• A blog about casual gaming
• The Best 30 HTML5 games

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  Introduction to collision detection techniques in games (prelude to collision detection in XNA)

• Determining if any two 3D objects intersect and get useful information about the intersection is not an easy task. Especially if you want to do it fast. The key to optimize these calculations is to quick discard non colliding objects, before applying the full collision test. To do so, several methods can be applied.

• All the games on this  list should be accessible, challenging, and fun for English Language Learners and native-English speakers alike (of all ages), except for two or three that are obviously for Beginning English Language Learners. 
• Line Rider 2
• Class Tools
• Teachers and students can create lots of learning activities using formats from popular 1980’s arcade games.
• Philologus 
• It’s a series of timed puzzles from the BBC, and they’re a lot harder than you think.
• The Senses Challenge
• Bite Size Literacy and Math 
• It’s a new BBC portal filled with fun activities for Beginning English Language Learners and native-English speakers to develop literacy and math skills.
• Free Rice game
• Twenty Questions Game
• Qtoro
• Launchball from the British Science Musuem. 
• Students can create a sort of video game (and learn scientific concepts in the process), title it, and post the url.
• Number three is another site primarily for Beginning English Language Learners.  It’s the new English Learning 
• Sound Factory
• A Break In The Road
• Wordmaster, another site from the BBC

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• The Future of Video Gaming 
  
        By Michael Dolan 
• The Future of Video Gaming
• Many software developers see themselves on a collision course with the film industry, with games having their own version of the Oscars.
• We tend to see gaming as one all-encompassing genre under a capital "G." But within that genre, many sub-classifications will rise, thrive, endure and fail.
• Because game designers are inhibited only by creativity and available technology, the potential will grow as their capability to move more polygons cheaply comes to fruition — something that the computer industry is working on every day.
• As the music industry looks for new ways to recapture its youthful audience, record labels will find even greater ways to cross-promote. Want to hear the latest Beastie Boys single? The place to hear it first could be in Grand Theft Auto 6.
• The future of gaming will not be all that different than the future of any other form of entertainment. As the masses of players determine what they want to get out of gaming, large corporations will throw their money and workforce into providing it.
• The average age of the gamer is rapidly approaching 30.
• To predict the future of video games, just follow Deep Throat's advice to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward during the Nixon Administration: "Follow the money."

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• Making the Game
• creating a game can be as complex as making a Hollywood blockbuster.

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• Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
• A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.
• 1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
• It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts.
• 2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
• But most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played.  Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. That's why the vague term "links" is used here.   If there is a consensus emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences — which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.
• 3. Children are the primary market for video games.
• Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes. Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids.  One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites.
• 4. Almost no girls play computer games.

  • A girl should read this paragraph.........
• More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before.
• the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent.
• 6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
• "To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."
• The Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters.   In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters.
• 7. Video game play is socially isolating.
• A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players.   Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking.
• 8. Video game play is desensitizing.
• Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat.
• Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions.

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