XNA, Rare and Microsoft Live Meeting

February 11, 2008 — Daniel

A trio of updates from the MS UK Academic blog.

Nick Burton of Rare on graduate recruitment and training for the games industry. (I have an obvious interest here. I also organised a student BCS event in Glasgow a few months ago with guest speakers from Rare, so can attest that their interest in graduates in genuine!)

An XNA game making tutorial, with assets and video support materials.

Lastly, an online meeting later in the month to promote what they call the ‘Microsoft Collaborative Campus’.  Interesting. I think Google have been pushing a lot into MS’ turf in this area in the past couple of years, so I’m sure they will be taking this seriously and putting a lot of effort in.

Posted in Game Development, Game Development Based Learning. No Comments »

The ____ Generation

February 9, 2008 — Daniel

For a moment lets not wonder whether digital native is an appropriate term for today’s youth (or even today’s under 36′s if we go by the cut-off originally proposed by Prensky). Instead, whatever they are, can we find an alternative suitable name for the new generation of youth? Take your pick, the following are all ones I’ve found in literature or popular press in recent days, weeks and months. Sometimes I see several of these in the one day!

The ____ Generation. Insert one of:

Google, iPod, Gamer, MySpace, Nintendo, Now, N, Net, Multi-tasking, Benefits, Facebook.

To help you choose I undertook a *highly* scientific survey of popularity of each. I googled each term, and have ranked them below. Try and order them before you see the results – how many did you get right?

(more…)

Posted in Digital Natives, Multi-tasking, Net Generation. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Researching Second Life

February 8, 2008 — Daniel

Yesterday I was in London for the Researching Second Life event at the London Knowledge Lab. It was a worthwhile outing, and some interesting discussions were had throughout the event. I’ll try and add my own notes soon, but meanwhile there is a set of brief bullet-notes from the day on the Learning From Social Worlds blog.

Posted in Education, Learning, Second Life, Teaching. 1 Comment »

Gamemaker competition and GameCreator in C++

February 4, 2008 — Daniel

I know quite a few educators are using Mark Overmar’s Gamemaker. His YoYo games site has a new competition – to create games with an Egyptian theme. Top prize of $1000. More here.

Meanwhile, I noticed a short while ago that the new edition of Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition (the free download one) includes The Game Creators game development kit. This is essentially the same library as used in DarkBASIC, but with a C++ API – and significantly improved performance. No I haven’t had a chance to play with, and no I’m not likely to in the near future. But if you are looking for an introductory C++ game creation toolkit, it has to warrant a closer look.

Posted in Game Development Based Learning, Technology. Tags: . 6 Comments »
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