this presentation was simply watching my children playing (and starting to play myself) Little Big Planet for the PS3. I was struck by the community aspects of the game and by the very web like use (and very useful implementation imho) of tagging and commenting  for content developed by other players.Once I found out that there was a huge amount of community content out there I immediately got my sons to show me how you could search (and re-find) that from within the game interface, as soon as I saw the tagging it made perfect sense that it should be there.


Actually I find it hard to pull out juicy points from the presentation although there was much I agree with and that sparked more thinging, Joshua March gives a good summary and Aleks wrote about it herself. A minor highlight for me after the fact is simply that Little Big Planet made me think of the talk and that when I got around to reading the transcript Little Big planet was raised in the brief question and answer session, it is certainly a game that was worth mentioning in this context so well done to man1. 

Watching the development of games and community aspects on a games console via the PS3 is certainly an elightening and highly useful experiance.  

Learning Via a Muse

This is what learning Mandarin means to me in respect to learning about the Internet, no Wait! let me explain ;)

Like the artist's muse my language learning gives me a focus, a filter, a point of reference and a reason to learn more about Web(n.0) and to judge whether a new technology is really helping me. Perhaps because I often spend more time working on the back-end of websites I used to find it difficult to learn about using web-technologies via learning about web-technologies. I often felt I was in a kind of "echo chamber". Although this work that sold for so much money probably doesn't fully represent a muse.

At Dconstruct08 Aleks Krotoski explains how Web developers can learn from game developers, this is her own summary on at the Guardian. I think learners can learn from game players also, make it fun, get passionate and the learning happens before your realize.

What is your muse, or if you don't have one, how do you avoid the echo chamber?

This post will be a small part of the background to my Bathcamp presentation Bathcamp presentation Twine(in progress).