Recent research shows that we all learn at roughly the same rate, but that high achievers spend more time practicing and studying. Genes do play their part, but the actions an individual takes (especially during childhood) have a greater impact on achievement. Practice during childhood will have such an effect that it will actually affect the development of the brain, allowing the child to specialise. Extra time spent practicing may be a result of extra tuition at home, or increased motivation to practice.

“Intelligence-based praise orients the receiver towards the fixed mindset – it suggests to them that intelligence is of primary importance rather than the effort through which intelligence can be transformed”

This view is backed up by Hetherington et al in Child Psychology: a contemporary viewpoint. The book suggests that children can respond to learning in either a helpless or mastery-orientated fashion. “Helpless” children view intelligence as being dictated by their DNA and are more likely to give-up after a failure.

If we coach children to believe that the amount of effort they apply is a greater determinant of success than any innate ability, we should be able to raise their motivation to continue practicing and studying. This will equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to solve problems and eventually supply them with the successful experiences they need to develop further.

In, “The Listening Player”, Emily Short (interactive fiction writer who made a large contribution to Graham Nelson’s radical new interactive fiction development system, Inform 7) talks about building game-play mechanics out of listening to dialogue. Drawing the user into passive sequences by requiring them to pick out subtle details and use intuition. Of course this needs careful attention to detail on the part of the game designers and content creators too, not to mention the pitfalls of the uncanny valley. This is a mechanic which looks to have been employed by Rockstar’s L.A. Noire.

Graeme Devine (The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour) talks about making the player the lead character in Drawing The Player Into A Story. Whilst believing that your are the main protagonist and that you have the power to cause or prevent change is one thing, I’m not sure that we need to be able to play as ourselves. I guess it depends to what degree this is meant. If a game supports multiple playing styles, it may satisfy a wider group of users. However, games are often a vehicle for escapism and so I don’t necessarily have to project myself completely into the game.

Marilyn Walker, Director of the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Games and Playable Media program’s talks about Generating Natural Language For Game Dialogue. She asks if bigger and bolder games will require Interactive Fiction writers to pen thousands of more lines of dialogue, or if we can create tools to procedurally generate NPC speech. With authentically generated speech, we could create responses specific to the player’s current context. The obvious hurdle is creating dialogue that is as rich as that written by an Interactive Fiction writer.

Paul Gouge, President of Playdemic uses the term “binary satisfaction” to refer to the male often black and white differentiation of win and lose, or complete and incomplete. Instead of creating obvious win scenarios, Playdemic design for more sandbox experiences where the user has more freedom in deciding when to progress or finish. However, Gouge also warns that there’s a danger you may end generalising too much, pandering to the female player.

Jennifer Gee, Executive Producer on RockYou’s Zoo World suggest that men are more competitive in gaming where as woman are more social and favour opportunities for self-expression.

However, despite some subtle differences in game-play mechanics, both audiences seek high production quality throughout.

• Social: My friends and I connect and share social experiences across social networks. Our gaming experiences are not limited to a single platform or property, but extend exclusively across the Internet.
• Identity: My Avatar is my online identity. It represents my style, attitude and character. I can see and personalise my character on the web, my PC or while playing a game.
• Search: New games and media are easy to discover and play. I can quickly search, find and play the games and view the media that are of interest to me.
• Transaction: From a 99 cent virtual item to a $49.99 game, I can spend my money as I see fit. Buying things enhances my gaming and entertainment experience.
• The future of PC gaming is upon us. The question is who will lead and who will follow? Are you ready to change the world? We are.

The comments on Reddit sum it up pretty well.

There’s a central, easy access menu with 4 options:

1. Inventory: managing quest items, armour, weapons & equipment
2. Magic: managing magical items & spells
3. Map: managing quests & fast travel
4. Star map: star constellations map character progress and skill unlocks

September 9th: Apple relax licensing agreement
Apple changed their Developer Agreement, relaxing requirements of 3rd Party Developer Tools. It is once again possible to develop Flash apps for iPhone and iPad using Adobe’s conversion tools.
Adobe shares jump 12%

Oct 2nd: Silverlight no longer aimed at competing with Flash
Microsoft seems to have significantly shifted its strategy regarding Silverlight. Microsoft never looked like they threw their weight behind Silverlight and to date, the only Microsoft web technology that required Silverlight was Bing’s 3D Map Control. Bing Maps, product manager Brian Hendricks commented:

“Because there’s been confusion on this announcement, we want to make clear that this announcement was around the end of life of the 3D Map control. 3D Maps is not based on Silverlight and this announcement has nothing to do with our commitment to Silverlight. We continue to invest in Silverlight functionality, which delivers the richest possible experience for our users – specifically through our map apps that run in the browser on the PC and the Silverlight map control for Windows Phone 7 applications.”

Oct 6th: W3C doesn’t endorse HTML5
Despite support from big vendors like Microsoft, Google and Apple, the W3C stressed that HTML5 is not yet a standard and might not be for a number of years

Oct 7th: Adobe Acquisition Rumours
After rumours that Adobe could become a target for acquisition by Microsoft Corp., Adobe shares jump 17%
This could be great news for Flash developers, as Microsoft could potentially bring their experience of building the .NET productivity suite to bear on Flash tools.

Oct 1-5th: Adobe MAX Announcements
Multi-Screen being realised. Adobe MAX format change – now focus on solutions, not on tech
Adobe’s biggest exclusive was the announcement of project Molehill will will be coming to a future version of the Flash Player. Molehill is a set of low-level GPU-accelerated 3D APIs which will allow the Flash Player to render thousands of z-buffered triangles in HD at around 60Hz. Combined with new peripheral support for gamepads and steering wheels, this is big news for gaming in Flash.
Adobe Project Molehill