Since yesterday’s post on the insula I’ve been pondering the consequences of tweaking the human brain. I remembered this older study that looked at monogamous prairie voles and rats. While the two share 99% of their genetic traits, the voles stick with the same partner for life. The rats… don’t. With St. Valentine’s day coming up, I thought that it might be good to consider how interwoven the different structures are in our brains.
Neils Clark :: Jan.29.2007 :: Games :: No Comments »
Fresh off the harddrives at the New York Times: patients with a very specific type of brain damage were found to have a far easier time at quitting smoking.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/science/26brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Neils Clark :: Jan.28.2007 :: Game Addiction, Research :: No Comments »
Located here at Blizzards official site:
Thousands of retail stores around the world had their doors open at midnight on January 16 to welcome the crowds that had gathered outside, and within 24 hours of The Burning Crusade’s launch that night, nearly 2.4 million players worldwide had purchased the expansion.
That’s a lot of copies.
Neils Clark :: Jan.24.2007 :: Games :: 2 Comments »
Check out Penny-Arcade’s new comic, here.
From their section on news:
I fully expect that, by the parched summer months, I’ll be shivering and panting in some closet muttering about mobs. I’m glad I bought it, and one day I will craft jewels etc., but I see no reason to hasten my annihilation. I’m going to enjoy my time on the “outside” before exchanging this earthly shell for its holy counterpart, the one which sleeps now in simulation.
Thanks a ton to Danny for linking me this.
The hook, the line, and the sinker. Click for a full-sized image.
Neils Clark :: Jan.24.2007 :: Games :: No Comments »
There’s a definite need right now for a little bit of humility and stand up honesty when it comes to researching games. In the grand scheme of things, we haven’t really been playing MMO games, or even using the internet for all that long. Making mistakes in research is more than alright, it’s bound to happen. A bigger mistake is to fumble and then pretend like everything is hunky-dory. In particular, I want to talk about Kimberly Young, Immersyve Inc and Smith & Jones’ Game Addiction Center. What concerns me is that people with clear vested interests are being portrayed as neutral experts.
Neils Clark :: Jan.22.2007 :: Games :: 7 Comments »
I was happy to see a new blog from my friend Shavaun Scott. She and her husband Mike are making a documentary on MMO games, and from what I’ve seen the overall theme is actually balanced and insightful. You don’t get that very often when people talk about games.
The first post here is actually talking about a 60-something film-dude who feigns interest in games. Pretty typical in my experience.
Gamer: Chronicles of Evanor was originally slated to be a documentary which tracked down some of the RL faces behind Shavaun’s online friends in the game Lineage. Mike, the Director, and Shavaun/Evanor, the host, soon found that there were other more imperative themes. Themes that had deep cultural and psychological implications.
Sure, I’m excited to see this because I might be in it (w00t!), but of course there’s more. Evanor is invested in really teaching people something about who gamers really are, the good and the bad. There’s so much idiotic information out there, info that slates gamers as some kind of purely degenerate subculture. Pundits like Bill O’Really, experts like Kimberly Young, and even some gamers see play as some kind of illicit substance. They spread information that fundamentally misrepresents gaming. This causes good aspects of games to fall by the wayside, making it less likely that harmful elements are correctly identified and appropriately handled.
These guys have a ginormous amount of footage, talking to the most in-touch developers, researchers, psychologists and gamers. It’s going to be really cool seeing what develops. Best of luck, Shavaun and Mike!
Neils Clark :: Jan.21.2007 :: General :: No Comments »
True story.
Vidaligo is a genetic condition that inhibits melanin, which produces coloration in the skin. And I have vidaligo. This affects a small area on my forehead, including my left eyebrow (my left). Without any coloration, my eyebrow turns white.
I have been told that it can move every ten years. If that’s the case, then I’m well overdue, as it kicked in when I was about 13.
Michael Jackson claimed to also have this condition, apparently neccessitating a treatment which involved specially-designed skin lightening chambers.
That’s right, this is all natural.
Neils Clark :: Jan.19.2007 :: General :: 1 Comment »
I took a quick peek into World of Warcraft, and was semi-shocked to see that people on my server had already reached level 66, a mere 43 hours since the expansion pack for the game was officially released. While the vast majority of the players out there are still 60-61, with a large pack of dedicated and geared out folks at 63, this really isn’t neccessarily related to addiction at all. Sure, a lot of people took their vacation time relative to this game, so that they could have an unrestricted amount of play time - but people do that for sporting events and tupperware parties.
Neils Clark :: Jan.17.2007 :: Games :: 7 Comments »
If you or your kid(s), friend(s), and/or partner(s) play WoW, and you think it’s time to change a little something, then you might try playing around with “parental†controls. These allow for a password-protected account that can effectively block an account from being played at certain times. Today I played with the parental controls on my Warcraft account. As always, it caused me to ponder deep philosophical questions.
Neils Clark :: Jan.11.2007 :: Game Addiction :: 2 Comments »
In last Friday’s Gamasutra article, I brought up three elements to game addiction that I feel are often overlooked: agency, media experience, and culture. Today I wanted to point out a very short paper that discusses media experience, Middle Earth and Brain Chemistry: J.R.R. Tolkien Explains Immersion. This paper looks at the possibility that human beings might experience game worlds in much the same way that they experience real life. It discusses JRR Tolkien’s ideas on fantasy, and how they might relate to the ways that we use games today.
Neils Clark :: Jan.08.2007 :: Media Experience :: No Comments »
