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Congress Slashes Funding for Peaceful Conflict Resolution Game
In a departure from the usual video game setting a recent educational video game called "Cool School" was designed to teach kids peaceful conflict resolution. Unfortunately Congress has decided to slash the funding of this program that has been receiving rave reviews from the testers at schools in Illinois. "Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). The primary goal of the game is to teach students how to solve social conflict through skills like negotiation and cooperation. During the title's development, Killen and Margie were able to work with some talented members of the video game industry, including independent developer F.J. Lennon and animator Dave Warhol." The game is now available as a free download and will play on both Mac OS X and Windows XP.
So, they're "done" with the game, effectively. What part of their funding do they still need? The "sit on their asses and collect money for work they already did" fund?
Thanks slashdot, for providing no link to the article where the funding is being slashed, just two links to a game and people's reviews of it.
Let's fight 'em!
...is on ars technica.
I bet they won't cut funding for that game America's Army...
Trolling is a art,
The software "is" free, literally. To anyone who wants to get it.
They shouldn't have to give away the source code, and it shouldn't "have" to be inter-operable with linux. It is made for schools, and over 95% of schools run windows. Optimizing it so it runs in wine (which it probably does, its not a graphically-complex game) would have cost money, and had very little in returns.
Now get off your linux soapbox and learn that the real world doesn't revolve around your chosen operating system.
What would be funny is if they threatened Congress to restore funding.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Wow.
Also in true /. style, I didn't read your whole comment, but I saw something in there about "governed" and "WINE" and you made no mention of "legalized". Frankly I think the US Government has no right to prohibit alcohol sales.
this could be a real problem for Linux adoption
Obviously, someone running Linux or other F/OSS OS doesn't need a game to understand the advantages of cooperation or peaceful conflict resolution. Kernel, license or editor conflicts almost never devolve into physical violence.
How fun would an appropriate game be?
"Mark doesn't agree with your indentation style. What do you do?"
a) Create my own fork
b) Develop software that will display the code in the viewers indent style
c) I demonstrate my indentation preference by indenting Marks face with my fist
d) I write my own new software with a new license allowing only derivative works with the same indentation style
maybe the question that should be asked is, why should congress fund any sort of game development? leave education to the educators, and the moral development to families and communities. the only governmental role in morality should be to protect us, not propagate their morals. Even if in this case it is something we all probably could agree on is good, government still shouldn't do it.
I actually have a child in the target group, so I downloaded the game to check it out.
Game-wise, it's nothing special. It's a flash based game with limited user interaction, less than exceptional graphical content, and it plays at 800x600 regardless of your resolution - no full screen capability. In their defense, most games targetting my kids show the same properties.
In the five minutes I played, I was able to click maybe 4 times, with the remainder of the time spent listening to the characters walk me through the game. The general idea they are trying to get across - building conflict resolution skills - is very apparent. I think my child will enjoy this game - although I think she won't choose it very often over other games that she has available such as Dora or Care Bears titles. Frankly, I think the commercial titles offer a much more clear educational experience, but that's not to say I don't like the game at all.
Personally - I think community developed games like those built with Scratch have a much brighter future. Lord knows how many tax dollars were spent on this game, and if you had 5 involved parents working together for a month and a half, you could have something much better and more open to derivative updates.
Scratch is still flash, but at least you have the ability to update games developed with it - and tailor them to your specific needs/target audience.
So which of Congress's enumerated powers did this fall under?
While I understand your sentiment, I respectfully disagree. I agree that over 95% of the US, and probably the world, use Windows directly. However, indirectly, everyone uses Unix or Linux.
Today the world revolves around the internet. Something like 65%-70% of internet servers run on Linux and 15%-20% run on some non-Linux version of Unix. (These numbers may have changed since I last checked.) In fact, the root of the internet, some 13 root name servers, all run on Unix/Linux.
Since the internet revolves around these Unix servers, and the world revolves around the internet...
The world does revolve around my chosen operating system! [Insert Maniacal Laughter here.][Overlay Thunder Claps within Maniacal Laughter.]
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Taxpayer money? ITYM bondholder money. When you're spending trillions of dollars you don't have because you can't collect it in taxes the nonessential parts absolutely count as bondholder money.
Video games are a medium, like anything else. The point of this project was to try to use that medium to teach - now, there may be numerous reasons this is not a great idea (the fact that kids play games because they're fun, for instance, combined with a game whose primary goal is not to entertain but to teach - the fact that technology changes so fast that the game may have a short practical lifespan, etc.) but if nothing else, something like this is probably worth research.
Bow-ties are cool.
Well, 'Hitman' was a game too, you know.
Seriously. Think about it. It was a game meant to teach the youngins. I doubt much time, if any at all, was put into security considerations for the code. It may work great as a game, but be a horrible vector for anyone who wants to exploit a schools computer systems. And if distribution met its goal, practically every school would have this somewhere. This is one case where keeping the source closed makes sense. And you can't tell me "the issues would be fixed if it was just open source". It is taking too long as it is to get to the schools. Imagine someone finding a bug, and somehow through magic there is a whole trusted system of which this patch will get reviewed and distributed back to the schools, and have them actually update all copies. It just won't happen that way. Obscurity may be bad security, but it is better than potentially giving the assailant the club to beat you to death.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson