World of Agile

[Joshua Kerievsky]

I've never played World of Warcraft.  I have watched folks play it.  It is a world-wide phenomenon.  People spend hours playing it in order to improve their rating.  

Could we create a similar environment for those who want to get increasing better at Agile?    

I think it's a lot of work, yet it could be quite worthwhile.  

Thoughts?

--
best regards,
jk

Industrial Logic, Inc.
Joshua Kerievsky
Founder, Extreme Programmer & Coach
http://industriallogic.com
866-540-8336 (toll free)
510-540-8336 (phone)
Berkeley, California

Learn Code Smells, Refactoring and TDD at http://industriallogic.com/elearning

[Andrew Golik]

me either, I don't play games at all. The concept of the most game
rates is to be the best one. So, individual success is the most
priority in contrast to agile mindset where collective success is.
I wish I could give any idea but I'm not good at gaming. Is there any
game where success is in collaboration? If so, we must make a start
from those ones






On Sep 16, 10:03 pm, Joshua Kerievsky <jos...@industriallogic.com>
wrote:

> I've never played World of Warcraft.  I have watched folks play it.  It is a
> world-wide phenomenon.  People spend hours playing it in order to improve
> their rating.
> Could we create a similar environment for those who want to get increasing
> better at Agile?
>
> I think it's a lot of work, yet it could be quite worthwhile.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> best regards,
> jk
>
> Industrial Logic, Inc.
> Joshua Kerievsky

> Founder, Extreme Programmer & Coachhttp://industriallogic.com

[Charlie Poole]

Hi Andrew,

How about the Software Development "game"? :-)

Charlie

[Joshua Kerievsky]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Andrew Golik <andrew...@mail.ru> wrote:

me either, I don't play games at all. The concept of the most game
rates is to be the best one. So, individual success is the most
priority in contrast to agile mindset where collective success is.
I wish I could give any idea but I'm not good at gaming. Is there any
game where success is in collaboration? If so, we must make a start
from those ones

Hi Andrew,

Actually, in World of Warcraft, to get to certain higher levels, you have to team up with people to go conquer something.  We could potentially compare that to teaming up with people to conquer a piece of legacy code.  

I'm not a gamer either.  I may just force myself to join World of Warcraft just to learn more.

best

jk

[Torbjörn Gyllebring]

I've spent considerable time playing WoW by have since left Azeroth
and my fellows in the horde for the real world.
What drew me into the game and made me spend somewhere beteween
4-8hours each day for quite a long time was multiple things, but the
greatest factor for me and many of my peers was the sense of
comradeship, belonging and community that it builds. Many sign in,
enter the forums and connect to Ventrilo or Skype just for the joy of
talking with like minded people, and in some cases accomplish great
feats of coordination and teamwork. In essence WoW is addicting
because of the teamwork and commitment to other players as much as
it's a wonderfully crafted piece of software.

I would love to see such warmth and dedication towards the joy of
learning, the art of delivering software and agile principles, looking
forward to the journey with this group. Let's build it upon a
foundation of trust, caring, honesty and a will to achieve great
things.

best regards,
Torbjörn

On Sep 16, 9:03 pm, Joshua Kerievsky <jos...@industriallogic.com>
wrote:

> I've never played World of Warcraft.  I have watched folks play it.  It is a
> world-wide phenomenon.  People spend hours playing it in order to improve
> their rating.
> Could we create a similar environment for those who want to get increasing
> better at Agile?
>
> I think it's a lot of work, yet it could be quite worthwhile.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> best regards,
> jk
>
> Industrial Logic, Inc.
> Joshua Kerievsky

> Founder, Extreme Programmer & Coachhttp://industriallogic.com

[Torbjörn Gyllebring]

On Sep 16, 9:37 pm, Andrew Golik <andrew.go...@mail.ru> wrote:
> me either, I don't play games at all. The concept of the most game
> rates is to be the best one. So, individual success is the most
> priority in contrast to agile mindset where collective success is.
> I wish I could give any idea but I'm not good at gaming. Is there any
> game where success is in collaboration? If so, we must make a start
> from those ones

In the beginning reaching the end-game instances of WoW required
skillful synchronized action of multiple different roles and balanced
groups of 40 people. It really required a level of teamwork that I've
seldom seen when consulting, leading or being part of a software team.

I don't know the current state of things, but the elite guilds in wow
and other MMO's are accomplishing stunning feats and many of the high
ranking officers in those guilds are either leaders at work or rapidly
advancing towards such positions since many of the skills really
overlap.

[Torbjörn Gyllebring]

I remember someone saying something about software as a cooperative
game... and I consider that line of thought one of the most valuable
paths to pursue.

[Joshua Kerievsky]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Torbjörn Gyllebring <torbjorn....@gmail.com> wrote:

I would love to see such warmth and dedication towards the joy of
learning, the art of delivering software and agile principles, looking
forward to the journey with this group. Let's build it upon a
foundation of trust, caring, honesty and a will to achieve great
things.

That sounds like the perfect foundation on which to build Torbjörn.  Thanks for being a part of this group.

best

jk

[Nayan]

WoW sucked up about a year of my life a few years ago, until i
realized that I probably should be paying more attention to my real
life! Agreed that if we can somehow make the WoW experience translate
to people's careers, it would be great.

I think that many (most?) developers love games in which they can
constantly "level up" and get shiny badges to collect. I think perhaps
this is why a lot of folks, despite the well-documented negatives, do
end up getting certs.

w.r.t Software development games:
* Develop a gaggle of tiny little tests that got progressively more
difficult and people could collect (virtual) badges, it could be fun
and get a lot of people into peer competition and improvement (I feel
like i might be plagiarizing something that Patrick said/wrote!)

* Have a crazy project (again Patrick's Tic-Tac-Pente game comes to
mind) that people can work on and maybe get points every time they
[increase code coverage | decrease complexity | improve design].

[Kerry Buckley]

On 16 Sep 2009, at 21:16, Nayan wrote:

> I think that many (most?) developers love games in which they can
> constantly "level up" and get shiny badges to collect.
>

> * Have a crazy project (again Patrick's Tic-Tac-Pente game comes to
> mind) that people can work on and maybe get points every time they
> [increase code coverage | decrease complexity | improve design].

I think Micah Martin's Code Sparring contests are a great example of
this kind of thing:

http://slagyr.github.com/sparring/

We definitely need more along the same lines.

Kerry

[Dale Emery]

Hi Josh,

Actually, in World of Warcraft, to get to certain higher levels, you have to team up with people to go conquer something.

That isn't strictly true...

My wife's toon will hit level 80 (currently the highest current) within a few days. She mostly plays solo, and the team things she's done were chosen for fun rather than necessity. You can make it to level 80 entirely by doing quests, and by doing them solo.

... but it's still an interesting idea, given that WoW does offer, assess, and reward lots of team activities.

There are battlegrounds and arenas in which teams of various sizes (from 2 to 40 players) contest against each other. There are dungeons and "raids" in which teams (from 4 to 40 players) battle against monsters in the game. Some people do these team activities nearly exclusively. Some people never do them.

For those team activities, people often form ad hoc teams, aka Pickup Group (PUG). The group forms, completes the activity (fight in a battleground, run a raid or dungeon), and disbands.

There is also another kind of team called a guild. Guilds are groups of people organized around some common purpose. This is a longer-term team, typically formed not to complete a specific activity, but to work together over time on a /kind/ of activity.

Sometimes the purpose is "leveling." These folks team up to complete quests and level up more quickly. Often with leveling guilds, there is a strong spirit of learning about the game, with more experienced players mentoring less experienced ones. Players of vastly different levels usually don't team up for quests, because quests are geared toward players in a narrow range of levels. But every now and then a very high level player will run a lower level player or group through a dungeon that would otherwise be too challenging for them. In these cases, the lower level player is usually seeking the unusually good rewards that dungeons offer, and sometimes the higher level player charges a fee (in game money) for the service.

Some guilds form for player-vs-player (PvP) activities such as battlegrounds and arenas. These guilds typically form "premade" teams to do battle. In these contests, in contrast to PUGs, the players learn each others skills and form strategies for whooping their opponents. Also, they often coordinate their combat actions using some form of voice-chat. A PUG stands no chance against a premade team that is even marginally practiced and coordinated. I've been on the receiving end of these, and these battles either go very quickly (if the premade team is out to win) or verrrrrry slowly (if the premade team is farming "honor points" or, as is distressingly common, simply enjoys prolonging their opponents' humiliation).

Other guilds form to run player-vs-environment (PvE) scenarios such dungeons or raids. Some of the higher level PvE encounters take many hours and challenge even the most skilled groups. Some groups run a given raid (20 or more players) repeatedly. These are typically very high level players, for whom quests offer little in the way of reward (gear-wise or experience-wise). These guilds can become legendary (as can individual players--google "Leroy Jenkins").

WoW has ways of assessing each of these kinds of activities. Quests offer experience points, which lead to higher levels. Dungeons and raids offer way-cool gear (weapons and armor) that not only give greatly improved abilities, but spin and sparkle and otherwise just look dandy. Arenas offer gear and also status--there are tournaments that you can win. Battlegrounds offer gear and "honor points".

I'm not a gamer either.  I may just force myself to join World of Warcraft just to learn more.

The thing that impressed me most about WoW is how well the learning is integrated into game play. Immediately as you enter the game you learn about quests and how to find them. Each early quest is not only interesting in and of itself, but also teaches you a key skill that you will use over and over (killing stuff, picking up items, using items, avoiding hostile monsters). It was only on starting my second or third character that I noticed that these early quests are all about learning. My first time through, they were just fun.

Dale

--
Dale Emery
Consultant to software teams and leaders
Web: http://dhemery.com
Weblog: http://cwd.dhemery.com

[Nayan Hajratwala]

On Sep 16, 2009, at 4:32 PM, Dale Emery wrote:

The thing that impressed me most about WoW is how well the learning is integrated into game play. Immediately as you enter the game you learn about quests and how to find them. Each early quest is not only interesting in and of itself, but also teaches you a key skill that you will use over and over (killing stuff, picking up items, using items, avoiding hostile monsters). It was only on starting my second or third character that I noticed that these early quests are all about learning. My first time through, they were just fun.

It seems that most well-done games these days have these starting tutorials built in ... no need to read a manual, just dive right in and it'll teach you everything you need to know ex: The Sims, Civilization, Call of Duty.

[Dale Emery]

Hi Nayan,

It seems that most well-done games these days have these starting tutorials built in ... no need to read a manual, just dive right in and it'll teach you everything you need to know ex: The Sims, Civilization, Call of Duty.

In contrast, I've tried Second Life a few times. SL starts by giving explicit lessons in game mechanics. I've never made it past those boring lessons. It's akin to starting a new job by sitting through a two week offsite lecture class, rather than on-the-job training, pairing, or even a two week offsite experiential workshop.

So maybe one lesson here is: Integrate the learning into the work; integrate work (real or simulated) into the learning.

[Joshua Kerievsky]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Dale Emery <da...@dhemery.com> wrote:

In contrast, I've tried Second Life a few times. SL starts by giving explicit lessons in game mechanics. I've never made it past those boring lessons. It's akin to starting a new job by sitting through a two week offsite lecture class, rather than on-the-job training, pairing, or even a two week offsite experiential workshop.

So maybe one lesson here is: Integrate the learning into the work; integrate work (real or simulated) into the learning.

Another one is just don't bore people.  Perhaps that's where the term Edutainment came from.   

So where do we go from here folks? 

Is WoW (World of Warcraft) the model we'd want to emulate in some way to create a world in which folks can progressively improve their Agile skills?   It sounds like a massive undertaking, yet most things worth doing are.  

best

jk

[Chris Simmons]

WoW might be a good mental model, especially if we distill and codify what people like about it, but we should stay away from trying to make an actual game. The art assets alone (and art would be needed in a game to make people care) would kill the project - they're ridiculously time consuming, and many a good open source project has been killed by lack of cohesive visual design.

---

From: Joshua Kerievsky
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:40:35 -0700
To: <assessin...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: World of Agile

[Nayan Hajratwala]

I thought about this game on my drive home from a local user group today:

Each person who wants to take part in this "game" creates an online character that has a bunch of attributes. These would be things like: TDD, Continuous Integration, Mocking, Simple Design, Refactoring, Pairing, etc...

The "player" can now take part in Real Life activities with other "players" that will give them Experience Points (XP) in each of the attributes. As a newbie, I start with 0 XP for each attribute. During the course of a month I do the following:

1) I Pair & TDD for 2 hours with Josh who already has 100XP in Pairing and 200XP in TDD

2) I set up a CI server with Patrick, who has 50XP in CI

3) I refactor some legacy code with Dale who has 1000XP in Refactoring & 150XP in Pairing

4) Attended SDTConf

We can now come up with algorithms to assign XP to me:

1) The person I'm pairing with can award me up to 10% of their XP, so Josh gives me 10XP for my excellent pairing work, but only 5XP for TDD, because I was _just_ starting to catch on a bit, but really couldn't follow what was happening a lot of the time.

2) Patrick thinks I did a great job, so he awards me 5XP for CI

3) I came up with some great refactorings with Dale, so he gives me 90XP in refactoring, and 15XP in Pairing.

4) SDTConf organizers decide that attendees should receive 5XP in TDD & 10XP in Simple Design

At the end of the month, my stats are:

Pairing: 25

TDD: 10

CI: 5

Refactoring: 90

Simple Design: 10

Maybe there are other rules, such as:

* You can only get XP from someone with more XP than you.

* Each skill may have a "Coaching" corollary which the person with the higher XP can get points for.

Of course your stats would be posted online, you could customize your "Avatar", talk smack about other players, and maybe use your XP to buy pieces of flair  to post on your character's page.

I'd play :-)

[Patrick Wilson-Welsh]

Hello Chris,

I agree. I think we can accomplish the effects we want from game play (fun, engagement, challenge, community, early gratification, addiction) without very much actual game framework machinery. I think most of it should be well-designed code exercises that start small and get larger and more challenging. 

In particular, I would like the first few games to concentrate on what I (perhaps presumptuously) suspect are the key first things for students to learn:

-- Test coverage (policed by actual metric)

-- Naming

-- SRP/Method-level complexity; class-level complexity (policed by static analysis)

-- Compose Method / Programming by Intention

-- Extract Method / Extract Interface / Extract Class

-- Pull up field/method. 

Even without insisting on TDD as a technique, if we asked students, in first few "game levels" or exercises to focus on these things, how much of the most important technique does that cover?  I'd like to find out. 

Cheers, 

--Patrick

-------

patrick welsh

248 565 6130

twitter: patrickwelsh

blog: patrickwilsonwelsh.com

[Kristoffer Roupé]

I've been playing wow since the beta that started ages ago, I've been in a somewhat successful (hard core) guild for a couple of years as a officer and leader. I think that I've been around wow quite a while to understand both it's beauty and it's horrors.
One thing that was spoken of earlier was the reward system, you do quests, you get a reward. Easy.
I would say that the post below is an inspiring idea. But as a long time wow junkie would oppose to that players gives "you" rank/xp. Rewards should come from the system, and therefore helping the system keep rolling even if someone on top of you don't want to share.
Someone wrote that they thought that a game like this should be built upon tasks of different skill level. In wow that would map back to quests. The mechanics of quests in wow would offer you experience only if you are within the level range for that quests, in other words, if you have 75 skill points (sp) in  refactoring, then undertaking a level 50 task would render you no or very few new experience points. You would have to find a "harder" task to do.

I havn't really understood what the "end game" of this kind of game would look like, but... think that will come as we get along :P.

Cheers,
Kristoffer

--
Kristoffer Roupé
kit...@gmail.com
Sent from Stockholm, AB, Sweden

[Patrick Wilson-Welsh]

Hello Kristoffer and Nayan:

I think this is starting to sound both lightweight and fun. 

Another thing:  it builds community out in the real world. A point system of XP points would be hilarious and useful and fun, altogether. 

We don't have to think this all the way through now. We could just try a couple of small experiments, and ... iterate!

--Patrick

[Dale Emery]

Hi Josh,

Is WoW (World of Warcraft) the model we'd want to emulate in some way to create a world in which folks can progressively improve their Agile skills?   It sounds like a massive undertaking, yet most things worth doing are.

I'd say that we want to cherry pick the elements that seem most... er... fruitful.

Dale

[Joshua Kerievsky]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 9:26 PM, Dale Emery <da...@dhemery.com> wrote:

Hi Josh,

I'd say that we want to cherry pick the elements that seem most... er... fruitful.

Yeah, it sounds like we have all the WoW experts we need here to get a good feel for what would be fruitful.  

So how would one be assessed in a quest?   Do you simply pass or fail a quest in WoW?   

Perhaps it will help to consider a concrete example, like a Refactoring or Planning exercise.  

[Dale Emery]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Joshua Kerievsky <jos...@industriallogic.com> wrote:

So how would one be assessed in a quest?   Do you simply pass or fail a quest in WoW?

There are several different ways that quests are assessed.

A small percentage of quests are pass/fail. There are (I think) two types of pass/fail quests: Escort quests and timed quests. A timed quest is just what you think it is. If the time limit expires before you complete the task, you fail the quest.

An escort quest starts when you discover a prisoner being held by evildoers. The goal is to escort the prisoner to freedom. Once you've released the prisoner from the jail where you found him, he follows an essentially fixed path to some predetermined "safe" location, at which point you complete the quest. The prisoner's fixed path inevitably leads through gatherings of evildoers, who are hostile and attack. The prisoner joins each fight, but fights poorly. If the prisoner dies, you fail the quest.

If you fail a pass/fail test, you can abandon it, visit the character who offers the quest, and try it again. There is no penalty for failing, and you can make as many attempts as you need.

Most quests are not pass/fail, but pass/abandon. You are given a task, and can take as long as you want. You either complete the quest and gather your reward, or you decide that you don't want to do that quest after all, and abandon it.

There are three main reasons you might abandon a quest. First, if you gain enough levels, the quest no longer gives a reward. Once that happens, you might complete it just for sheets and geegles, but more likely you just abandon the quest altogether.

Another reason to abandon a quest is to make room in your quest list. You can have at most 25 quests in progress at one time. So there's a simple kanban WIP limit. If you're offered a quest that you really want to do, and your at your WIP limit, you gotta drop one to take the new one.

Finally, you might temporarily abandon a quest because it is currently beyond your abilities. Each quest has a level associated with it. If the quest level his higher than your level, the title appears in red in your quest list. This indicates that it will be very difficult to complete on your own at your current level. A yellow quest is difficult but doable. A green quest is easy. A gray quest is so easy that it offers no reward. So you might pick up a quest, find that it is too difficult, abandon it, and reacquire it after you've gone up a few levels.

Some quests are chained. When you complete the first quest in the chain, you are then offered a second quest. When you complete that, you are offered a third, and so on, sometimes for chains of ten or more quests. Often there is a nice reward at the end of the chain, with more meager rewards along the way.

Some quests have no particular sense of progress along the way. You have either achieved the goal or not. Many quests require you to gather a certain number of some item, or kill a certain number of some kind of monster. For these, the quest list keeps a tally of how many items/kills you have completed.

For escort quests, you eventually get a feel for how long the journey is. Also, escort quests usually involve escort-specific groups of bad dudes, sent (from who knows where) to reacquire their prisoner. There are usually three waves of bad dudes, the last wave appearing when you reach the safe location. So though there's no explicit progress meter, you can gauge your progress by how many waves of monsters have tried to grab the prisoner.

For quest chains, the game doesn't tell you how far along the chain you've completed. But there are lots of books and web sites that give that info.

Another kind of explicit assessment is Reputation. Each character who gives you a quest is associated with some faction or other. When you complete a quest, your reputation increases with the quest-giver's faction. Having a good reputation gives you discounts from the faction's vendors, and sometimes allows you to buy items that are available only to players "revered" or "exalted" by that faction.

Another assessment: Honor. You gain honor by winning games in battlegrounds, and by killing players of the opposing faction (your player belongs to one of two factions, each hostile to the other). Honor allows you to buy stuff from special vendors.

Here's a kind of assessment that's not built into the game: Leveling speed--how long it takes to take a brand new character from level 1 to level 80. Most people don't care about this, but a few kinda obsess.

And then, of course, there's this highly subjective assessment: How much fun are you having?

Related assessments: When is the last time you saw the sun? Saw your son? Took a bath? Spoke aloud to another person who was actually in the room with you at the time?

One final observation: Given all of the kinds of assessments in WoW, you get to choose which ones you care about. And you can change your mind whenever you like.

Dale

[Kristoffer Roupé]

There are different types of quests. They can probably be categorized into: gathering, escort, killing and "executing".

Gathering & Killing:
The gathering and killing quests are quite straight forward. You either gather 10 wolf skinns/flowers/meat boxes etc. or kill 25 yeti's or the like. You can't really fail a quest like this, they can only be completed, half way through or abandoned.

Escort:
Escort quests are when you stumble upon a NPC (none playing character) within the game that needs your help to get away from some dungeon/captivity etc. (Kidnapping is a quite common thing in Azeroth...). In these quests you have to make sure that your escort survives until the quest is completed. Otherwise the quest fail and you have to wait for the NPC to respawn (reaper at some of it's spawn points) until you can redo the quest.

Executing:
Generally, "executing" quests (sorry, can't think of a better name... xD), is the kind of quests where you are asked to execute some task for someone. It can be anything form stopping a bomb to explode (which typically would have a time limit), which would fail if you didn't make it on time; i.e. you would have to start over once the quest gets available again.

So, typically; a quest could fail if it has a time limit, you must keep your escort alive etc. otherwise it is totally up to you to either finish the quest or abandon it.

Now, we should also mention that there are other kinds of quests as well. Daily quests, group quests etc. And that it all starts to get interesting when you start to interact with more people than yourself :). So from a leveling perspective, I would say that you can get from Journeyman to Expert by doing "single player quests" or small group quests (pairing exercises), but to get from Expert to Master you would have to interact with more of "team quests".

HTH,
Kristoffer

--
Kristoffer Roupé
kit...@gmail.com

[Kristoffer Roupé]

Think Dale beat me too it xD

Cheers,
Kristoffer

[Adam Sroka]

I taught myself how to write Commodore Basic in fourth grade so that I
could create a program to generate D&D characters. Now players in a
role-playing game are going to assess my programming ability? The
universe is a strange place.

[Ola Ellnestam]

Adam Sroka wrote:
> I taught myself how to write Commodore Basic in fourth grade so that I
> could create a program to generate D&D characters. Now players in a
> role-playing game are going to assess my programming ability? The
> universe is a strange place.
>

It's an /idea/.

Personally I like to build on others ideas and then offer my own.

//Ola

--
---------------------------------------------------------
Ola Ellnestam
Agical AB
Västerlånggatan 79, 2 tr
111 29 Stockholm, SWEDEN

Mobile: +46-708-754000
E-mail: ola.el...@agical.se
Blog: http://ellnestam.wordpress.com
Twitter: ellnestam

[Adam Sroka]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Ola Ellnestam <ola.el...@agical.se> wrote:
>
> Adam Sroka wrote:
>>
>> I taught myself how to write Commodore Basic in fourth grade so that I
>> could create a program to generate D&D characters. Now players in a
>> role-playing game are going to assess my programming ability? The
>> universe is a strange place.
>>
>
> It's an /idea/.
>
> Personally I like to build on others ideas and then offer my own.
>
> //Ola
>

I don't have a problem with the idea. My personal irony does not make
the idea any less valid. However, I was compelled to share.

[Ola Ellnestam]

Oh, OK. I hope you didn't feel 'attacked' by my remark. The nuances of
communication really isn't that good via email. :-(

I have seen far to many ideas get shot down way too early. And I guess I
have done my fair share of shooting down as well over the years.

Cheers,

[Simon Kirk]

FWIW, I found it funny :)

I was also reminded of a quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

[Adam Sroka]

Classic. That's one of my (many) favorite parts. I was just rereading
the part of /Life the Universe and Everything/ where he describes
learning how to fly, which is another favorite.

BTW, my comment was not just meant to be ironic. It is 100% true. My
mom got me the Commodore so that I would get off her Mac. It came with
a book on basic. I was way into D&D and was intrigued by the idea that
I could write a program to generate the character scores. @ 1986

[Chris Wheeler]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Adam Sroka <adam....@gmail.com> wrote:

BTW, my comment was not just meant to be ironic. It is 100% true. My
mom got me the Commodore so that I would get off her Mac. It came with
a book on basic. I was way into D&D and was intrigued by the idea that
I could write a program to generate the character scores. @ 1986

Man, how many programmers got their start because of D&D? I know I did as did a bunch of my friends - everything from 20-sided die sims to character generators and even simulated dungeon masters.

D&D may have driven a whole generation of programmers. I wonder what inspires the kids today?

Chris.

[David Carlton]

I'm coming a bit late to the topic (just joined the list), but I
wanted to throw in a few references that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

* Roger Travis is teaching a course on Herodotus and Thucydides at
U.Conn this semester by structuring it as a role-playing game, and it
sounds like it's going really well; more info at <http://
livingepic.blogspot.com/2009/09/operation-kthma-post-hub.html>.

* Another current video game which is structured around requiring
collaboration to be successful is _Left 4 Dead_. The designers gave a
really interesting talk at GDC on how they structured the game to
force collaboration; my notes on it are at <http://malvasiabianca.org/
archives/2009/03/gdc-2009-thursday/>. (Scroll down to the 1:30 slot.)

* Dan Cook's "Princess Rescuing Application" talk might also be
relevant, slides are at <http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/10/princess-
rescuing-application-slides.html>.

--
David Carlton
car...@bactrian.org