[MLUG] Re: linux game information...

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Fallert, Adam Christian wrote:

> Lastly, this game is light on system requirements.  As far as I can tell 
> this game mostly runs off of html, xml interfaces with java applets in a 
> specialized browser window.

Interesting.  So it was designed with portability in mind.  Someday it 
will run on a Blackberry and people will become even more disabled by it! 
;-)

This is a really fascinating thing.  The game seems very attractive and 
interesting, but this means that it is an even greater danger to a 
person's real life.  Accomplishments in the virtual world are not real. 
The "career" you have there is not making you any money and it is probably 
not even developing you in a useful way for real life.

It would be much more difficult for the developer, but it would be 
wonderful if someone would create a game where the user was learning 
important things by playing the game.  In fact, my guess is that much of 
the future of education will be like that:  Computer "games" will teach 
and reward learning.  That kind of instruction *can* be made much more 
effective than book-based or classroom-based learning.  It is harder to 
produce a great instructional program than it is to produce a book, but in 
the next century or so, loads of freely-available bits of game code will 
be lying around ready to be assembled into a great instructional program.

Mike