First up the bad news. Some malicious mods for Minecraft exist which have stolen some passwords. A great pity as mods add so much value to the game. I really mean this and will probably blog on minecraft’s extended content at some point in the future. Mods really are that pivotal to getting the most out of the experience of Minecraft. Notch mentions making it hard for mods to access your details once the mods update is enacted.

Notch recently indicated adding a pet to Minecraft and it appears it will be wolves. Check out the video.

An achievements system is also in the works but they don’t want it to end up encouraging repetitive tasks such as “cut down 10000 trees”.

There’s also been an interesting development in chain gaming which is using Minecraft. Basically it involves playing one life then handing the world over to a new player. Chaining may not be a new concept but it is interesting in application to Minecraft. I think it could be used more widely and in other games too. RockPaperShotgun has more.

Update: I forgot to add Peter Molyneux called Minecraft game of the Decade.  Pretty high praise.

With the nuclear disaster in Japan it’s clear to all knowledge about nuclear power plants, radiation and meltdowns are not at all well understoof publicly.  A lot of that is of course fear and secrecy from the nuclear heyday in the 50s.

Geoffrey Noles made a highly simplified nuclear plant simulator using Adobe flash.  It can help to understand some of the most basic principles in the plant operation including…. you guessed it… meltdowns.  What I do want to stress is that the real nuclear plants are run by experienced professionals and have redundant systems ensuring the chance of these sorts of disasters is very rare.  That being said things like earthquakes and tsunamis interfere with operations quite drastically.  You can give it a go here.

h/t Boing Boing

I feel so cold…

This is difficult for me. Here we have a very much innovative game which I feel has the hallmarks of being a positive game, albeit somewhat narrowly. Unfortunately it is very much not my type of game. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be your type of game.

Where to start? Well the first Winter Voices was released 30 Oct 2010 by Beyond the Pillars. There are three episodes available, bought cheaply but separately, which is a pricing model which has become more common to see these days. Winter voices is single player and merges light RPG elements with adventure.

Right from the outset you know this game is different. The game is couched very much as art. It opens with poetry. Instead of battling monsters, you battle emotions and memories, and the graphics are quite beautifully done. The music also has something to offer.

So yes art. As such reviewing this game is more troublesome. Art is a very subjective thing and is too easy to bash to bits or praise like it rained down from heaven. Some of you are going to love the art presented here and for you the game is going to shine past it’s misgivings. Others are going to loathe it and the game will be quite dreadful for them.

For me the art was good but over the top. It think I can confidently call the art cold and depressive. It is also cast in a severe style which I believe is what is going to put many of you in the dislike basket.

The game opens with you as a young women of a village, whose father has just died. From there you make your way through life fighting, but mostly running away from, your emotions and memories. You can pick one of three young women characters and customise it a bit. There seems little effect of your choice in game though. In each turn and tile based fight with your emotions, you use abilities similar to magic in other RPGs, usually in order to escape the battle. For example, you might push some enemies around. The battles are OK but terribly repetitive and it feels odd to fight mists, blobs and other formless things.

The really difficult part of the game is the pace. It’s molasses slow in many ways. Those who are not enjoying the story are likely to be bored stiff. There are also none of the puzzles which usually face adventure gamers. Winter Voices is more story focused.

As I have mentioned, this game is beautiful graphically both in game, and during the cut-scenes. The primary drawback is the resolution is limited. Those with modern widescreens will have to make do.

Winter Voices runs on Windows and the Mac. A demo version is available on their main site or on Steam. I highly recommend it to see if this game suits you before you buy it. Winter voices uses Adobe Air to run.

Winter Voices episodes are available for purchase on their main site or Steam for 4.49€ or your equivalent currency. There are also episode bundles available.

Game : 2/5   Positive:

Time Travel

The latest addon recently released on 12th March 2011, is Time Travel. It offers a prehistoric Stone Age theme with new backgrounds and elements such as bones and a dinosaur in a treadmill. There are 50 new experiments to complete.

I found this addon to be a bit marginal in value due to its more light-hearted theme. I would recommend it but only to those who already enjoy Crazy Machines 2.

Liquid Force

Liquid Force offers interesting new physics via water flows modelled by the PhysX engine. Water flows down other elements as well as filling vessels and splitting flows. There are 20 new experiments to work with. The big drawback here is that liquids are demanding on PhysX and as a result the experiments lag horribly unless you have PhysX acceleration.

Overall this is not recommended unless you have that acceleration.

Back to the Shop

The best addon is this straightforward one which offers 60 new experiments and a good variety of new elements such as electrostatic fields. Recommended.

Every now and then I want to cover basic mechanisms in games, entertainment and other media about how things work and what it might mean to Positive Entertainment and in this case, Positive Gaming. Today I will cover one of the most fundamental mechanisms found in games. Namely the Challenge-Reward system.

This very simple mechanism presents the player with a challenge to overcome followed by a reward associated with that challenge. It is literally everywhere in gaming. It’s the fundamental part of quests systems such as in EverQuest. Kill 4,007 mutated chickens and your reward is a pink pirate hat. It’s part of First Person Shooter (FPS) upgrade systems where, for example, you must get to the end of the map to obtain the shiny new 400E Minigun, a serious upgrade to the 400B you used to get there. It’s part of character development and experience gains. You run around doing quests, killing monsters and so on to get your nice reward of a new level and points to distribute. Most games are jam packed with this simple mechanism and most games overall focus is on the challenge to reach the end followed by the endgame feelgood yes-you -made-it reward. Perhaps a nice end-game movie or sequence on top… if their budget held up.

This mechanism is so powerful, the most addictive games available use it liberally. World of Warcraft, and similar online role playing games, layer rewards systems quite thoroughly. To begin with there is a pull towards the final goals of endgame equipment, dungeons and attaining the maximum level. But that’s not all, there’s also the rewards system centered on guilds, where group activity is encouraged. Then there’s an achievements system essentially involving large numbers of longer term goals to fulfill. There’s each move on from a lower level area to a higher level area. There’s each character levelup. Then there’s questing and the pile of gold, items and experience at the end of it. Every looting instance where, say, you loot the goodies from a goblin, is associated with a challenge. Instead of having one reward on looting you get can get several. One might be an item for a quest, one a crafting material, one sellable for gold, gold directly, a nice sword to carry you over several levels. And on top of those are the rare and very rare items, the ‘blues’ and ‘purples’ as they are known which will be looted rarely but are quite valued. Maybe you’ll even find fireworks. There’s also crafting and gearscore and pets as rewards.

Thus each player in World of Warcraft is really facing multiple challenges and attaining multiple rewards at the same time. Challenge-Reward stacking works and multiplies the attraction of a given game.

Increasing the challenge difficulty increases the pleasure of the reward. Even if the reward is the same. Often the reward is actually better due to expectations. So there is a higher sense of achievement with more difficult challenges. Killing a half dozen goblins doesn’t compare to killing an end game boss Dragon. The challenge of successful gaming companies is often to encourage players to take on higher difficulty challenges without making it so difficult that the player gives up. Giving up totally shatters the Challenge-Reward system.

So why is this Challenge-Reward system so powerful? The oversimplified answer is dopamine. Dopamine is a natural ‘reward’ drug. Now that’s an addiction that many will find easier to understand. Ultimately it comes down to life and how we evolved. We are opportunistic beings and that suits both survival and growth very well. So we are always on the lookout for a reward. We see an opportunity, we try to overcome whatever challenge is in the way to approach, consume and perhaps repeat consuming the reward.

All this may sound negative. Perhaps manipulative or at the very least restrictive. But because the Challenge-Reward system is part of our wider life it is everywhere. At work. Do we go for the challenge, or do we go for the reward for that challenge? When we prepare a meal to eat. When we discuss a difficult topic with family. When we try to open a drink. When we play sport. When we ask someone out on a date. We face myriad challenges from trivially easy to almost insurmountable and we only attempt those challenges if there is some kind of reward at the end strong enough to pull us along.

So really the Challenge-Reward mechanism is not inherently positive or negative. It is simply a part of who we are. The real question underneath all this is how the mechanism is used. Now that can be positive or negative. The question begged is; “How is this helpful?”

We already know how it can not be helpful. To mesmerise millions of people into enormous levels of waste not just via the monthly fees, but of the incredible amount of time, energy and effort that could otherwise be more positively employed.

But it can be helpful. Because this is about motivation. Can we make the challenges more useful than killing goblins? Can we make the rewards healthier than yet another stack of pretend gold? I believe the answer is yes. In my earlier post I talked about creativity, learning, and experiencing things. I like to see challenges that involve these. Gaming is already powerful. I want to see it become positively powerful. Let people learn through games while having fun instead of traditional lectures with all the excitement of watching hair turn grey. Not only that, I think gaming could have us learn much more this way.

Now for getting through this article I have a little reward: