Regional de Educación 07

jueves, 20 de febrero de 2020

HCI International 2019

At the end of next July, the HCI (Human Computer Interface) international conference will take place in Orlando, FL.

This conference aims to discuss the intersections between culture, technology, behavior and society. The "games" subject will, surely, be one of the main discussions in the event, and I'll be in HCI presenting my paper "The Strategic Use of Smartphone Features to Create a Gaming Experience of Mystery: The Mind Alone Case".

Below, you can check the abstract of my article that will be published in a book, which will be sold at the conference:

In the present work, we discuss the creative process behind the Brazilian mobile game Mind Alone (Sioux Games, 2018). We start our discussion with a brief overview of mobile media and the Brazilian gaming market, in order to clarify why mobile games are a rich field to explore in this country, and to assess some aspects of the Brazilian gamer audience. After this introduction, we proceed to expound the main features of the game Mind Alone, aiming to finally put forward some ideas about strategic thinking in game design, game writing, and puzzle design, emphasizing the need of multidisciplinary thinking. This article recounts the whole creative process behind Mind Alone, highlighting some main phases: (1) brainstorming, including interviews with the production team at the Sioux company; (2) documentation, analyzing the "high concept template"; (3) production, elucidating the interface between art and coding (and how to merge smartphone features to create the game experience); and (4) beta-testing, comprising guidelines for a qualitative session. With this work, we intend to depict the full development of a mobile game, from brainstorming to publishing and documentation. It is important to highlight, in this context, that the author of this article was the game designer responsible for Mind Alone's mechanics and narrative.

After the conference, in August, I intend to share the PDF file with my complete article and the presentation as well.

For this trip I had the sponsorship of ON e-stadium (a Brazilian eSports arena from São Paulo) and ESPM (the college I work at) IT course.

Wait for news, pics and good content next month.

#GoGamers

Dwarves: The Natural Choice For An Army Painting Sprint

The last meaningful work I did on my Warmaster Dwarves was seven years ago (nearly to the day). I'd been humming and hawing about a Warmaster army for awhile now, and settled on the Dwarves when I got back from Scotland a few weeks ago. Since then I've finished the silver and gold, and laid down the first layer for the wood. I have no idea if I'll get these to a usable state before Fall In! in November, but I'm trying.

miércoles, 19 de febrero de 2020

How Free Games Like Pubg Earns Money?

Have you ever thought that how freely available games like PUBG or COC end up earning more money than paid games? So here how it earns money :

There are actually below given ways through which such games earn money.

1. In-app purchases:

You might have seen that PUBG allows the player to buy many additional skills and guns with real life money. The same applies to other online games also. They are mainly cosmetic upgrades but still rake in quite a lot of cash.

2. Ads driven revenues :

While playing some games or using some apps you might have seen that there are ads or pop-ups. These are actually the primary way of earning money for such games.

Though games like PUBG earn less by in-game ads so they focus on earning money through in-app purchases.

3. Targeted ads :

It is rumored that the big companies sell your data (in PUBG it is primarily the voice chat ) to the ad-companies for money. By listening into the audio devices they pick up keywords which are in-turn sold to advertisers for a large profit.

So this was how PUBG earns money. We hope you liked this. For more interesting topics on PUBG click here or on the link :

https://sudragamer.blogspot.com/?m=1

Storium Theory: Reading Ahead - Outcomes As Inspiration

I've written a bit before about how challenge outcomes provide guidelines for writing during a challenge...how they provide the effective limits of what can happen during a challenge, and how they reveal what the players should be writing towards when playing Strengths and Weaknesses.

Today, I'd just like to take a little time to look at that from a slightly different angle: Outcomes as inspiration.

This falls along similar lines to what I said above: Challenge outcomes reveal what players should be writing towards when playing their cards.

Because of this...challenge outcomes provide ideas.

If you have trouble writing on a challenge, one of the first things you should do is take another look (you did take a first look, right?) at the outcomes for that challenge.

Think about what they mean.

What happens in the outcomes?

What does it mean for the story?

What does it mean for your character?

Then, think about what events might lead to those outcomes.

And now...think about what your character might do that causes those events.

These steps can help you to draw inspiration from the challenge outcomes. They tell you what your character's involvement in the tale is. They tell you what the challenge means to your character - how he sees himself in the midst of the problem at hand. They tell you what your character thinks she is fighting for, or struggling to accomplish. They tell you what your character thinks is slipping away when things go wrong.

They tell you where the possibilities lie. They tell you what paths lead to the different potential endings.

And when you can see a path, and see what your character values in a situation, it can start to become quite a bit easier to think of what your character would do in such a situation. It gives you context, and context is an excellent guide for storytelling.

By taking a look at where the challenge can go, you can make it easier to determine how your character can take it closer to where it can go.

One important point, here: Even if a challenge's path is at this point "certain" - if, for instance, there are 4 Strengths and 1 Weakness or 4 Weaknesses and 1 Strength and there's only two card slots left - I still advise reading both outcomes when you're using this method. Both outcomes still provide valuable context. The Strong outcome still shows what could have gone right. The Weak outcome still shows what could have gone wrong.

In the process, both show what your character's actions would lead towards...even if there's no longer a possibility of the challenge actually getting there. They show what can be nearly grasped...or what can be threatened, but end up avoided.

I encourage reading outcomes ahead of time anyway, simply because of the focus they provide to the story...but they're a great resource when you need a little nudge, a little context, to get yourself thinking on just how you can progress the story of a challenge. They should not be your only resource when you need inspiration, but remember that they are there and put them to good use!

jueves, 13 de febrero de 2020

Brave Browser the Best privacy-focused Browser of 2020

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.