Grand Text Auto

(PDF version here)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
cont…@tiltfactor.org
603.646.1007

Tiltfactor Laboratory is pleased to announce that ZOMBIEPOX™ has been selected for the IndieCade showcase at the 2012 annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 5th to June 7th. E3 is presented by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and is the world’s premier trade show for video game and related industries, with last year’s attendance peaking at 46,800.
http://www.e3expo.com/

(l to r): Sam Beattie, Oge Young, Dave Roberts, Michelle Favaloro, Justin Gary, and Tracy Hurley respond to provocative audience questions at Dartmouth at Play '12

Held the Friday of Green Key weekend, one of the busiest times of the year on campus, our first annual Dartmouth at Play event was a smashing success.

(PDF version here)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
cont…@tiltfactor.org
603.646.1007

Dr. Mary Flanagan, director of Tiltfactor Laboratory and Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College, will deliver several talks this summer and fall on such topics as critical play, games as an art form, and games as a medium for social change. Scheduled venues include the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Games for Change Festival, and the IndieCade Conference.

by goyo

BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP! — BEEP!

Recent developments in digital game hardware allows for multiple methods of interacting with a given game. For example, the Nintendo DS incorporated the use of both a stylus-based touchscreen and tangible game control buttons. Similarly, Android and iOS games often use a combination of touchscreen controls and accelerometer-based controls.

In these platforms, there is often a moment in which players must transition from one mode of interaction to another, or use both simultaneously. I believe this transition or need to multitask a player’s mode(s) of interaction can be utilized to develop new skills.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Here’s a little more (okay, a lot more) to digest along with your turkey (or tofurkey) this year…

Given that one of the major goals of Tiltfactor’s current research is to design games aimed at reducing implicit bias held toward (or by) women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), I thought it would be worthwhile to take a step back and discuss what psychologists have discovered about implicit bias – and how games might be an especially powerful means of reducing or combating it.

Attention NH/VT Upper Valley kids!

The Tilt team is heading to the library, and we’re bringing our games with us!

On November 12th, we will bring many classic games (such as Set, Uno, and Apples to Apples) as well as our own mid-design stage games for some fun times.

We hope you’ll join us as with games, it’s always the more the merrier!

Game Day
Saturday, Nov. 12
1-4PM
Lebanon Public Library

Mark your Calendars!

Happy Halloween everyone! We’ve been keeping this a secret for sometime now and we’re happy to announce that POX: Save the People® is now available for the iPad!

All of us here at the Tiltfactor Lab are very excited about the release!

Based on our board game, POX: Save the People® is a 1-4 player game in which players fight the spread of a disease that threatens to take over a community. The game is based on the way a typical disease spreads, and players must work together to contain the spread of infection by either vaccinating or curing citizens.

Puyo Puyo games are simple puzzle games that require the player to rotate falling pairs of objects to build combos of four or more of the same color.  If the objects aren’t matched, they stack up and if they reach the top, the game is over.  As the levels progress, players must rotate the pairs more quickly in order to survive, as the speed at which the pairs drop increases.

One commercially successful example of a Puyo Puyo game that I played as a child is Sega’s Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine.  The final level is depicted below, so you can get an idea of the gameplay.

Our entire team has read the research report by the Association of American University Women (AAUW) that offers compelling evidence to help explain what is going on in the US with science, technology, math and science and women. By the way, in 1885, a group of AAUW members conducted a survey that debunked the popular theory that higher education was bad for women’s health. . . So, thanks to the organization for that one, and for more contemporary research on women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

The Tiltfactor team was busy at DiGRA 2011. Thursday September 15th, I presented (with  Jonathan Belman)  our paper on the design approach behind POX: Save the People. Friday September 16th, Jonathan Belman shared our latest paper on our Grow-A-Game cards, “Grow-A-Game: A Tool for Values Conscious Design and Analysis of Digital Games,” with audience members on Friday. Read the essays now!

Digra2011-PreventingPox-FlanaganEtAl-Paper

Digra2011 – GrowAGameTool-BelmanNissenbaumFlanaganDiamond
See below for full citations on these articles!

A variety of folks have been reacting to Ian Bogost’s “Gamification is Bullshit” post today (with which, for the record, I largely concur.)

This is one of my favorite responses.

The whole essay is fantastic, but I want to take a second to point out something of an aside of Mr. Nelson’s:

“…perhaps we could also read from the large body of research in areas like cognitive behavioral therapy, which includes a lot of thinking on quite relevant questions, such as how to use extrinsic interventions in a way that guides a user towards intrinsic motivation, rather than making them dependent on Skinner-box-like motivational approaches”

I have two main thrusts for this post; first, the experience of crafting/creating in real life and how that might possibly inform the process of crafting and creating in a game, and second, the impact of tools (or lack thereof) on same.  And I am starting out with a little bit of an introduction about why this concept of Creativity should be considered to span more games than “just” MMOs, where the word crafting has direct application.

Further, crafting and creation seems the most direct possible application of the concepts behind user-generated content, yet those applications have been ignored or, worse, actively thwarted (as in the case of The Sims.)

1. Creativity

A couple of months back, Microsoft and the Games for Learning Institute(G4LI) challenged the public with the educational holy grail:

“Can you make learning fun?”

Tiltfactor, as the team of intrepid explorers that we are, rose to the challenge, and birthed Flagellla. Flagella was Tiltfactor’s response to Microsoft and G4LI’s task: To create games that can be introduced into schools that address certain curriculum points. Flagella is a flash game that not only addresses the concept of estimation but bundles in a mini-lesson on mutation as a bonus. In that sense it reminded me of the EA game Spore that I thoroughly enjoyed a while ago, but that’s a completely different ballgame.

For the past several weeks the Tilt team has been working on (among other things) a zombie-themed board game.  After several different versions with tons of interesting mechanics, we’re closing in on our final design!  Work together with your fellow players to evacuate the office before the outbreak escapes into the city.  Over the next few weeks we’re going to be testing and revising, and you should look forward to seeing a prototype in early August. We’re researching cooperative play with this one too, a hallmark of our design approach.

Want to get your undead on?  Come play the game at Gen Con, the EPIC game convention in Indianapolis!

Tiltfactor is going to Gen Con this year! Held in Indianapolis, Indiana August 4-7, 2011, Gen Con is “the original, longest running, best attended, gaming convention in the world.”

We will have an exhibit booth, demoing our latest game, the 2nd Edition of POX: Save the People, as well as a couple of other surprises. More details to come as we get nearer to Gen Con.

The Tiltfatory is cranking on the 2nd Edition of POX. 2nd Edition includes minor tweaks to the game board, cards, and the game instructions. If all goes well, we hope to have POX 2nd Edition game sets available by late August. What’s so awesome is that we are already getting pre-orders for the 2nd Edition. MUCHO THANKS!

Pre-Order now at a discounted price, now through 7/25!

Pre-Order POX 2nd Edition set

In a time when women are increasingly prominent in fields such as medicine, law and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? The situation in Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology fields has prompted a variety of investigations into how we might best attract women and girls to more technical fields, especially computer science. Today, I was on a panel at the annual NCWIT conference (National Center for Women & Information Technology) with Mitch Resnick, of the MIT Media Lab and known for the innovative programming software program Scratch, and fellow panelists: Kevin Clark and Tobi Saulnier. The panel provoked an interesting discussion with the audience, and I want to continue my thoughts a bit further here.

Wow! In less than two months, we are SOLD OUT of the 1st edition of our Pox Game! But do not fret! The Tiltfactor team is publishing a 2nd edition. Pre-Order Edition 2 now! Expected ship date 9/1/2011. We’ll have some at GENCON in Indiana this August as well at our BOOTH!

Thanks to everyone who bought a set and helped -ahem- spread the word about POX.

The Indiecade call for submissions is OUT! Submit your game(s) as soon as possible and spread the word Submissions for the 2011 IndieCade Festival are now open!

IndieCade is awesome, for it is the only stand-alone international festival of independent games out there. The festival showcases budding new game designers from around the world — the student, basement hacker, and former industry idealist alike. The festival will take place October 6-9 in L.A.-adjacent downtown Culver City, bringing together the worldwide indie community, industry heavy-hitters, and players to see, hear, and experience the next big thing.

What breaks your sense of presence in a story? The culture of video game playing has developed a tolerance for the common practices and limitations in designing and producing games.  We’ve stopped asking “why?” and have come to expect the typical input arrangements, the impermanence of death, and restrictions of our own free will.  Although much of the work in the EIS lab is focused on investigating new practices in creating and playing games, I’ve found, in my personal “research” of popular games, that despite the predictability, certain innovations in narrative are notably novel.