Home About EIS →

Category Archives: Gaming Culture

StarCraft AI at Super Happy Dev House

I attended Super Happy Dev House 36 and presented a lightening talk about the upcoming AIIDE 2010 StarCraft AI Competition. The competition is interesting to the hacker community at Super Happy Dev House, because the Broodwar API enabling the competition is a reverse engineering project providing direct access to game state and units in StarCraft. […]

Also posted in Academics, Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Designer Intent vs Emergence: Nissan Edition

Forza Motorsport 3 is, as described by one of the designers, “car porn.” And, well, that beauty above? That delicious, glistening, throbbing piece of machinery? That’s a Nissan Datsun 510 from 1970. You’re free to take a moment right now, if you need one… imagining yourself astride the seat, hand gripped on the gear shift, […]

Also posted in Authoring, Games | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Time Travel: What Google Wave and Braid have in Common

At this point, most people should know of Google Wave.  Fewer have had an opportunity to start “waving,” as Google Wave is still in a “limited preview” stage.  Usually, I’m not the first in line to adopt a new technology, because I always need substantial convincing for why I should bother.  In the case of […]

Also posted in Games | Comments closed

Chiptunes To Party To: Saitone

Thriller: Smooth Criminal: Something to give thanks for and dance your way into turkey comas. Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Gaming Culture | Tagged | Comments closed

Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked

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.”

Also posted in Deconstructions, Games | Tagged , | Comments closed

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

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 […]

Also posted in Deconstructions | Comments closed