For those that have yet to try this game, it’s awesome. It also has educational value:) I currently own it on the computer, android phone, and iPad so I do not think I need it on xbox but for those that do not have it, I would encourage you to give this game a try for only $20:
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Minecraft/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802584111f7
Pretty much one of the first first person shooters, this game was available before Doom and other popular FPS titles. This game brings back a lot of memories:
Very cool what gaming software and hardware can do. Kinect and Wii motion technologies are powerful and will be doing much more in the near future.
From the article:
“Detecting autism in children can be a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process that requires the trained eye of a medical professional. But researchers Guillermo Sapiro and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos believe that the Microsoft Kinect gaming sensor could assist in that task.
As part of an experiment at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, Sapiro and Papanikolopoulos set up a series of five Microsoft Kinect sensors in the playroom of a school. There, the motion-detecting cameras recorded the movements of the children, aged 3 to 5, and sent the collected data to a series of PCs. The computers then calculated what children were most at risk for autism based on their hand movements and activity levels. Children whose activity levels differed greatly from their peers were flagged for further study by medical professionals.
Researchers admit the cameras are no substitute for the opinion of a real doctor, but say they could still help determine which children require closer examination for signs of autism. “The same way a good teacher flags a problem child, the system will do automatic flagging and say, ‘Hey, this kid needs to see an expert,'” says Shapiro.”
Looks like Nintendo will be joining the club and offering their games online. While they currently have an online store for the wii, this will offer normal retail games that normally require a disk. This is a good move for us consumers for many reasons. It will:
– Provide us with cheaper games (maybe?). Packaging has to increase game cost so if there is not packaging one can assume games will decrease in price.
– Give us instant access to games when they are released
– Games may run faster on SSD drives rather than having to spin via dvd.
– A bad thing: no more used games
– A bad thing: Need for large hard drives which may cause us to buy more
I really love PBS and not because I worked there while I was getting my Ph.D. They offer some great educational tools for educators. Last week in my courses we discussed gaming and gamification in K-12 Education. One of the sites my students were able to ‘play’ with during our game playing session was at PBS. This site offers tons of free educational games, so check it out and try to implement some into your lessons where you can. Keep in mind some are better than others so be sure to try out several:
My most recent publication. This was a class project that several of my students and I turned into a publication:
A new buzz term has been making its way around the instruction design world: Gamification. Like all buzz words, the idea is not new, however, acknowledging that it is an instructional strategy is very useful, especially for someone like myself who has a strong interest in gaming.
So what is gamification?
Gamification is the act of applying gaming techniques, strategies, and principles into any type of training and/or process. For instance, putting an achievement system into an LMS to reward learners for taking courses and gaining certain scores on the assessment. Essentially its the idea of taking anything gaming and putting it into regular training. Thus we take the ‘part’ of games that make them fun while giving us a sense of accomplishment and put this into regular training which then increases learner motivation. Instead of developing an actual game, we take pieces of the game.
At this point, the literature on gaming is growing large but is not very experimental. Having said that, the idea of gamification can be measured via quantitative research and I would expect to see quite a bit in the next few years as we develop best practices based on gaming strategies.
Rumors speculate that the next generation Wii, called the Wii U will retail at $300. I think this is right on and Nintendo knows exactly what they are doing. Given the economy and the fact that these consoles are released every 4-5 years, they should not be costing us more than $300. I think Sony and Microsoft need to pay close attention to this. People are not going to pay $400+ dollars for their next consoles. I know I will not.
Check out this site, they have tons of old Atari games: http://www.2600online.com
The games are all free to play and you play them in the browser, so you do not need to download anything!
Looks like both Microsoft and Sony are planning to release new consoles in 2013, more than likely in Q3 or Q4 just before the holiday season. There are tons of rumors floating around right now about both of these consoles but considering we are more than a year away from their release its too early to start spreading more other than their release dates.
I do believe the current generation of consoles is nearing its life cycle as their tech specs are getting old. I am ready for the new versions and hope that this time around both Microsoft and Sony concentrate on two main things: 1) a system that wont break. We all know of the red ring of death from MS and Sony had their share of problems as well, including hacking. 2) Price. We do not want to pay $400 for a gaming machine. The Wii outsold everyone this generation and one of the big selling points was the $250 price tag. So don’t give us a blu-ray player if it’s going to add even $50 to a cost of the machine, blu-ray is out anyway, netflix/amazon/hulu apps are much more important.