links for 2010-11-13

Sol­id advice from Eric Zim­mer­man on com­mon pit­falls of edu­ca­tion­al game design. I can cer­tain­ly relate to many of these.

“I sus­pect the lag also con­tributes to the extreme unease the sys­tem some­times cre­ates – we’re deep in the uncan­ny val­ley of inter­ac­tion.” Chris finds Kinect slight­ly scary, and requir­ing an Amer­i­can size liv­ing room.

“How to Live Safe­ly is actu­al­ly a nov­el, about a man named Charles Yu search­ing for his father in quan­tum space-time. He lives in Minor Uni­verse 31, with sci­ence fic­tion wrapped around an inner core of approx­i­mate­ly 17 per­cent real­i­ty (by vol­ume). He’s a time-machine repair­man, armed with his TM-31 Recre­ation­al Time Trav­el Device, TAMMY the slight­ly neu­rot­ic user inter­face, and Ed, his nonex­is­tent but onto­log­i­cal­ly valid dog.” On the to-read list.