Photos from Multiplayer (MTV) blog

check out the photostream from the folks at the multiplayer blog (from MTV) - they have been to E3 and Comic con - lots of photos of swag, costumes, stars

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28516300@N04/

fencing in SL

You can fence in SL - this would be interesting for a group that wanted to look at sports in sl.

Here's a tutorial video


The SLCN has a sports channel - turns out there is car racing as well as boat racing and giant snail racing in world

new avatars in SL

I was playing around in SL yesterday - rooting thru my inventory and found a couple of cool avatars.

First check out this great dragon. There's a whole dragon culture in L - they have celebrations and their own islands. Imagine making architecture for dragons who can fly, walk on all 4s. Cool project topic. Here's a pic of me as a dragon.



For qualitative class I"m going to go around as a robot - a little robot with an antenna on top of its head. Here's a pic.



And for game class I'm going to go around as MasterChief for awhile. THen just back to my normal self probably. Picture coming.

Delusions of Beginning Game Design Students

from Teach Game Design blog

Here are some typical delusions seen in beginning game design students
Here are some of the delusions common amongst beginning game development students. The teacher's job is to counter these delusions. It's better to be honest, to work from reality rather than encourage fantastic "dreams".

• They'll design a game and someone else will do all the work!
• It's all creativity instead of work.
• Ideas will just come to them, floating in out of the ether--and that one idea is all they need
• AAA list games can be produced easily--they have no idea of the magnitude involved.
• They'll play games all day in the job. (Even game magazine editors cannot do that.)
• It matters that they're expert game players (it only slightly matters, and only for designers)
• They're going to have a big effect on a AAA game soon after getting a job (they'll probably never have a big effect)
• Getting a degree is going to get them a job. (They have to show what they can do, degrees don't count for a lot yet.)
• If they just make a game that includes all the currently-popular elements (a market-driven game), theirs will be instantly popular.
• They're going to be able to assemble a development team without salaries and get things done on schedule with the promise of royalties once the game goes commercial. (Though at least this happens every once in a while.)
• They'll start their career working in the position they want to achieve in the long run.
• Think the college curriculum is an extension of high school and act as such.
• If they can do just what's in the curriculum, and without any additional effort, they will have 100% of what it takes to succeed.
• They will only work on hard core games, underestimating the amount of casual game players.
• Work will always be fun and they will always enjoy playing the game they create at the end.
• They can never make a "bad" game that gets canceled.
• Testing is only playing the game, not writing long reports on bugs and flaws.
• They can sneer at and ignore non-AAA titles as though there was something wrong with them and they'd never need to work on such a thing
• It will be Easy.

All delusions . . .

Reality in the game world

First the good news: Lots of different kinds of hardware, console makers looking strong. Here's an article from reuters: http://uk.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUKN1736434220080718


Next the bad news: Lots of games get canceled during development - lots and lots. We have to be ready for that. Here's an article from the Guardian (in the UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/17/it.games One suggestion - more small developers - but industry imploding, converging - big companies willing to throw away a lot of innovative designs/ideas in order to protect development that looks like more of a sure thing

We now have an immense amount of videogame stuff

Image via WikipediaOk - it seems like an immense amount to me at this point. I'm going to make a list and then eventually i'll get a picture of our amazing educational tools (games!!!)

Hardware
- 2 XBOX360 Pros with 20 gig hard drives
- 2 PS2 (yes ps2's, not ps3's, they're coming) - more games for the ps2
- 5 PSPs
- 5 DS (variety of colors)
assorted memory cards and cases

Software
For the DS (nintendo has a bunch of online manuals
- Final Fantasty III
- Super Mario Brothers
- Professor Layton - hre is the pdf of the actual manual
- Nintendogs - here are directions and the PDF of the actual manual
- Harvest Moon
- Brain Age
- Big Brain Academy

For the PSP
- God of War
- Patapon
- Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

For the Wii
- Zelda Twilight Princess
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
- Boom Blox
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Okami

For the PS2
- Singstar 80s (with 2 microphones and music that doesn't make my ears bleed)
- Buzz The Mega Quiz with 4 controllers
- Resident Evil 4
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- Indigo Prophecy
- Shadow of the Colossus

For the XBOX360
- Halo3
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- Bioshock
- The Orange Box (half life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal
- Mass Effect

Related articles by Zemanta

• E3 08: Incredible Prince of Persia developer walkthrough
• PSP Can't Stop, Won't Stop Sellin' In Japan [Simple 2000: The Japanese Hardware Chart]
• E3 trendspotting: the triumph of music
• Monthly NPD video game sales: Sony overtakes Microsoft, Nintendo keeps rocking
•