Look at this: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Far_Lands
The edge of the Minecraft beta's world generator. They're immediately fascinating to me as alien, world-sized crevices that one could become lost in until they emerge on the other side in a bright flash as they realize that the world generator breaks down even further (I made that up. It looks like the chance of corrupt blocks increases as distance from the normal world proceeds).
On the other hand, they remind me of the human-shaped holes in the Amigara Fault (which will frighten me until I die). None of these caves look like the run laterally! I'd be trapped to go forward until there is no forward (ugh I don't want to think about it or say what happens at the other end, I'm already horrified thinking of it).
Scroll down a little until you spot that cute little cartograph screenshot. Look at the Corner Far Lands! It's like the world in Septerra Core (never finished it. It was too slow for me), or what I immediately thought of, the megastructure in Blame. Imagine exploring a world like that (well-lit and with only a few spawning monsters) where it's just like an overworld map but in certain places one can climb between levels at enormous towers like in Blame, With a different biome on each level and a grander scale than possible in Minecraft, that'd be lovely. That's a world I'd like to explore.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
5
So I'm into games, and especially game design as is clear by now. One subtle undercurrent to game design that was heavily discussed in the circles that I follow is "gamification": the use of achievements (lifted straight from video games) to incentivize real-life activities (interesting aside: note how gamification (a novel word and concept by itself) requires a new word "incentivize" to be coined to describe it).
Achievements are as follow: for completing a task set by the game/level designer, a player earns 1) a little popup at the bottom of their screen detailing that they have earned an achievement(s), and optionally 2) an in-game reward or meta-reward. What if it were applied to students in our faculty and starting tomorrow we were given a way to track achievements (I just had a thought: the way interprofessional portfolio points are kept track mimics gamification) and have a "Student Score" based on the points we earn? Attending particularly boring but educational options would provide the most points and thus be more attractive to students! However, the current state of achievements is lacklustre and harm or do not benefit students in a meaningful way especially if they overtake the importance of education itself. There are three prototypes of achievements that I take issue with: straightforward, easy achievements, progress-to-win achievements, and completion achievements.
The vast majority of achievements that I personally know of have straightforward goals and progression: kill 100 of monster X, kill 1000, kill 10 000, and so forth. Often the goal and the method of obtaining it are clearly defined before the achievement is ever earned. I don't like it. I don't like it based on the premise that they promote sticking with a "method of maximum-efficiency" rather than critical thought to complete objectives, the activity itself is rote and inconsequential yet is being promoted, or if the activity occurs regardless of intent (e.g. writing 10 000 words in a writing course where the assignments are marked for credit).
One egregious facet of achievements is that someone invented the model of "progress-to-win" achievements (i.e. those achievements can be earned just by playing the game rather than making any literal achievement). They are meaningless and valueless in games, and doubly so if anyone were to ever implement them in a education system ('attend class every Monday for six months') or a work environment ('hand in fifty TPS reports'). I'd additionally worry that these promote a culture of easy objectives and no challenge, and destroy impetus to reach for harder goals (which may be worth fewer achievements).
Conversely, another style of achievements is for exploring the content or universe surrounding the content above and beyond what is expected for completion. Taken to an extreme, this means players/students spending valuable time completing tasks of no real importance in order to achieve a 100% "completion rating" in a field or class rather than spending their time on actually-beneficial objectives. Again, the theme of the gamification distracting the student from education itself
Achievements are as follow: for completing a task set by the game/level designer, a player earns 1) a little popup at the bottom of their screen detailing that they have earned an achievement(s), and optionally 2) an in-game reward or meta-reward. What if it were applied to students in our faculty and starting tomorrow we were given a way to track achievements (I just had a thought: the way interprofessional portfolio points are kept track mimics gamification) and have a "Student Score" based on the points we earn? Attending particularly boring but educational options would provide the most points and thus be more attractive to students! However, the current state of achievements is lacklustre and harm or do not benefit students in a meaningful way especially if they overtake the importance of education itself. There are three prototypes of achievements that I take issue with: straightforward, easy achievements, progress-to-win achievements, and completion achievements.
The vast majority of achievements that I personally know of have straightforward goals and progression: kill 100 of monster X, kill 1000, kill 10 000, and so forth. Often the goal and the method of obtaining it are clearly defined before the achievement is ever earned. I don't like it. I don't like it based on the premise that they promote sticking with a "method of maximum-efficiency" rather than critical thought to complete objectives, the activity itself is rote and inconsequential yet is being promoted, or if the activity occurs regardless of intent (e.g. writing 10 000 words in a writing course where the assignments are marked for credit).
One egregious facet of achievements is that someone invented the model of "progress-to-win" achievements (i.e. those achievements can be earned just by playing the game rather than making any literal achievement). They are meaningless and valueless in games, and doubly so if anyone were to ever implement them in a education system ('attend class every Monday for six months') or a work environment ('hand in fifty TPS reports'). I'd additionally worry that these promote a culture of easy objectives and no challenge, and destroy impetus to reach for harder goals (which may be worth fewer achievements).
Conversely, another style of achievements is for exploring the content or universe surrounding the content above and beyond what is expected for completion. Taken to an extreme, this means players/students spending valuable time completing tasks of no real importance in order to achieve a 100% "completion rating" in a field or class rather than spending their time on actually-beneficial objectives. Again, the theme of the gamification distracting the student from education itself
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