It’s fun to type your name into Google, and it’s only slightly less fun to type your name into the address bar of your browser, followed by a .com or .net to comply with the standards of hypertext transfer protocol. Today, I typed in scott.com to see what would happen, and I found The Scott Page, a compendium of people and businesses on the internet named Scott! People and businesses like me!

The site, which also serves as the web page for Scott Web Services, features listings of businesses named Scott, people with the first name of Scott, and people with the surname of Scott. The site invites users fitting into one of these categories to submit their web site to the listings. Naturally, I felt up to the task, and looked forward to adding myself to the ever-growing taxonomy.

That was before I realized that the collective of Scott-named persons was a close-minded, cultish conglomeration. It all became apparent in the Scott People Page Request section, which greets you once you’ve decided to add your name to the Scott People Page list. The rules start out simple enough:

• To be considered for The Scott People Page, you must have a personal web page. Scott businesses are listed on The Scott Page.

La dee dah! Simple enough. Check!

• Your personal web page must mention your full Scott name. If your page doesn’t mention your Scott name, it is not a Scott People Page and your submission will be rejected. The links featured here go to someone’s web page where you see a Scott name on it! That’s what makes cruising The Scott People Page so much fun!

O…kay…

• You must have your own page. You can’t use a page you share with non-Scott people.

“non-Scott people”?

• Your first or last name must be spelled “Scott”. Other spellings are not allowed.

Suddenly I doubted whether I wanted to belong to such an exclusive club. No longer a common space for even those whose names *sounded* like “Scott,” The Scott Page revealed itself to be a place of fear-driven isolation. In a way, I felt guilty that I and my home page fit so neatly into the site’s well-defined category of perfection. I wished to be an outsider, but could only offer stale gray conformity.

In the end, I signed up regardless of my feelings, joining the ranks of those proud to be named “Scott,” and not “Scot,” “Skott,” or “Jim.” Though barely perceptable, a tiny part of my soul has withered to nothing. Hello. My name is Scott.

» Related: a man all too happy to be named Scott

…not because I want to be like him, or do anything close to what he’s doing, but because he manages to somehow be a complete idiot and an incredibly intelligent personality at the same time.

Take, for example, this episode on the topic of his ugly MySpace contest. Watch it. The first 55 seconds are a motif of ugly myspace pages, complete with a horridly self-produced song asking “do you know you some ugly?”

The next two minutes and twenty seconds are filled by an explanation of why this project exists, complete with a brief history of the mass prolification of media authorship and its tools. This. Is. Brilliant.

Special thanks go out to Mr. Jason Calacanis, whose blog pointed me in ZeFrank’s direction. How have I never heard of this guy before?

» You can subscribe to ZeFrank’s “The Show” with this feed.

Taking advice from both Rules of Play and Frank, I’ve been tinkering with board game design. Not anything too complex, just making something small and original. It’s been an on and off project, but recently I had a breakthrough, and excitedly showed my design in progress to Bonnie.

On a simple 7×7 grid, my game had two players starting out in the center, with the ending condition of the game being that one of them reaches the goal. Each player moves one space in any direction per turn. The twist was that the goal, represented by a larger pawn, was constantly moving. It would rotate around the perimeter of the grid, moving three spaces for each player’s turn. The strategy then becomes for the players to base their movement on where the goal is going to be. For a little extra layer of strategy and competition, I added “reverse” spaces, which would change the direction in which the goal would rotate.

I described all this to Bonnie, with my little prototype between us on the kitchen counter. Once I was finished, I paused to let her comment. It didn’t need to be positive. Anything constructive she could bring up would be immensely helpful. I decided this before talking with her so I wouldn’t get annoyed when she didn’t praise my brilliant design decisions.

She stared at the board for another minute, considering. “So, it’s Kill Doctor Lucky.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s like Kill Doctor Lucky, but with a simpler ruleset, right?”

“What? No…”

“Well, you have a ‘goal’ that’s constantly moving around on its own, and the players are trying to reach the ‘goal.’ You can influence the ‘goal’s’ movement to foil other player’s attempts. The only fundamental difference is you don’t have to kill the ‘goal’ in order to win.”

I looked down at my board again. I had appropriated pieces from other board games in order to build my prototype. But not until then did I realize that my goal piece was Doctor Lucky, or at least his special pawn from my copy of the board game. It seems you can’t teach an old piece new tricks, and the good doctor had reverted to his old habits of movement, perhaps even relieved that his human opponents were no longer out to get him.

My first breakthrough and I wind up designing my favorite board game by accident. This would be Problem #1: watch our for “brilliant ideas,” because they’re probably not yours.

I could call it “Reach Mr. Goalie.”

Everybody loves embedded video…

…and I love this song. Found it on Napster years ago while going through an “everything Japanese is awesome” phase, and haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.

How do you use Sony’s Playstation Portable to play big games? Take advantage of the system’s ability to search for WiFi access points, and make that the basis of a scavenger hunt / puzzle game. At least that’s what Jonas Hielscher did when he created CollecTic, an inventive little title developed as part of Hielscher’s graduation project for the Media Technology masters program at Leiden University. From the man himself:

The objective of the game is to search for different access points, to collect them and to combine them in a puzzle in order to get points. In the game, the player has to move around in her/his local surrounding, using her/his PSP as a sensor device in order to find access points. By doing this, the player is able to discover the hidden infrastructure of wireless network coverage through auditive and visual feedback.

Bonus points go to Hielscher for moving beyond the simple scavenger hunt mechanic, and adding a bit of puzzler to the mix. According to his site, each secured access point is defined by a shape and color, the shape being determined by the manufacturer code of the unique MAC address, and the color determined by the product code of the same. When the player “collects” an access point he/she can then arrange it in a 3×3 square with other access points collected. Matching sets of three (by color, shape, or both), earn the player points.

As if that wasn’t enough, the game allows players to collect unsecured access points as well. Once collected, the unsecured points appear as either black or white stars. If they’re white, they act as “wild cards,” and can be used to complete matching sets. If the point is black, however, it clears the player’s grid, forcing him/her to start over with collecting.

These are small additions, but they can add a great deal to gameplay, as well as make the experience more aesthetically pleasing as a whole (in addition to size, shape and color, each individual access point is defined by unique sound, making for a nearly synaesthetic experience).

Be sure to check out the site, which offers more information on the game’s development, photos, and short videos of the gameplay in action. Although CollecTic is not publicly available yet, Jonas Hielscher promises that it is coming soon, and will be playable on PSP’s up to firmware version 2.0.

»CollecTic via Kotaku.

Appeared originally on Away From Keyboard.

At first I went “huh?” but then I realized it was a match made in heaven.

For those unaware, Will Wright recently announced that Brian Eno — former glam-rocker and father of ambient music — will be creating the soundtrack to Spore. This is, of course, brilliant.

To solidify this relationship in the public eye (and possibly just as an excuse to have a good old chat), EA and Maxis recently held an open seminar in San Francisco, where a theater full of open ears listened to the rantings of two men who in very different fields are doing the exact same thing. Both artists (yes, I’m calling them that) use the idea of cellular automata as a basis for their creations. Cellular automata, I’ve recently learned, refers to a simple initial rule-set that is capable of generating very complex and disparate results. Wright can do a better job of describing this than I can:

“Science is all about compressing reality to minimal rule sets, but generative creation goes the opposite direction. You look for a combination of the fewest rules that can generate a whole complex world which will always surprise you, yet within a framework that stays recognizable…..It’s not engineering and design, so much as it is gardening. You plant seeds.”

Thanks, Will. I dig this concept as a root for game design. The implicit message here is that in generative game design, the designer’s task is not to create a world, but create the tools and rules that allow the player to create through their interaction. The fun and interesting challenge in this is to apply it to games outside of the “sandbox” category. Level design can become inconsequential, for instance, if the player can generate his/her own environments through play.

Tetris is an example of this style of design. The play environment is a direct consequence of the player’s interactions, all built out of the blocks delivered into the player’s control. Although it’s still a great big WIP, I’d like for Sqube to follow a similar design principle.