Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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All:
It looks like Will Wright has come up with some fascinating graphics and simulation tools once again. * You can watch the author, Will Wright, demonstrate the game Spore in a 36-minute presentation on Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore * There's lots more about the game on the GamingSteve.com forum: http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?board=12.0 Impressive programming, but why does this talent have to spend so much time creating games that revolve around death and/or destruction. Couldn't there be some games/simulations about how to get rid of poverty, disease or war? -tom ============================================== J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller ============================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060322/37dac833/attachment.htm |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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Well they could, but they'd be boring. Death and/or destruction make for
good narrative; getting rid of poverty, disease, war don't. Check Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Milton (insert favourite author here) Robert On 3/22/06, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote: > > All: > > It looks like Will Wright has come up with some fascinating graphics and > simulation tools once again. > > * You can watch the author, Will Wright, demonstrate the game Spore in a > 36-minute presentation on Google Video: > http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore > > * There's lots more about the game on the GamingSteve.com forum: > http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?board=12.0 > Impressive programming, but why does this talent have to spend so much > time creating games that revolve around death and/or destruction. Couldn't > there be some games/simulations about how to get rid of poverty, disease or > war? > > -tom > > ============================================== > J. T. Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism > www.analyticjournalism.com > 505.577.6482 (c) 505.473.9646(h) > http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com > > "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. > To change something, build a new model that makes the > existing model obsolete." > -- Buckminster Fuller > ============================================== > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060323/1981c9dc/attachment.htm |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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"Well they could, but they'd be boring. Death and/or destruction make for
good narrative; getting rid of poverty, disease, war don't. Check Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Milton (insert favourite author here)" What counts is the kind of stories that can be told, and the spore model allows for stories of decomposition but not of complex human musings. We are limited by the methods we choose. As business seems to be taking seriously emotional life, the "experience economy" and beyond to the "life development economy", modeling will need to be more complex. (though is complexity a quality of the thing, or or our understanding?). Political life, struggling with poverty (of many kinds) and disease (many kinds) will also need to be more historically aware, and literature provides models for the kinds of stories that will be important (greed, love, envy, betrayal, loyalty). That is, the balance between destruction and creation. The early English novelists, such as Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's Tom Jones, and on to George Eliot's stories, are stories of moral development and enlarging ethical perspective. Methods taken as the front end limit investigation. Starting with the phenomena and then choosing methods is a better approach in some situations. Douglass Carmichael doug at dougcarmichael.com www.dougcarmichael.com blog at http://carmichael.wordpress.com <http://carmichael.wordpress.com/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060323/518edd9e/attachment.htm |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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About a year ago, Penny Arcade (a gamer comic) ran this:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27 (Fair warning, Penny Arcade is generally in extremely poor taste.) I didn't get it at the time, but I get it now. "Wil Wright's forthcoming Spore"? That just sounds so gross. I'm not sure I want to know about anybody's forthcoming spore. Anyway, on the whole death and destruction thing, "Tetris" didn't have death and destruction, and it was excellent. On the other hand, "Vice City" lets you kill cops with a chainsaw, and that's usually fun too. I think you kind of have to keep your sense of humor about it. But it's definitely possible for games without violence to succeed. As far as I can tell, the big reason for the hype on this game is Wright's philosophy regarding content. If I understand it correctly, instead of seeing content as a corporate asset, and employing legions of overworked animators to cook up widgets, he sees it as a result of playing the game, and really even the whole point of the game in the first place. That's a pretty neat idea. Giles On 3/23/06, Douglass Carmichael <doug at dougcarmichael.com> wrote: > > "Well they could, but they'd be boring. Death and/or destruction make for > good narrative; getting rid of poverty, disease, war don't. Check > Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Milton (insert favourite author here)" > > > What counts is the kind of stories that can be told, and the spore model > allows for stories of decomposition but not of complex human musings. We are > limited by the methods we choose. As business seems to be taking seriously > emotional life, the "experience economy" and beyond to the "life development > economy", modeling will need to be more complex. (though is complexity a > quality of the thing, or or our understanding?). Political life, struggling > with poverty (of many kinds) and disease (many kinds) will also need to be > more historically aware, and literature provides models for the kinds of > stories that will be important (greed, love, envy, betrayal, loyalty). That > is, the balance between destruction and creation. The early English > novelists, such as Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's Tom Jones, and on to > George Eliot's stories, are stories of moral development and enlarging > ethical perspective. > > Methods taken as the front end limit investigation. Starting with the > phenomena and then choosing methods is a better approach in some situations. > > > > > Douglass Carmichael > doug at dougcarmichael.com > www.dougcarmichael.com > blog at http://carmichael.wordpress.com > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of the
game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the blocks) through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only by a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class enemies) can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress the individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. I don't think it's any coincidence that Tetris was invented in Moscow in 1985, only a year before the 27th Party Congress at which Gorbachev introduced perestroika and the dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian apparatus began. Robert On 3/23/06, Giles Bowkett <gilesb at gmail.com> wrote: > > About a year ago, Penny Arcade (a gamer comic) ran this: > > http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27 > > (Fair warning, Penny Arcade is generally in extremely poor taste.) > > I didn't get it at the time, but I get it now. "Wil Wright's > forthcoming Spore"? That just sounds so gross. I'm not sure I want to > know about anybody's forthcoming spore. > > Anyway, on the whole death and destruction thing, "Tetris" didn't have > death and destruction, and it was excellent. On the other hand, "Vice > City" lets you kill cops with a chainsaw, and that's usually fun too. > I think you kind of have to keep your sense of humor about it. But > it's definitely possible for games without violence to succeed. > > As far as I can tell, the big reason for the hype on this game is > Wright's philosophy regarding content. If I understand it correctly, > instead of seeing content as a corporate asset, and employing legions > of overworked animators to cook up widgets, he sees it as a result of > playing the game, and really even the whole point of the game in the > first place. That's a pretty neat idea. > > > Giles > > > On 3/23/06, Douglass Carmichael < doug at dougcarmichael.com> wrote: > > > > "Well they could, but they'd be boring. Death and/or destruction make > for > > good narrative; getting rid of poverty, disease, war don't. Check > > Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Milton (insert favourite author here)" > > > > > > What counts is the kind of stories that can be told, and the spore model > > allows for stories of decomposition but not of complex human musings. We > are > > limited by the methods we choose. As business seems to be taking > seriously > > emotional life, the "experience economy" and beyond to the "life > development > > economy", modeling will need to be more complex. (though is complexity > a > > quality of the thing, or or our understanding?). Political life, > struggling > > with poverty (of many kinds) and disease (many kinds) will also need to > be > > more historically aware, and literature provides models for the kinds of > > > stories that will be important (greed, love, envy, betrayal, loyalty). > That > > is, the balance between destruction and creation. The early English > > novelists, such as Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's Tom Jones, and on to > > George Eliot's stories, are stories of moral development and enlarging > > ethical perspective. > > > > Methods taken as the front end limit investigation. Starting with the > > phenomena and then choosing methods is a better approach in some > situations. > > > > > > > > > > Douglass Carmichael > > doug at dougcarmichael.com > > www.dougcarmichael.com > > blog at http://carmichael.wordpress.com > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060324/c3d7ad78/attachment.htm |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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Robert Holmes wrote: > Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of > the game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the blocks) > through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only by > a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class enemies) > can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and > "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, > anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no > matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress the > individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. Awesome. - Martin |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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Sorry, guys, but it remembers me the course of Scientific Communism
:-) --Mikhail ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin C. Martin" <[hidden email]> To: <robert at holmesacosta.com>; "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <Friam at redfish.com> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Wright's forthcoming Spore > > > Robert Holmes wrote: >> Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of >> the game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the blocks) >> through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only by >> a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class enemies) >> can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and >> "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, >> anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no >> matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress the >> individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. > > Awesome. > > - Martin > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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yeah, and it's totally false. Tetris is actually intensely
anti-capitalist (strictly speaking, anti-corporate). The blocks represent the ever-increasing piles of junk created by mass-market consumerism, and the implication is that you can only survive these piles of junk by destroying them. The original, ambitious design goal was to have each block be represented by a television, which would explode with a shattering of glass every time a line was completed. Thus it's true that Tetris does incorporate a certain amount of destruction, but no death at all, and your interpretation of its political overtones is almost exactly opposite of the real intention. On 3/24/06, Mikhail Gorelkin <gorelkin at hotmail.com> wrote: > Sorry, guys, but it remembers me the course of Scientific Communism > :-) --Mikhail > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Martin C. Martin" <martin at martincmartin.com> > To: <robert at holmesacosta.com>; "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee > Group" <Friam at redfish.com> > Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Wright's forthcoming Spore > > > > > > > > Robert Holmes wrote: > >> Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of > >> the game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the blocks) > >> through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only by > >> a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class enemies) > >> can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and > >> "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, > >> anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no > >> matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress the > >> individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. > > > > Awesome. > > > > - Martin > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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In reply to this post by Robert Holmes-2
Robert, your post On Tetris is important. On Monday I was at a seminar
given by a leading Indian futurist ( <http://www.strategicforesight.com/> http://www.strategicforesight.com/ ). The view was simple: the world business community can create wealth, and is expected to do so at 3-8% per year for the next 20 years (India and China are on the higher edge of the number), but...but...it does not know how to distribute the wealth more evenly. In India only 7 million families, 30 million people, are in the leading edge of the economy (car, phone, computer). Farmer violence episodes were 700/year in 2000 and 7000 last year. they are left behind. same in china. Both the leading sector and the rural sector want democracy, but in the real conditions that translates in to aristocracy for the business class and theocracy for the bicycle (200 million people) and bullock (800 million)classes, the vast majority. The same conditions exist in china, and influence similar conditions in the middle east. This is a catastrophic situation. Technology is an enabler of this current culture of capitalism. If it continues it will be extremely destructive, and the forces of destruction are increasing much more rapidly than the overall growth rate. This Vonnegut Player Piano scenario is not attractive. Business and technology need a different capital model. Doug _____ From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 7:29 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Wright's forthcoming Spore Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of the game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the blocks) through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only by a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class enemies) can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress the individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. I don't think it's any coincidence that Tetris was invented in Moscow in 1985, only a year before the 27th Party Congress at which Gorbachev introduced perestroika and the dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian apparatus began. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060324/9423bc6f/attachment.htm |
Will Wright's forthcoming Spore
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In reply to this post by Giles Bowkett
I meant Tetris' "archetype" is very simple and can be found in many stories
but it cannot be used to describe / interpret adequately those stories, especially, complex ones. --Mikhail ----- Original Message ----- From: "Giles Bowkett" <[hidden email]> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <Friam at redfish.com> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 1:38 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Wright's forthcoming Spore > yeah, and it's totally false. Tetris is actually intensely > anti-capitalist (strictly speaking, anti-corporate). The blocks > represent the ever-increasing piles of junk created by mass-market > consumerism, and the implication is that you can only survive these > piles of junk by destroying them. The original, ambitious design goal > was to have each block be represented by a television, which would > explode with a shattering of glass every time a line was completed. > Thus it's true that Tetris does incorporate a certain amount of > destruction, but no death at all, and your interpretation of its > political overtones is almost exactly opposite of the real intention. > > On 3/24/06, Mikhail Gorelkin <gorelkin at hotmail.com> wrote: >> Sorry, guys, but it remembers me the course of Scientific Communism >> :-) --Mikhail >> >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Martin C. Martin" <martin at martincmartin.com> >> To: <robert at holmesacosta.com>; "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity >> Coffee >> Group" <Friam at redfish.com> >> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 PM >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Wright's forthcoming Spore >> >> >> > >> > >> > Robert Holmes wrote: >> >> Actually, Tetris is about death and destruction. The whole premise of >> >> the game is a metaphor for the oppresion of the proletariat (the >> >> blocks) >> >> through an imposed conformity (getting a solid horizontal line). Only >> >> by >> >> a continual process of realignment (read: re-education of class >> >> enemies) >> >> can the ever-rising tide of disaffected individuals be neutralised and >> >> "disappeared". The game's profoundly anti-Marxist (strictly, >> >> anti-soviet) message is that this process is inevitably doomed: no >> >> matter how much the hegemony's representatives (the player) oppress >> >> the >> >> individual, eventually they rise up and it's game over. >> > >> > Awesome. >> > >> > - Martin >> > >> > ============================================================ >> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > |
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