Real Life NPCs are Boring

Let's start off with my likes for this title: First, the graphics are really good. I really felt immersed in the environment and quaint little neighborhood in the first level. I know other games have pretty good graphics, but Going Outside: You Know, Real Life? takes it to another level, because when you look closely at an object, instead of seeing blurry pixels, the developers made a point to add really fine details. The levels in this game are huge; there's plenty of areas to explore and lo...

 The Game of Life is Purposeless

The real deal-breaker of this game is it's slow storyline; nothing is explained in the first level, you just start on your front door's porch with no objectives or mini-map. The NPCs don't give you any clues on what you're supposed to be doing, you're just forced to figure it out. The huge area is interesting, but as impressive as the graphics are, it seems wasted on a very "average" environment that doesn't really give the player any "Wow" visuals, like huge machines or supernatural events. ...

 Programming as the Fifth Discipline

Seibel: You mention four disciplines: music, graphics, mathematics, and text those are about as old as humanity. Clearly there are powerful ideas there that are independent of computers—the computer just provides a way to explore them that might be hard without the computer. Is there also a set of interesting, powerful ideas inherent in the computer? Is programming or computer science another deep discipline—a fifth area we can only do we have computers? Ingalls: Yes, I think that's wha...