Wow, in a study last year it was disclosed that equipment powering the internet accounts for 9.4% of electricity demand in the USA. The largest demand for internet-related energy use comes from desktop computers and monitors, which account for two-thirds of total usage. Time to turn...
Tiltfactor is delighted to be able to share some design methods with the public. Developed as part of Values at Play, the Grow-A-Game cards are widely in use in both K-12 and University classrooms. Using Grow-A-Game, groups of people brainstorm novel game ideas which prioritize human...
Announced today, the The Games for Learning Institute (G4LI) is a joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research, New York University and a consortium of universities, including Dartmouth College. Tiltfactor will be home to the 3 year research initiative at Dartmouth, where researchers will be evaluating...
I am by no means the first to report this, but there are some eerie similarities between Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon game from 2001 and the current conflict in South Ossetia. Ghost Recon is set in April 2008 when an ultra-nationalist Russian president seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union invades Georgia. US Green Berets are deployed to South Ossetia to battle armed rebels and Russian troops. In reality, the conflict broke out in August, not April, and Russia was defending itself after Georgia staged a sneak attack in South Ossetia against Russian peace keepers and civilians, but the way the US media has portrayed Russia as the aggressor, you’d think Tom Clancy was dead on.
Commentators pointing out the similarity between Ghost Recon and reality have noted that the key difference is that no US troops were involved in the fighting, but in fact that’s a detail Clancy got right. We don’t know of any Green Berets in the conflict, but Russian media has reported US instructors guiding Georgian forces. Civilians in South Ossetia claimed to see soldiers in black uniforms with American flags on their sleeves. Even if the accounts of black uniformed soldiers were innacurate, there were definitely NATO training excercises and US military instructors in Georgia this past July. I wonder if any of those soldiers ever played Ghost Recon. I wonder how the experience playing the game affected their experience guiding real soldiers in such a similar conflict.
At the Games Learning and Society conference this past July many people claimed that we’re witnessing the gestation of ludic century. This will be an era of games everywhere, from the classroom to the living room to the factory floor. Perhaps this is so. We are already seeing the rise of ludic warfare.
To get everyone in the mood, here's perhaps the best Christmas-themed thing ever. And remember to be safe!...