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Damiens Portumna website

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WAR!!!

War games, What is the attraction? It depends on the type of war game, first person shooter or simulation/strategy.
For me personally the attraction to the strategy games is watching my civilization start off with a few peasants and building it up to grand cities with thousands of inhabitants and a dominant army. I enjoy towards the end of the game the most, if possible I usually keep the other civilizations weak, keep attacking but with small patrols of soldiers, just enough to kill and destroy a small part of their city, I never send in the whole army to capture the city, I keep them inside my city walls waiting for the end.
You could say that my attraction to strategy war games is power, and I would have to agree with you. The ability to control cities and armies would be a great attraction for a lot of people, most of whom I think would be male, even if its just in a game. With war games you are also abstracting action from consequence, making the power a guilt or conscience free power, you probably wouldn't send a patrol of soldiers on a very dangerous mission if there were real lives at stake as fast as you would when the soldiers were just sprites, npc's playing part in your rise to glory.
The abstraction of action and consequence also comes into play in fps war games, who in there right mind would run into a bunker all guns blazing when the consequence is death, its a lot easier to take that bunker when the worst that is going to happen is "Game Over", although that can also be pretty devastating after hours of play to get to that point.
I think what makes war games so marketable and attractive is the fact that you can get up and walk away from them when you want, when your playing the power is great but when things arent going your way you can take a break, watch some tv or even eat some dinner.

Interactive learning

I've just read a bit on interactive learning or e-learning, at least I think the two are the same. Basically its trying to teach people new skills through media like computer games. The main problem is that its at a stage where the user isnt immersed enough in the e-learning/game to keep playing, so the user feels its more like study than fun and stops. To try and solve this they are adding in characters to the game world to try and entice the player to keep playing by trying to give the player something to associate themselves with. Thats what I picked up anyway.

"artsies" vs "techies"

Hey, So I'm still waitng for those videos, the guys lagh is hilarious. But in the Meantime I've been up the walls with work for college. I've been learning about the chasm between "artsies" and "techies", they are the artistic people and the technical people, I'd have to say that I'm a "techie". They both have different views on the same things, which becomes more evident in the games field, because that is where interactive storytelling makes the two "clicks" overlap work. Or so I read.
Other than that I've just been trying to master the elder scrolls construction set, reading a lot of high level papers on Systems Architecture and reading up on phsics for my fyp.
Fun times.

Captain Crazy

So, I was shown a hilarious video about two weeks ago, here it is. Anyway, two of my friends went to Jamaica on holidays last week, they went to Nine Mile and went on the Bob Marley tour. They came home and started to tell me about this guys laugh, yup you guessed it, they had Captain Crazy as their tour guide, I'll post the videos tomorrow when i get them, its hilarious.
Other than that I've just been busy with college, trying to sort out an fyp. I'm thinking about doing it on collision detection so I've a good bit of reading to do. I think thats what I'll be doing for a while now.

My first blog

Hey all, this is my first blog so dont really know what to put down, hopefully it will get easier because I've to blog twice a week for the next 12 weeks, I'll probably just write about college but who knows.
Anyway, so I'm in fourth year (finally). Going to be a very busy year but I'm looking forward to it.

I had to put up the picture, he reminds me of a lecturer I had.