Platypotamus

The Brainy Gamer's got a great blog up right now about his experience asking younger gamers to play an old classic.  Both funny and a little bit depressing, ultimately more enlightening than anything else.

It mostly came down to issues of user-interface, navigation, combat, and a general lack of clarity about what to do and how to do it. I had supplied them with the Book of Mystic Wisdom and the History of Britannia, both in PDF form, but not a single student bothered to read them. "I thought that was just stuff they put in the box with the game," said one student. "Yes," I replied, "They put it in there because they expected you to read it." "Wow," he responded.

The Brainy Gamer: Unplayable.

The Brainy Gamer has a piece on how Portal is being introduced as required reading for a course called "Enduring Questions" at Wabash College.  This is awesome.

The Brainy Gamer: Portal on the booklist.

Our charge from the faculty made it clear that we should apply a broad definition to "readings," and I believe my special purpose on the committee was to help identify films, music, art, and other 'non-textual' sources to challenge our students to think hard about the questions raised in the course.

And so, as you might expect, a little light went off in my head. What about a game? Why not? Which one? Will they bite on this? Who knows? Let's try.

Been a while since I updated, due to some travel, some visitors, and some other general busy-ness (as opposed to business).  Not only have I fallen behind on updating ye olde blog, I've fallen behind on my reading too.  So I've been generally catching up, and sometime during that time,was linked to the following piece, which is just fantastic:

The Brainy Gamer: Fun Factor Catalog.

If you've been following my recent posts, you already know about my Fun Factor project. I'm trying to account for the many ways games provoke us to play them. A few days ago I asked you to help me 'catalog the fun' delivered by some of your favorite games, and you came through big time. Thanks again for that.I've sorted through your responses and added some of my own. The result is below: a collection of fun factors and a list of games that exemplify them.

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