Valve’s rekindling of the passions of PC gamers continues to get some attention today, as RPS writer John Walker sits down with Gabe Newell for a chat and Escapist author Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) went a-visiting in their Bellvue offices. He has a travelogue from the trip up on the site, showing an interesting side of both the company and the commentator. “One of the things I’ve always wondered about in Valve games is the credits, in that very little seems to get credited, if you catch my drift. The names of all the people involved always simply roll past in alphabetical order with no job titles or details of any kind. The reason for this, as I’m learning, is that no one at Valve has any specific title. Part of that is because of something called the Cabal System. When a job needs done or a problem needs solving, or an issue has come up in one of the hundreds of play test sessions Valve games undergo, a group of bods with random assortments of skills from all over the spectrum of game design are brought together to bounce solutions off each other and argue their merit.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ReMaze
Amazing mazes

Fast Crawl
Coffee break dungeon crawl

Violent Games As Great Teachers
Gamepolitics and the site Physorg have an in-depth look at a study (pdf) done on the educational nature of violent games. While the implications of the study reinforce the old ‘games lead to violent kids’ saw, the authors of the research stress that they’re more interested in talking up the benefits of games in education. “When considered in the light of what is known to be the “best practices” of education, violent video games appear to be exemplary teachers of aggression … It should therefore be no surprise that video games are excellent teachers, both of educational content and of violent content… The fact that learning occurs regardless of whether the effects are intentional or unintentional is irrelevant, and should make us more thoughtful about designing games and choosing games for children and adolescents to play.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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