Amorality in Games and Discovering the Algorithm

The rules of Vice City call for a vast accumulation of cash, cars and cronies, of weapons and real estate. Most of these activities are outside the law, but law is just part of a larger algorithm. In any case, the story and the art are arbitrary, mere decoration. If in utopia, everything is subordinated to a rigorous description, a marking of space with signs, in atopia, nothing matters but the transitive relations between variables. The artful surfaces of the game are just a way for the game...

 Belief Discovers No New Qualities

SINCE therefore belief implies a conception, and yet is something more; and since it adds no new idea to the conception; it follows, that it is a different MANNER of conceiving an object; something that is distinguishable to the feeling, and depends not upon our will, as all our ideas do. My mind runs by habit from the visible object of one ball moving towards another, to the usual effect of motion in the second ball. It not only conceives that motion, but feels something different in the con...

 Game Play Informs Real World Play

For Molly, computer play in a simulated world connected strongly with off-line play. It reinforced her desire to create fictional worlds of her own. And it helped sharpen her understanding of that creative endeavor. In evaluating the imaginative and creafive worth of childhood activities, of course, this is the gold standard: that reading or watching television, that trips to the theater, to art and science ce museuns, an and id yyes, that play with computer games should stimulate personal en...

 Blends, Bricolage, and Chimeras of Association in Child I...

Blends and bricolage can tell us much about the young imagination and its potential for mature creativity. No one is surprised when a child substitutes a little toy truck television show—though perhaps we should be. No matter how unremarkable, all blends reflect the imagination at work. That said, our notice of make-believe chimeras generally increases, the more unlikely the juxtaposition of their elements. What we notice and notice again in child's play are the blends and complexes that ar...

 Considering Art Creative but Engineering Not as a Questio...

In retrospect, Cohen and MacKeith made a number of questionable assumptions that undermine that conclusion. To be fair, these assumptions were quite common among psychologists at the time and still persist to a significant degree among the public. One of these assumptions is that some activities, such as the arts, are inherently creative, whereas others, such as science or engineering, are not. Another assumption is that creativity is a function of one's ability to fantasize, which is to say,...

 Characteristics of Worldplay

Worldplay appeared to be a solitary, or perhaps intimately shared, pastime. Over the years nearly everyone in my extended family heard or saw something of Kar, yet immersion in that make-believe remained a solo pursuit for Meredith. Thomas Malkin, Hartley Coleridge, Barbara FoUett, and Stanislaw Lem also played alone. Friedrich Nietzsche played in the imaginary world of King Squirrel with his sister; C. S. Lewis played in Boxen with his brother. Worldplay looked to be constructive, that is ...

 Starter Phrases for Creativity

Fluency List other ways to express the idea... What ideas or words come to mind when... What are new ways to do... Situations in which something might occur... Other uses for an object or invention...Flexibility Describe many possible changes... List different ways to modify... In what ways might...Originality Devise your own way to... Propose a novel approach... List ways to develop...Elaboration Extend upon... Enhance by... Build on...

 How Metroid Forces Players to Remember the Whole World

Whenever a Metroid player aquires a new power-up, her mind races back in time in a way not unlike what happens at a turning point in a movie. When a secret is revealed we are forced back through the story to mentally review everything we've seen so far, sometimes changing the interpretation of entire scenes. [...] Since the player never completely leaves an area behind and forgets about it, the game world constantly expands in the mind of the player. By never completely exhausting an area b...