Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Why so Serious?

I thought a lot about what game designs may provide both entertainment and educational values to the player. I want my idea to be something simple enough that could be made into a board game, but complex enough to keep the player wanting to play it over and over again (akin to Oregon Trail).

In economics, one of the hardest areas I had comprehending was macroeconomic theory, and how certain policy options affect businesses and citizens. Also, I could barely comprehend certain ideas as inflation and how money markets operate. So I think a game where each player would control certain monetary (the Fed) and fiscal (governmental) policies, such as tariff's, buying foreign bonds, selling bonds would be a fun concept. It would be a competitive and strategic game simulating how countries react to situations.

Adding to this idea, I thought that there could be even more players that could act as businesses in those countries, competing in the world economy. With this addition, it would create a comparison of both micro and macro economic concepts, and show how they intertwine.

The biggest problem with this idea would probably be researching how the policies and markets work. I have a very rudimentary idea of how they work, but would require more in depth research to learn how to manage all of the variables required to make the game work.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Air Hockey

This is a quick Air Hockey Game I created for my C211 class. I also used my google sketchup assignment to make models for my game.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jmcatani/267501

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Me!

About me:
I am currently at the beginning of my college career as a freshman here at IU. My intended majors are Informatics and Computer Science.

Throughout high school, I was bogged down by a rigorous and stressful school schedule. What I noticed about my behavior through this time was my method for stress relief. My number one way for getting away from it all was learning about technology. This includes reading Google News' technology section almost hourly, keeping tabs on the new innovations in video games, and tinkering around with many different new innovations in the field that I could afford to make. I used to do these things for stress release....now I am able to take these things seriously.

How I could Be Useful in a Group:

Right now, I believe my best skill is my ability and motivation to learn what is necessary for the project to be a success. Currently, I do not have an excess of technical skills. My computer programming is limited to what I have learned thus far in my scheme class, and a little bit of java (no C or C++).

Also, as a freshman, I do not have any objectives on what I need the game in this class to be or what topic area I would like to pursue. However, I do have a motto that I think my group needs to follow with this game: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I believe our timetable is quite limited in this class, and we need to plan the scope of our game accordingly.