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Category Archives: Deconstructions

Content Selection vs. Content Generation

By Anne Sullivan | Published: June 5, 2010

Lately, some of us in the lab have been having a discussion on the difference between content selection and content generation. Where does one end and the other begin? At some level, procedural content generation uses content selection. So what’s the difference?

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Mining the World of Warcraft Armory

By Chris Lewis | Published: April 24, 2010

Many people have mined the World of Warcraft Armory for all sorts of information. Until recently, the data being mined out of the Armory was largely something I call “descriptive statistics”: statistics that are interesting in and of themselves, but don’t really require much more than counting up instances of labels. How many Orc hunters […]

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Global Game Jam recap

By Foaad Khosmood | Published: March 8, 2010

The Global Game Jam 2010 concluded over 30 days ago, but the treasure trove of indy creations it left behind remains largely unexplored. Then again, how is anyone supposed to review some 1000 games created specifically for an event that shuns any global judging? Who has that kind of time anyway? Certainly not overworked grad […]

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WoW Armory Data Mining: The Next Generation

By Chris Lewis | Published: March 2, 2010

Over at the Armory Data Mining blog, a plucky computational biology PhD student under the name of Darush has taken a look at some World of Warcraft Armory data and run some fascinating transformations to analyze the number of Druid players that favor bear form vs cat form when they play World of Warcraft. Note […]

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Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked

By Chris Lewis | Published: November 18, 2009

Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked Only with the absurdity of this video can you accurately capture the almost-entirely failed message of Call of Duty. Choice quote: “My girlfriend has walked in front of the telly again.”

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Non-Linear Stories v1.0: Choose Your Own Adventure

By Chris Lewis | Published: November 15, 2009

While every boy knows that Fighting Fantasy was like, you know, 900 times better, than Choose Your Own Adventure, the level to which Christian Swinheart goes to dissect the CYOA series is nothing short of phenomenal. His visualizations of the story paths, in particular, are beautiful depictions of a system in operation. While I won’t […]

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