a new game to try

just what i need

i'm not good at computer games. i rarely play them and when i do, i stink. i'm a kingdom of loathing type babe. although this game DOES sound like something i'd dig. dig?

Gaming Evolves

By CARL ZIMMER

NEW HAVEN — By day, Thomas Near studies the evolution of fish, wading through streams in Kentucky and Mississippi in search of new species. By night, Dr. Near, an assistant professor at Yale, is a heavy-duty gamer, steering tanks or playing football on his computer. This afternoon his two lives have come together.

On his laptop swims a strange fishlike creature, with a jaw that snaps sideways and skin the color of green sea glass. As Dr. Near taps the keyboard, it wiggles and twists its way through a busy virtual ocean. It tries to eat other creatures and turns its quills toward predators that would make it a meal.

The chairman of Dr. Near’s department, Richard Prum, watches him play and worries about his reckless lunges.

“You’re just attacking them?” he asks as Dr. Near tries to eat a fat purple worm that looks too dangerous to bother.

“If you kill them, you unlock their parts,” Dr. Near explains. But then the purple worm sticks its syringelike mouth into Dr. Near’s beast and begins to drain its innards. “Uh-oh, I’m about to die,” he says. The screen fades to black.

The next time, Dr. Near’s luck changes. He gains enough points to move to the next level of the game. His creature grows a brain. “Oh man, it’s like I graduated college,” he says. Dr. Near can now alter his creature. He stretches the body to give it a neck. He adds a pair of kangaroolike legs.

His creature — or, rather, a swarm of his creatures — charge out of the ocean and onto land. Dr. Near pushes back the laptop as his creatures find a place to make their nest and lay eggs. “So that’s pretty cool,” he says with a grin not often seen on a professor.........

ben there, dan that

via wonderland

.....Aw this is so cute. Ben and Dan are two bedroom programmers - they made Gibbage - who have just turned out a point-and-click adventure starring Ben and Dan. Well, why not, if you're going to make your own games you might as well star in them. Plus, it's totally educational:.............

i haven't played the game yet myself. i can't vouch for it BUT you can't go wrong trusting wonderland. my new laptop should be here next week and then i SHOULD be able to resume some normal activities

this isn't right

plague of kittens

(shout out to boing boing)

you would think the LAST thing we need is ANOTHER computer game

you would be thinking wrong then
because there's ...
foldit

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. This page describes the science behind Foldit and how your playing can help.

from jane's e-learning pick of the day

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

Foldit uses spare computer time, via a screensaver, to work out how proteins fold. Proteins are the building blocks of life inside cells; they are first made as long chains of molecules and work properly only after they have folded into their final shape. But understanding the rules of protein folding remains one of biology's central problems. Players use their computers to fold proteins. The more chemically stable the folded protein becomes, the more points the players are awarded.

from kotaku

Foldit Makes Protein Folding A Game

Could you win a Nobel Prize in Medicine for playing a computer game? Foldit is a game for the PC and Mac that takes the Folding@Home concept and adds a more human element to the mix. Instead of having a network of computers work through all of the possible shapes for folding proteins, a problem so huge it could take centuries for all of the computers in the world to solve, Foldit presents unfolded proteins to the player in the form of puzzles, on the basis that human intuition could tackle the problem much faster.

"Some people are just able to look at the game and in less than two minutes, get to the top score," said (UW associate professor of computer science and engineering) Zoran Popovic. "They can't even explain what they're doing, but somehow they're able to do it."...........