Room to Think

I wrote last time about how mixed reality (MR) might be better for everyday augmentation of my crazy life, and virtual reality (VR) would be better for lazy days. After another week of thinking, hearing, speaking, dwelling, learning, absorbing, and immersing, I'm beginning to think I'm obsessed. In my lunch circle, I bring up the subject so often that my friends have dubbed me the "VR girl". I can't help it if I've been doing rapid learning and I'm really excited to share and process what I've learned! Today I want to return to the impressions I had during some of my first VR experiences. The first time I threw myself into VR was in the 6th floor expo hall at PAX Prime this year, playtesting a student game where it seemed like the goal was just exploration--in a very simplistic, child-like, and limited world. This is all in comparison to 2D video games, mind you. I didn't have anything else to compare with. Of course my graphics and physics sta...

Hey-o! This is my first post of the new year and I'm attempting to get used to a "working person's" schedule. [read: getting up at zombie hours of the morning, rushing through the beautification process, skipping breakfast, scraping the frost off my car, stressing out while I wait for it to heat up, and waiting in an hour of traffic just to get to work on time. After work, I wait in traffic to get home, enjoy what little free time I have between all the activities we have going on, and go to bed at grandma hours of the evening, just to do it all over again...all for unpaid experience and a shot at a really fun job.  >.<  I'm a sucker, yet again.] It's 11:30pm on the first Friday of 2013.  (yeah, I typed 2012 first.  I hate getting used to new dates!) and there's a strong possibility I'll be getting up early (read: 5am...that's BEFORE zombie hours!) to attend one of FIRST Robotics' Kickoff sessions. I've never been to one, and cu...

This lovely lady's name is Jane McGonigal. She's a game designer who has spoken at TED conferences before, but recently had a pretty bad experience with brain trauma.  I like her particularly because she starts off her talk letting us know that she plays her life as a game. She's a gamer I relate particularly well to. She likes goals. She likes secret missions and side objectives (the side objectives are my favorite. I often play those before I even get to the main storyline). And she treats this talk the same way. Her goal is to extend our lifespan by 7.6 minutes. The only downside of this goal is its measurability...but it's a nice way to begin a talk.   For now, I'm just going to post the talk...seeing as it's 1am already. I'll do a follow-up either tomorrow or the next day(eek! double post on Friday!), but this week has really been a busy one. So, I'm treating it like a game, and hitting as many objectives as I can without skipping a...

Hello again...finally. I apologize in advance for my text-heaviness and rambling.  Someday I'll edit my thoughts. I thought I'd come back into the blogosphere with a video to share with you all, given that I finally have time to enjoy my video games after such a hectic quarter .  --Also...I'm on a video game binge, I realize.  I do have other TEDtalks in my queue. promise. =P This TEDtalk is a long one, so I'll split it into two parts (because I'm feeling lazy tonight and actually don't feel like thinking at all). Essentially, David Perry started out life learning how to program computers. And he didn't program them to help kids with their homework--he made video games. In his talk, he essentially covers the past and future of video games...he has a cool timeline video that he updated from a previous TED conference that tracks the audio and video quality over time (only until about 2007...it's a bit outdated).   W...

This talk is given by Brenda Brathwaite, a woman who has been a game designer since she was fifteen. Doesn't that just make you jealous?  I totally am. She doesn't design video games anymore, but she was a lead designer at Atari from 2001-03. Right now, though, her passion lies in making board (bored?) games for social change.  She's even got a blog about it. This talk is specifically about why she began making these types of games: her 7 yr-old half-black daughter came home after learning about the Middle Passage in school, and shrugged it off as if it were "some black people going on a cruise". Brenda couldn't stand her daughter's apathy, so she made a game to relate her daughter to the events of the Middle Passage.  And by the time they were done playing, everyone was in tears. Her daughter related to the people in the game, and superimposed her own experiences and relationships onto those characters to make meaning from the game. ...