A video game-playing AI beat Q*bert in a way no one’s ever seen before
Whatever the case, this doesn’t seem to be an exploit that any human has discovered before. If the AI agent could think, it would probably be wondering why it’s supposed to bother jumping on all these boxes when it’s found a much more efficient way to score points.
[Source: The Verge]
New Iranian Video Game, Engare, Explores the Elegant Geometry of Islamic Art
The intersection of mathematics and art holds out great potential for not just endless discoveries but deeply memorable creations. The 20th-century visionary M.C. Escher understood that, but so did the Islamic artists of centuries before that inspired him. They've also inspired the Iranian game developer Mahdi Bahrami, whose newest effort Engare stands at the cross of mathematics, art, and technology, a puzzle video game that challenges its players to complete the kind of brilliantly colorful, mathematically rigorous, and at once both strikingly simple and strikingly complex patterns seen in traditional Islamic art and design.
"The leap from the bare bones prototype to it becoming a game about creating art was a small one, given that Islamic art is steeped in mathematical knowledge," writes Kill Screen's Chris Priestman.
[Source: New Iranian Video Game, Engare, Explores the Elegant Geometry of Islamic Art | Open Culture]
The Legend of Zelda taught me everything I need to know about UX
The Legend of Zelda taught me everything I need to know about UX
I miss the days when video games assumed their players possessed a modicum of intelligence and common sense. These days, elaborate tutorials sap the fun out of the early levels of modern games, repeatedly prodding users with instructions and tips as if we possessed the mental acumen of a stack of cinder blocks.
This is about the debate of walkthrough vs. let the user discover the app. I think that for games it makes sense for users to discover everything by themselves because, well, it’s a game.
But it quickly becomes frustrating if you’re using an app that delivers something valuable other than entertainment and you don’t know how it works. It’s a fragile balance.
Why first-person shooters are so enjoyable
Why first-person shooters are so enjoyable
It’s not simply the first-person perspective, the three-dimensionality, the violence, or the escape. These are features of many video games today. But the first-person shooter combines them in a distinct way: a virtual environment that maximizes a player’s potential to attain a state that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”—a condition of absolute presence and happiness.
Indeed:
“Flow,” writes Csikszentmihalyi, “is the kind of feeling after which one nostalgically says: ‘that was fun,’ or ‘that was enjoyable.’ ” Put another way, it’s when the rest of the world simply falls away. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is mostly likely to occur during play, whether it’s a gambling bout, a chess match, or a hike in the mountains. Attaining it requires a good match between someone’s skills and the challenges that she faces, an environment where personal identity becomes subsumed in the game and the player attains a strong feeling of control. Flow eventually becomes self-reinforcing: the feeling itself inspires you to keep returning to the activity that caused it.
All these years I’ve waited for someone to scientifically explain why Halo was such an awesome game, and they did it.
Count up all the instances where each of the starting Pokémon have the upper hand (or at least an advantage) against the 12 gym leaders, and you find that while Bulbasaur might do great at the beginning of the game, it also will have the hardest time of all the Pokémon finishing off the rest of the leaders. Squirtle, on the other hand, has simultaneously the most advantages and the least amount of disadvantages against the leaders. Squirtle and its evolutions come out on top.
The Cutting Room Floor, bootleg central for video games
The Cutting Room Floor, bootleg central for video games
This is for the uber-geeks out there. (You know who you are.)
The Cutting Room Floor is a project dedicated to give prime time to unused content from video games; music, credits, anything hidden, secret or unpublished in video games.
Even without a government ban, game consoles won't fly in China
Even without a government ban, game consoles won’t fly in China
A rumor based report, published last week in China Daily, revealed that the Chinese government might lift its ban on video game consoles. Apparently, machines built by Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo can’t be bought in China.
This appears to be untrue, according to some investigation led by the good folks at Wired:
But those with knowledge of the Chinese game market told Wired that they believe the ban will remain in place, and that little would change in China even if it were lifted, in part because the ban is largely ignored.
“I’ve stood in a bank lobby [in China] where the promotion for opening a new checking account is a new Wii,” said Lisa Hanson, founder of Niko Partners, a market research firm focused on the Asian game sector. “Not even banks know that this is illegal.
Gamers hired by father to 'kill' son in online games
Gamers hired by father to ‘kill’ son in online games
Some headlines are worth all the world’s gold.