A UK university [Derby] is trying to get women to apply for a computer games programming degree…. making a special effort to persuade women that solitary hours in front of a computer screen can be good for their career prospects.

Acting programme leader, lecturer John Sear, said: “Girls do want to play games but no-one is making games for them.”

He said there had been some attempts to make, as it were, “pink” games specifically for girls, but with limited success. So summer schools were one idea to let young women see what was available – and that programming did not have to be all about “boys’ toys”.

So, let me get this straight… in order to make games programming more inclusive, less about “boys’ toys”, and generally more appealling you’re going to tell me that I can’t play with the boys, that I need my own games (specifically made and marketed for me) and that sitting in the dark on my own is good for my career!!??? No wonder there aren’t any games for girls, if the people at the top think this is in any way appealling.

BBC NEWS | Education | Women wanted as games programmers

Fair View Junior School, in Gillingham, Kent, teamed up with the makers of Sim City, which lets users play around with computer-generated cities.

A special Medway version was created to include recognisable local landmarks.

Children use the game to learn about environmental and transport issues while redesigning their home town.

The education-by-computer-game is part of a Medway Children’s University course called Design A Town.

The four-day courses have been run at Medway schools since 1998. BBC

I’ve always loved the Sim City games (ever since I was little and had to go round a friends house to play because we didn’t have a copy) Every aspect from terraforming to laying out nice little strips of land to watching the little cars whizzing about. And it’s highly addictive because stuff always goes wrong. The fire station catches fire, the nuclear power plant blows up, people complain about you putting up taxes to build the schools that they’re complaining they don’t have (there’s a political lesson there… take heed) … and then just when you think you’ve got is sorted, aliens land and start zapping things.

While I there’s a great deal of value in teaching children about city planning/government/attack-by-aliens (yes children, if you want a National Health/Education Service, you’re going to need some money from somewhere) I have to say I’m not wholly sure where the value in a special version showing local landmarks is. Beyond the initial “I can see my house from here” gimmickry, surely the class is just going to elect to put a sewage plant on top of the headteacher’s house…

After a slow period on BBC Tech News , there’s now a whole load of stuff.

• EU to launch its own web domain – “.eu will be up and running by the end of 2005.”
• Search ads fire up Google profits
• Papal hotmail address goes on sale – and other emails and domain too!
• ‘Simple games’ rule mobile charts – Tetris tops the charts – couldn’t have seen that coming!
• The Cult of Mac – The BBC voicing what the rest of us knew ages ago
• Review: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – “not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped.” – I’m fearing the worst I’m afraid….
• Helpful users face virus danger – Another Sober variant

I don’t think I’ll be taking up that particular recommendation. There aren’t enough hours in a lifetime.

Well, I’ve come across one area in particular where Amazon’s customisation (in the form of the Recommendations section) could do with a little work.

Amazon knows I own a PS2. I have told it as much. It knows I own and enjoy a number of games for PS1 and PS2. It knows I own and enjoy a number of games for PC…. I do not have a GameCube or an Xbox. I have never told Amazon that I do and I have not bought or wishlisted any games for either. So why does it recommend them? Surely one of the criteria which Amazon bases its games recommendations on should be ‘platform’ ….

The main thrust of the piece is that games producers are going to have to rise to the challenges/opportunities presented by the next-gen consoles (PS3, XBox2, Whatever-they’ve-decided-to-call-the-new-gamecube-this-week) Any companies who don’t make the grade are gonna fall by the wayside.

The BBC article describes it as ‘a cull’. Personally I don’t think it’ll be anything like that dramatic. It took a while for a lot of companies to step up anything more than the number of polygons they were using between PS1 and PS2. So I don’t think it’s the mere implication of a new type of console.

What’s going to make or break companies here is which console they decide to back. There is going to be (you could argue there already is) an all out battle between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo – and if you back the wrong one, you might not be playing to a big enough marketplace.

After getting Simon very worked up (and then having to persuade him that getting a PS2 in the middle of his final year was a really bad idea) I looked it up on Amazon.co.uk.

And in a fantastic display of timing the game is not due out for Hallowe’en (as previously advertised) or even before Christmas (like in the name, geddit?) but in the New Year… so it’ll have to go on my birthday list…..

It’s fantastic.

Most of the first twenty minutes of gameplay were interrupted by either me or Simon exclaiming “How cool is that!” and “Oh, Wow!!” and “Look! Minions!”

After most of the initial excitement had died down and I’d gotten used to the controls (playing Playstation pretty much exclusively for 4 months makes pointing and clicking rather confusing) it’s still a reeeally cool game.

Basically, you’re an Evil Genius bent on world domination who’s been in hiding for the past x years and you’re starting out afresh. It’s Dungeon Keeper meets The Sims meets Austin Powers, without the annoyance of Mike Myers ANYWHERE!!. You get a number 2, ridiculous henchmen, a design-your-own base in the side of a mountain, and many, many minions. Who you can have killed as a morale boost. And you can laugh evilly at prisoners. And that’s just in the demo version!!

So that adds another game to the list of those I’ve sold my soul to recently…

But as soon as you kill REAL PEOPLE (terrorists don’t count… they don’t qualify for human rights so they can’t be human….obviously) with REAL (meaning red) BLOOD… and heaven forbid if you can actually see their faces and expressions as you attack them at close range… then it’s inciting violence in the real world.

Personally I don’t see that there is much difference (in gaming) between hacking at a mutant with a crowbar and chasing after a person with a baseball bat. They’re both sick and violent and if one of these is going to incite you to go out and actually do it chances are the other is too… but if that’s the kind of person you are then eating tomato soup might have the same effect….

Now, whether or not [insert entertainment genre of your choice] has an influence on violent crimes has been done to death and most people aren’t about to change their minds on the matter… but one quote got me waving frantically at my monitor (and I’m in a public place).

“I can’t believe that this sort of material is allowed in a society where anarchy is not that far removed. It should not be available and it should not be available to young people”

For a start… the whole point of an anarchic society is that nothing is banned.. so therefore the closer we get to anarchy (not that I’m condoning anarchy) the more things are allowed.

Also, to jump on the enragement bandwagon, the game has an 18 certificate, and 18 is considered adult in this country which means it isn’t available to “young people” it is available to adults (Unless the 18 denotes mental age, in which case we might all be in trouble)

But what really gets to me is that too many people seem to eager to place blame anywhere they can. If you can find an outside influence; games, movies, music, Marilyn Manson, TV, etc, etc ANYTHING that takes the blame off you the done thing appears to be to do so. I was always taught to “own up” and “accept responsibility for myself”. All this reminds me of Ben Elton’s satirical novel “Popcorn” (which has also been adapted for stage. The book ends with a list of people blaming each other for the preceeding events. In the end noone accepts responsibility.