Daniel Ponce

In the spirit of keeping up with current events I have discovered an interesting article on gamasutra entitled "Persuasive Games: The Birth and Death of the Election Game." It mainly talks about the role that candidate sponsored video games play in campaign process. My only experience so far with campaigns in a virtual environment has been in Second Life. During the primaries John Edwards had set up a small virtual campaign headquarters, but it was very disappointing to to say the least. Not only was there little to no information about the candidate, but they where giving away the most atrocious shoes in all of Second Life for my avatar to wear. Obama is going a different route then Edwards by buying in game advertisement space in select video games, but it is just that an advertisement. In this election none of the candidates have actually done anything official that informs people of their stance on issues or policies they wish to implement in a digital space, but maybe that's what is in store next election.

In the mean time you can check out the article here http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3834/persuasive_games_the_birth_and_.php?page=3

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/04/cnns-holographic-freakout-begins-seems-totally-bizarre-and-unn/

If you head to the link above you will probably come to the same conclusion I and a lot of other people thought, WHY??!! Earlier in the semester we discussed data visualization and its uses, but I'm sure the people at CNN needed that lecture just as much as we did. As I watched some of the CNN coverage early in the day I noticed that they had tried their hardest to visualize data in many different ways, the one which they showcased the most was a touch screen. The main problem I have of their presentation of this information is that the intention was to watch someone else interact with the information they had. Because of this I ( and probably most viewers) could not retain any of the information that was on the touch screen, as the correspondent who used it would navigate the information at his pace (which was super fast) and not at a pace I would have liked. Their experiment of failures culminated with the "Hologram," which was completely absurd. We should all take notes on how not to visualize data.

Gesture control has always been something that intrigues a lot of us in the department. For me it began with the clapper, it then evolved to the Nintendo Wii. In the Link below there is an article that shows off a new system of control that uses a web cam (much like the eye toy) to track movement and gestures in order to control what is on the screen. I do believe that there is lots of interesting things that will come out of gesture controls, but one of the main hindrances in my opinion is the fact that it is not for the lazy. Read the article and judge for your self!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/06/mgestyk-system-promises-gesture-control-on-the-cheap/

Taking Tracy's class on designing for interactive media has opened my eyes to the wonders of paper prototyping. The great thing about paper prototyping is that it can be used for not just games, but for software too. Apparently someone at Adobe must be in contact with Tracy because if you check out the link below you will discover what could potentially be the greatest paper prototype of them all.

http://gizmodo.com/5080163/what-photoshop-would-look-like-in-real-life

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21052

Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British to Ultima Online fans, recently returned to the planet. Mr. Garriott has been a game designer for over 20 years and has been an instrumental designer in Ultima series of games. He had recently completed his interstellar trip to the international space station. It got me thinking, one day that could be one of us, completely full of themselves and insane. I can't wait.