The special Puzzles & Games issue of the magazine (volume 30, number 1) has just gone out to subscribers. It’s got copious details about riddles and puzzles and people. And more. Lotsa stuff that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. The magazine is in PDF format. You can buy a copy, or buy a subscription.
The 30+ years since the launch of Super Mario Bros. have given ample opportunity for scholars to study the game’s possible influences in academia and society at large. Here is a short list of some representative academic works [ all of which can be read in full via the links ] that have documented ramifications […]
“The medial [sic] appeal of table tennis seems to go down in terms of TV hours, at least outside Asia. One of the reasons is the fact that the speed of the game is nowadays so high that it is very hard for spectators to follow the balls.” So, in terms of slowing down the […]
That can depend, to quite a degree, upon whom you ask. “A serious game is a name given to computer software that tries to achieve just that. While some people think that serious games and games for learning are synonymous, digital games can be used for ‘serious’ purposes other than learning. Serious games can be […]
When boxing or fencing, players are unlikely to miss the sensation of being hit by an opponent. That’s not usually the case, of course, for VR gamers. But change might be on the horizon thanks to “impacto, a device designed to render the haptic sensation of hitting and being hit in virtual reality”. Researchers Lopes, […]
Following on from our recent note concerning Quidditch in academia, may we also recommend a paper by Raphael Crawford-Marks, Lee Spector, and Jon Klein of the Cognitive Science department at Hampshire College, Amherst, US? It’s entitled: ‘Virtual Witches and Warlocks: A Quidditch Simulator and Quidditch-Playing Teams Coevolved via Genetic Programming’ (in: Late Breaking Papers of the […]
For those interested in following recent academic attention afforded to Quiddich may we recommend, Quidditch : Impacting and Benefiting Participants in a Non-Fictional Manner (in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues December 7, 2014) by professor Adam Cohen (Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA) and professor Jon Welty Peachey (University of Illinois, Champaign, USA). “This […]
If you haven’t come across the word ‘Ludefaction’ before, it may be because you haven’t seen the latest issue of the scholarly journal games and culture. There, the word is described by Graeme Kirkpatrick, Professor in Media Arts, Aesthetics & Narration at the University of Skövde, Sweden. as “the negative underside of ludification.” (see: Ludefaction […]
In stone skipping, one tosses a stone with a flattened surface across water (or other fluid) to try to get it to bounce as many times as possible. (There are also military applications, but let’s stick to the fun stuff.) A few months ago, mechanical engineer Tadd Truscott and collagues wrote a quick study on […]
Dr. Patrick Barrie, PhD, MRSC, CEng, MIChemE, Cchem, MA, BA, of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge University, UK, presents A new sports ratings system: The tiddlywinks world ratings in the Journal of Applied Statistics Volume 30, Issue 4, 2003 “After each tournament, a ‘tournament rating’ is calculated for each player based […]