Play to Learn to Play

I’m strangely depressed at the passing of the virtual world universe, Metaplace! It’s not as if Metaplace was a relative or that I had invested large sums of money in to it. Its not just me though and many seem to have had the same emotion - if the reading of the obituary-like responses to the official announcement are anything to go by. Its sad that something that was so different and that inspired so much creativity could not survive. Metaplace had ambitious goals, and it really worked as a concept! It makes me feel a little angry at the nature of the consumer market just now. I visualise the consumer zombie, mouth open like PacMan, wandering aimlessly and muttering “feed me! feed me!” The modern day entertainment junkie wants continual hits of pleasure, and they want someone else to construct the means to these experiences. I worry about the vicious circle that is in evidence today; consumer child wants junk food and the parental provider finds it easier to oblige than to educate and offer variety. I hope that Metaplace rises like a Phoenix from the flames, transformed into something worthy of the legend. In the mean-time I have to find a new virtual home, and in a more practical sense, I need to find another platform for my research and teaching.

From the staff point of view a reading week gives us the chance to keep our head above water! To prepare for the last half of the semester, complete tasks that have been on hold for 5 weeks and for our school to schedule meetings and yet more tasks. This week I have been programming an XNA flocking example for my final years – finished it more quickly than expected. I’m calling the demo “Dancing on Mice” as it has a cat controlled by a player that feels like its skating due to the forces modelled in the simulation. The cat chases flocking mice (or rather cheese! because I couldn’t find a good mice animation!). Doing this reminds me of two things: one that you need to program algorithms from scratch in order to get a good understanding of them, and two that to be a good game designer you need to test your ideas in practice with a complete game.

This week I’m also trying to finish fixing a BJET hournal paper and read a PhD thesis for a viva (I’m internal examiner on an image processing PhD). Opps! I have a exam paper to write for 2nd years that is a few weeks late. Tomorrow I have a full day of placement job practice interviews. No pressure in my job at all

The student view of a reading week seems to be that it’s a holiday! Perhaps a few see it as an opportunity to do coursework.

Therese and I presented papers at the European Game Based Learning conference this week. We felt that our presentations went well enough and explained our work clearly. We had a number of good conversations with researchers who were interested in what we were doing and I really enjoyed chatting to a couple of researchers from France who were on the same research wavelength as myself. Hopefully, I can maintain links with these guys and take the education virtual world RPG ideas forward. EGBL 2009 had a mixed quality of presentations but was well worth the trip for the conections made.

Therese and I finished Halo ODST co-op campaign last night on Heroic difficulty. We enjoyed playing Halo 3 in co-op and on the whole we weren’t let down by ODST. There are some great set pieces and it really brought the experience right back to Halo 1 and 2; the Hunters scared me again and there was a nice balance to the battles. I liked the addition of the visor which really improved the atmosphere by having quite a few dimly lit scenes. On the down side, it was quite short for the price, the detail on character models is pretty average, and the story-line was weak (a bit like a short story rather than an epic). Firefight is a good addition, but I think for me Gears of War 2 still beats Halo for this type of gameplay.

As usual, I am playing several other games at the same time. Shadow Complex on Xbox Live is excellent, really like Super Metroid (which I adored). I also  tracked down the PSP game Jeanne D’Arc which is fun tile based RPG. It is funny having historical based gameplay with actual locations and historical characters mixed in with turn-based battles with orcs and mages!

While I wait for the endless updates for the new mmo Aion I have started playing Mario Galaxy on the Wii - what a great game. In between trying to get some work done in the afternoons I find myslef being called into Kaci’s room (6 yrs old) to help her progress in Spyro for the Wii. All good fun.

Its been my busiest summer ….ever! The only holiday I’ve managed to take this year was last week. I wasn’t resting though, we got our house completely repainted and new carpets in every room. Lots of carrying of furnature and plenty of drilling of holes for new curtains etc.

The end of June was devoted to writing a journal paper for BJET – no word on this yet. We completed three papers for CIG 2009, two of which have been accepted.
July was spent working on a consultancy report on the use of games and virtual worlds for construction industry education and engagement. We focused on OpenSim and Metaplace. Metaplace proved to be a very popular choice and it is now likely that we will be using this virtual world technology on a two year Knowledge Transfer Project. XNA was also suggested for the creation of wiimote educational mini-games and we may be creating some prototypes for this in the near future.

In August, one of my students Ben Cowley, successful passed his PhD viva and Leo Galway will be doing his this week. I also finally found out that my paper was accepted for ECGBL 2009 so a bit of work needed on that before I send in the completed version. Tomorrow I’m making a presentation on games and virtual worlds to enhance student engagement at a T&L symposium within the university. I hope to find some time to prepare for my two semester 1 XNA based modules soon!

We were just pondering yesterday whether we might see live streaming for Metaplace. Seems its coming soon – this could be a very important development for Metaplace.

http://www.metaplace.com/community/metastream_event/1319668

Once we get some Moodle integration it should really take off within educational circles.