Serious game
A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is prepended to refer to video games used by industries like defense, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning and politics. Serious games are a subgenre of serious storytelling, where storytelling is applied "outside the context of entertainment, where the narration progresses as a sequence of patterns impressive in quality... and is part of a thoughtful progress". The idea shares aspects with simulation including flight simulation and medical simulation, but explicitly emphasizes the added pedagogical value of fun and competition; the use of games in educational circles has been practiced since at least the twentieth century. Use of paper-based educational games became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but waned under the Back to Basics teaching movement; the early 2000s saw a surge in different types of educational games those designed for the younger learner.
Many of these games were not computer-based but took on the model of other traditional gaming systems both in the console and hand-held formats. In 1999, LeapFrog Enterprises introduced the LeapPad, which combined an interactive book with a cartridge and allowed kids to play games and interact with a paper-based book. Based on the popularity of traditional hand-held gaming systems like Nintendo's Game Boy, they introduced their hand-held gaming system called the Leapster in 2003; this system was integrated arcade -- style games with educational content. In the 2000s, educational games saw an expanse into sustainable development with titles such as Learning Sustainable Development in 2000 and Climate Challenge in 2006. By 2010, serious games had evolved to incorporate actual economies like Second Life, in which users can create actual businesses that provide virtual commodities and services for Linden dollars, which are exchangeable for US currency. In 2015, Project Discovery was launched as a serious game.
Project Discovery was launched as a vehicle by which geneticists and astronomers with the University of Geneva could access the cataloging efforts of the gaming public via a mini-game contained within the Eve Online massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Players acting as citizen scientists categorize and assess actual genetic samples or astronomical data; this data was utilized and warehoused by researchers. Any data flagged. Joy e as Letrinhas: um Serious Game como ferramenta de auxílio no processo de alfabetização de crianças do ensino fundamental. Abt, C.. Serious Games. New York: The Viking Press. Aldrich, Clark; the Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games. Pfeiffer. P. 576. ISBN 978-0-470-46273-7. Anderson, E. F.. Serious Games in Cultural Heritage, VAST-STAR, Short and Project Proceedings, 10th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality and Cultural Heritage, Faculty of ICT, University of Malta, pp. 29–48 Baranowski, T. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 34: 74–82. Doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2007.09.027.
PMC 2189579. PMID 18083454. Digitalarti Mag #0. Serious Game. Pp. 24–25. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon; the basic learning approach behind Serious Games. April 2005 Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon. Overview of research on the educational use of video games. March 2006 Graafland, M. Schraagen, J. M. Schijven, M. P. Systematic review of serious games for medical education and surgical skills training. Houda Mouaheb, Ahmed Fahli, Mohammed Moussetad, Said Eljamali; the Serious Game: What Educational Benefits?. Sep 6, 2012 Jalink, M. B. Goris, J. Heineman, E. Pierie, J. P. ten Cate Hoedemaker, H. O; the effects of video games on laparoscopic simulator skills.. Lang, F. Pueschel, T. and Neumann, D.. "Serious Gaming for the Evaluation of Market Mechanisms", Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems 2009. Mettler, T. Pinto R.. Serious games as a means for scientific knowledge transfer - A case from engineering management education. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 62, 256-265. Reeves, Byron. Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete.
Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. "Winners & Learners: Classroom Discourse Surrounding Educational Games" by Kristen Shanahan The International Journal on Serious Games, a scientific Open Access Journal, first issue January 2014. Thompson D, Baranowski T, Buday R et al. Serious Video Games for Health: How Behavioral Science Guided the Development of a Serious Video Game. Simulation Gaming August 2010 vol. 41 no. 4 587-606. Zyda, M.. "From visual simulation to virtual reality to games". IEEE Computer
The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter is an American digital and print magazine, website, which focuses on the Hollywood film and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, in 2010 switched to a weekly large-format print magazine with a revamped website. Headquartered in Los Angeles, THR is part of the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a group of properties that includes Billboard and SpinMedia, it is owned by Valence Media, a holding company co-founded by Todd Boehly, an executive of its previous owners, Guggenheim Partners and Eldridge Industries. THR was founded in 1930 by William R. "Billy" Wilkerson as Hollywood's first daily entertainment trade newspaper. The first edition appeared on September 3, 1930 and featured Wilkerson's front-page "Tradeviews" column, which became influential; the newspaper appeared Monday to Saturday for the first 10 years, except for a brief period Monday to Friday from 1940. Wilkerson ran the THR until his death in September 1962, although his final column appeared 18 months prior.
Wilkerson's wife, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel, took over as publisher and editor-in-chief when her husband died. From the late 1930s, Wilkerson used THR to push the view that the industry was a communist stronghold. In particular, he opposed the screenplay writers' trade union, the Screen Writers Guild, which he called the "Red Beachhead." In 1946 the Guild considered creating an American Authors' Authority to hold copyright for writers, instead of ownership passing to the studios. Wilkerson devoted his "Tradeviews" column to the issue on July 29, 1946, headlined "A Vote for Joe Stalin." He went to confession before publishing it, knowing the damage it would cause, but was encouraged by the priest to go ahead with it. The column contained the first industry names, including Dalton Trumbo and Howard Koch, on what became the Hollywood blacklist, known as "Billy's list." Eight of the 11 people Wilkerson named were among the "Hollywood Ten" who were blacklisted after hearings in 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
When Wilkerson died, his THR obituary said that he had "named names and card numbers and was credited with being chiefly responsible for preventing communists from becoming entrenched in Hollywood production."In 1997, THR reporter David Robb wrote a story about the newspaper's involvement, but the editor, Robert J. Dowling, declined to run it. For the blacklist's 65th anniversary in 2012, the THR published a lengthy investigative piece about Wilkerson's role, by reporters Gary Baum and Daniel Miller; the same edition carried an apology from Wilkerson's son W. R. Wilkerson III, he wrote. On April 11, 1988, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel sold the paper to BPI Communications, owned by Affiliated Publications, for $26.7 million. Robert J. Dowling became THR president in 1988, editor-in-chief and publisher in 1991. Dowling hired Alex Ben Block as editor in 1990. Block and Teri Ritzer dampened much of the sensationalism and cronyism, prominent in the paper under the Wilkersons. In 1994, BPI Communications was sold to Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen for $220 million.
After Block left, former Variety film editor, Anita Busch, became editor between 1999 and 2001. Busch was credited with making the paper competitive with Variety. Tony Uphoff assumed the publisher position in November 2005. In March 2006, a private equity consortium led by Blackstone and KKR, both with ties to the conservative movement in the United States, acquired THR along with the other assets of VNU, it joined those publications with AdWeek and A. C. Nielsen to form The Nielsen Company. In December 2009, Prometheus Global Media, a newly formed company formed by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, chaired by Jimmy Finkelstein, CEO of News Communications, parent of political journal The Hill, acquired THR from Nielsen Business Media, it pledged to grow the company. Richard Beckman of Condé Nast, was appointed as CEO. In 2010, Beckman purchased THR from Guggenheim Partners and Pluribus Capital, recruited Janice Min, the former editor-in-chief of Us Weekly, to "eviscerate" the existing daily trade paper and reinvent it as a glossy, large-format weekly magazine.
The Hollywood Reporter relaunched with a weekly print edition and a revamped website that enabled it to break news. Eight months after its initial report, The New York Times took note of the many scoops THR had generated, adding that the new glossy format seemed to be succeeding with its "rarefied demographic", stating, "They managed to change the subject by going weekly... The large photos, lush paper stock and great design are a kind of narcotic here."By February 2013, the Times returned to THR, filing a report on a party for Academy Award nominees the magazine had hosted at the Los Angeles restaurant Spago. Noting the crowd of top celebrities in attendance, the Times alluded to the fact that many Hollywood insiders were now referring to THR as "the new Vanity Fair". Ad sales since Min's hiring were up more than 50%, while traffic to the magazine's website had grown by 800%. Since January 2014, The Hollywood Reporter has been led by co-presidents Janice John Amato. John Kilcullen replaced Uphoff in October 2006, as publisher of Billboard.
Kilcullen was a defendant in Billboard's infamous "dildo" lawsuit, in which he was accused of race discrimination and sexual harassment. VNU settled the suit on the courthouse steps. Kilcullen "exited" Nielsen in February 2008 "to pursue his passion as an entrepreneur." Matthew King, vice president for content and audience, editorial director Howard Burns, executive editor Peter Pryor left the paper in a wave of layoffs in December 2006.
Independent Games Festival
The Independent Games Festival is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference, the largest annual gathering of the indie video game industry. The IGF competition awards a total of $50,000 in prizes to independent developers in Main Competition and Student Competition categories, held around the same time as the Game Developers Choice Awards event. Founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, innovation in video game development, IGF wants to do for the independent game community the same benefit the Sundance Film Festival has brought to the independent film community, IGF is owned by the CMP Game Group, producers of the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com. The festival awards ceremony is split into two broad categories: the main IGF competition and the IGF Student Showcase; the main Independent Games Festival, held in March 2012 at San Francisco's GDC 2012, distributed nine major awards: Seumas McNally Grand Prize Nuovo Award Excellence In Visual Art Excellence In Audio Excellence in Design Technical Excellence Best Mobile Game Audience Award An additional award, "Excellent in Narrative", was added for the 2013 IGF.
In addition, the IGF's Student Showcase competition gives out the following awards each year: IGF Student Showcase Winner Best Student Game Prior to the Festival, developers have the opportunity to submit their game in a playable state to the IGF organization committee for a small fee. These titles are send to 300 game industry representatives on the Nominating Committee; each Committee member can nominate any of the provided games to one or more of the categories. For each award category, a pre-selected jury of between seven and fifteen members reviews the nominations and makes a final selection of six finalists and a number of honorable mentions; the selected finalists are expected to present their games at the IGF during the Games Developers Conference. During the convention, a separate jury selected by the IGF organization committee will review each game, just prior to the awards, vote for one game in each category; the only exception is the Audience Award, voted through online forms by anyone interested.
Years given below indicate the year when the award was given, with the games or developers being recognized from the previous year. 2019: Return of the Obra Dinn 2018: Night in the Woods 2017: Quadrilateral Cowboy 2016: Her Story 2015: Outer Wilds 2014: Papers, Please 2013: Cart Life 2012: Fez 2011: Minecraft 2010: Monaco 2009: Blueberry Garden 2008: Crayon Physics Deluxe 2007: Aquaria 2006: Darwinia 2005: Gish and Wik and the Fable of Souls 2004: Savage: The Battle for Newerth and Oasis 2003: Wild Earth 2002: Bad Milk 2001: Shattered Galaxy 2000: Tread Marks 1999: Fire and Darkness 2019: Black Room 2018: Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy 2017: Oiκοςpiel, Book I 2016: Cibele 2015: Tetrageddon Games 2014: Luxuria Superbia 2013: Cart Life 2012: Storyteller 2011: Nidhogg 2010: Tuning 2009: Between 2019: Mirror Drop 2018: Chuchel 2017: Hyper Light Drifter 2016: Oxenfree 2015: Metamorphabet 2014: Gorogoa 2013: Kentucky Route Zero 2012: Dear Esther 2011: BIT. TRIP RUNNER 2010: Limbo 2009: Machinarium 2008: Fez 2007: Castle Crashers 2006: Darwinia 2005: Alien Hominid and Wik and the Fable of Souls 2004: Spartan and Dr. Blob's Organism 2003: Wild Earth 2002: Banja Taiyo 2001: Hardwood Spades 2000: King of Dragon Pass 1999: Crime Cities 2019: Paratopic 2018: Uurnog Uurnlimited 2017: GoNNER 2016: Mini Metro 2015: Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure 2014: DEVICE 6 2013: 140 2012: Botanicula 2011: Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2010: Closure 2009: BrainPipe 2008: Audiosurf 2007: Everyday Shooter 2006: Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space 2005: Steer Madness and Global Defense Network 2004: Anito: Defend a Land Enraged and Dr. Blob's Organism 2003: Terraformers 2002: Bad Milk 2001: Chase Ace 2 2000: Blix 1999: Terminus 2019: Opus Magnum 2018: BaBa is You 2017: Quadrilateral Cowboy 2016: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes 2015: Outer Wilds 2014: Papers, Please 2013: FTL: Faster Than Light 2012: Spelunky 2011: Desktop Dungeons 2010: Monaco 2009: Musaic Box 2008: World of Goo 2007: Everyday Shooter 2006: Braid 2005: Gish and Wik and the Fable of Souls 2004: Bontãgo and Oasis 2003: Wild Earth 2002: Insaniquarium 2001: Shattered Galaxy 2000: Tread Marks 1999: Resurrection This award was retired starting from the 2014 competition onward.
2013: Little Inferno 2012: Antichamber 2011: Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2010: Limbo 2009: Cortex Command 2008: World of Goo 2007: Bang! Howdy 2006: Darwinia 2005: Alien Hominid and RocketBowl 2004: Savage: The Battle for Newerth and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates 2003: Reiner Knizia's Samurai 2002: Ace Of Angels 2001: Shattered Galaxy 2000: Tread Marks 1999: Terminus 2019: Return of the Obra Dinn 2018: Night in the Woods 2017: Ladykiller in a Bind 2016: Her Story 2015: 80 Days 2014: Papers, Please 2013: Cart Life 2012: Beat Sneak Bandit 2011: Hellsing's Fire 2008: Iron Dukes 2007: Samorost 2 2006: Dad'N Me This category replaced the separate prizes for Web/Downlo
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
Moscone Center
The George R. Moscone Convention Center, popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California; the complex consists of three main halls spread out across three blocks and 87 acres in the South of Market neighborhood. The convention center opened in 1981, it is named after San Francisco former mayor George Moscone, assassinated in November 1978. The Moscone Center complex consists of three main halls: Moscone South is located to the south of Howard Street, it is three stories tall. It opened in 2017, replacing the original Moscone Center building that opened in 1981. A Keith Haring sculpture stands outside the hall at the corner of Howard streets. Moscone North is located to the north of Howard Street. Moscone West is a three-level exhibition hall located across 4th Street from Moscone North. Moscone North and South are connected by a pedestrian bridge over Howard Street, as well as by the underground exhibition hall, which extends far beyond the aboveground structures and beneath Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon entertainment center.
The massive underground hall has been described as a bunker. Together, Moscone North and South have 504,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition space, two ballrooms, 82 meeting rooms, 107,000 square feet of pre-function lobby space. A large solar electricity system was installed on the roof of the center in March 2004 by PowerLight Corporation; the installation of this system marked San Francisco's first major step towards obtaining all municipal energy from pollution-free sources. With the 60,000-square-foot solar array in place, San Francisco boasts one of the largest city-owned solar installations in the country; the electricity generated by the solar system, combined with savings from energy efficiency measures, delivers the equivalent energy to power 8,500 homes. The location of the complex in the South of Market area provides easy access to downtown San Francisco's many hotels and restaurants, as well as major transportation systems; the center is two blocks away from the Powell Street station, served by both BART and Muni Metro.
When complete, the Yerba Buena/Moscone station will bring Muni Metro service to the southwestern corner of the convention center complex and provide connectivity with Caltrain. An Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach stop at Moscone Center transports riders to the Emeryville Amtrak station along the Capitol Corridor line. Labor organizations supported the construction of the Center, were granted full labor jurisdiction. All labor in the Convention Center is performed by I. A. T. S. E. Local 16 Stagehands and Display Workers Local #510, Brotherhood of Teamsters local #65, IBEW Local #6, Security I. A. T. S. E. Local #B-18, Communications Workers of America, the Hotel & Restaurant Workers Local #2. Projection Presentation Technology is the on-site rental service; the South of Market Area where Moscone Center was built was claimed by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, a protracted battle was fought by the displaced low-income residents during the 1960s and 1970s. Although the Center is named after the murdered mayor, Moscone opposed the development of the area when he served on the SF Board of Supervisors in the 1960s because he felt it would displace elderly and poor residents of the area.
As mayor, Moscone convened a special committee of opponents of a convention center. Hearings were held throughout SF seeking citizen input. A compromise was reached, supported by Moscone, he put the matter on the ballot in November 1976 and it passed overwhelmingly. The original Moscone Convention Center hall opened in 1981 on the site of what is now known as Moscone South, it was designed by a team at Obata & Kassabaum led by Bill Valentine. The exhibition hall was placed underground to minimize the controversial convention center's visible footprint. Moscone Center was featured in the 1995 movie The Net, with Sandra Bullock; the expansion of Moscone North and Moscone West in 1992 and 2003, designed by Gensler with Hunt Construction Group as the general contractor, added an additional 600,000 square feet to its original 300,000 square feet of exhibit space. Moscone North and South underwent a two-year renovation project completed in 2012; the renewal project was designed by the center's original architect.
A $551 million expansion project is underway, scheduled for completion in December 2018. The aboveground portions of Moscone South have been demolished and replaced by a more spacious structure. Moscone North was renovated; the expansion project was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in collaboration with Mark Cavagnero Associates. Moscone Center hosts many large events each year. During the 2016–17 season, Moscone Center hosted 74 events with a total attendance of 1,021,031. Moscone Center hosts a number of annual professional gatherings, including: American Bar Association annual meeting Dreamforce Game Developers Conference Oracle OpenWorld Pacific Coast Builders Conference RSA Conference SEMICON West Winter Fancy Food ShowIn addition, Moscone Center hosts public gated events such as the SF Auto Show and the Fancy Foods Show. Moscone Center hosted the following annual events: American Geophysical Union fall meeting Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Google I/O JavaOne Macworld/iWorld Microsoft Build VMworld West Coast Computer Faire WonderCon Other notable events at the convention center have included: 19
Artificial intelligence in video games
In video games, artificial intelligence is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors in non-player characters similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in the 1950s; the role of AI in video games has expanded since its introduction. Modern games implement existing techniques from the field of artificial intelligence such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. Additionally, AI is used in mechanisms which are not visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation; the term "game AI" is used to refer to a broad set of algorithms that include techniques from control theory, computer graphics and computer science in general, so video game AI may not constitute "true AI" in that such techniques do not facilitate computer learning or other standard criteria, only constituting "automated computation" or a predetermined and limited set of responses to a predetermined and limited set of inputs.
Many industry and corporate voices claim that so-called video game AI has come a long way in the sense that it has revolutionized the way humans interact with all forms of technology, although many expert researchers are skeptical of such claims, of the notion that such technologies fit the definition of "intelligence" standardly used in the cognitive sciences. Industry voices make the argument that AI has become more versatile in the way we use all technological devices for more than their intended purpose because the AI allows the technology to operate in multiple ways developing their own personalities and carrying out complex instructions of the user. However, many in the field of AI have argued that video game AI is not true intelligence, but an advertising buzzword used to describe computer programs that use simple sorting and matching algorithms to create the illusion of intelligent behavior while bestowing software with a misleading aura of scientific or technological complexity and advancement.
Since game AI for NPCs is centered on appearance of intelligence and good gameplay within environment restrictions, its approach is different from that of traditional AI. Game playing was an area of research in AI from its inception. One of the first examples of AI is the computerised game of Nim made in 1951 and published in 1952. Despite being advanced technology in the year it was made, 20 years before Pong, the game took the form of a small box and was able to win games against skilled players of the game. In 1951, using the Ferranti Mark 1 machine of the University of Manchester, Christopher Strachey wrote a checkers program and Dietrich Prinz wrote one for chess; these were among the first computer programs written. Arthur Samuel's checkers program, developed in the middle 50s and early 60s achieved sufficient skill to challenge a respectable amateur. Work on checkers and chess would culminate in the defeat of Garry Kasparov by IBM's Deep Blue computer in 1997; the first video games developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, like Spacewar!, Gotcha, were games implemented on discrete logic and based on the competition of two players, without AI. Games that featured a single player mode with enemies started appearing in the 1970s.
The first notable ones for the arcade appeared in 1974: the Taito game Speed Race and the Atari games Qwak and Pursuit. Two text-based computer games from 1972, Hunt the Wumpus and Star Trek had enemies. Enemy movement was based on stored patterns; the incorporation of microprocessors would allow more computation and random elements overlaid into movement patterns. It was during the golden age of video arcade games that the idea of AI opponents was popularized, due to the success of Space Invaders, which sported an increasing difficulty level, distinct movement patterns, in-game events dependent on hash functions based on the player's input. Galaxian added more complex and varied enemy movements, including maneuvers by individual enemies who break out of formation. Pac-Man introduced AI patterns to maze games, with the added quirk of different personalities for each enemy. Karate Champ introduced AI patterns to fighting games, although the poor AI prompted the release of a second version. First Queen was a tactical action RPG which featured characters that can be controlled by the computer's AI in following the leader.
The role-playing video game Dragon Quest IV introduced a "Tactics" system, where the user can adjust the AI routines of non-player characters during battle, a concept introduced to the action role-playing game genre by Secret of Mana. Games like Madden Football, Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball all based their AI in an attempt to duplicate on the computer the coaching or managerial style of the selected celebrity. Madden, Weaver and La Russa all did extensive work with these game development teams to maximize the accuracy of the games. Sports titles allowed users to "tune" variables in the AI to produce a player-defined managerial or coaching strategy; the emergence of new game genres in the 1990s prompted the use of formal AI tools like finite state machines. Real-time strategy games taxed the AI with many objects, incomplete information, pathfinding problems, real-time decisions and economic planning, among other things; the first games of the genre had notorious problems. Herzog Zwei, for example, had broken pathfinding and basic three-state state machines for unit control, Dune II attacked the
Gordon Walton
Gordon Walton, Jr. is an American video game developer and executive producer who has worked with many North American online game companies, from Maxis to Electronic Arts to Sony Online to BioWare. Since 1977 he has developed over thirty games, overseen development of hundreds more, working as a producer, vice-president or executive producer, he is Executive Producer of the Kickstarter-backed MMORPG Crowfall. Walton was born on March 2, 1956 in Houston, Texas, to Conrad G. Walton, Sr. an architect, Rilda Akin, an artist. Roberta Agnes Hensley and Evelyn Coleman Lowey are his siblings, he attended Spring Woods High School in Houston, enlisted in the U. S. Army from 1974-1977, attaining the rank of Sergeant, he was stationed at Fort Ord, Fort Gordon, Fort Hood, Fort Chaffee, Kaiserslautern, Germany. In 1977 he left the army to enroll at Texas A&M University, continued serving in the U. S. National Guard until 1979. In 1981, he received his BS degree in computer science. From 1990-1992 he served in the US Army Reserve.
He played his first computer game in 1977 on the PLATO system, published his first computer game, Trek-X, in 1978 on the Commodore PET 2001. In 1984, he co-founded Applied Computing with Don Gilman, he was development manager for both Three-Sixty Pacific and Konami of America, Inc. Though his work had been in the single-player game industry up until that point, in 1995 he joined the growing online game industry, managing games such as Air Warrior and Multiplayer Battletech at Kesmai. After Kesmai, Walton moved on to managing Ultima Online at Origin Systems, at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin he worked on Star Wars Galaxies. At Maxis, he was executive producer on The Sims Online, he worked on the MMOG Star Wars: The Old Republic at BioWare's studio in Austin until January 2011. He was last employed at the social gaming company Playdom and is starting a new company in 2013, he is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as E-3, GDC, the Austin Games Conference, attained fame in 2003 for a talk entitled, "Ten Great Reasons You Don't want to Make a Massively Multiplayer Game."
He is active in the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and IGDA, has been on the steering committee of the IGDA's Online Games SIG. He is on the advisory boards for the Full Sail University, University of Texas at Austin and Austin Community College Game Programs, while informally advising other educational programs. Walton lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Laura Ann Miskines Walton, children John and Katherine; the following is a brief list of games which Walton either managed, produced, or developed: Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare Star Wars: Galaxies - Jump to Light Speed, LucasArts The Sims, Electronic Arts Inc. The Sims Online, Electronic Arts Inc. Ultima Online: Third Dawn, Electronic Arts Inc. Ultima Online: Renaissance, Electronic Arts Inc. Air Warrior II, iEntertainment Network Air Warrior III, iEntertainment Network Harpoon Classic'97, iEntertainment Network Harpoon, Three Sixty Pacific PT-109, Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. Sub Battle Simulator, Inc. Orbiter, Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
Reader Rabbit NFL Challenge, XOr The Playroom MobyGames bio
