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Simulation Articles
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Storytelling in Computer Games: Past, Present, and Future
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XYZZY News features transcripts and audio downloads of a 2 hour panel discussion on the history and future of computer games. Game designer Scott Adams (not the cartoonist) describes his experiences in the early days of the home game market, offers his opinions on the current crop of games, and makes predictions about games of the future. Scott is credited with writing and marketing the first commercial computer game. Dennis Jertz says, "Computer-mediated storytelling has always been about what you do, right here and now, while you are sitting at the keyboard. That's where the story comes from. It's not about what somebody else did, once upon a time, in a land far, far away."
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Sep-06-01 09:43 AM
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1 Votes
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Rating: 10.0
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Companies Use Simulation to Pitch Products
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Simulation games are emerging at a time when Web surfers largely ignore more conventional forms of advertising. The games, ranging from simple, two-minute diversions to more sophisticated and addictive Web-based fare, help hawk everything from dandruff shampoo to big-budget movies. Many of the new games are viral, meaning that they permit players to spread the games by e-mail to friends. So far, companies using advertising games say they have been well received by consumers, citing online surveys. More important, the companies say, the games have been effective.
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Sep-03-01 12:39 PM
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Military Simulations
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Michael Macedonia, the Chief Scientist and Technical Director for the U.S. Army Simulation explains how valuable simulation is to the military, "With our gunnery training simulation, you can fire tank rounds day and night because they're virtual tank rounds; they don't cost you any money so you just fire virtual tank rounds all day long. We took those soldiers out and we put them in a real tank together after using the simulation, and these folks went and beat everybody in tank gunnery imaginable. Everybody said, "How did these soldiers get so good?" Well, because they spent literally days and weeks inside this gunnery trainer perfecting their gunnery skills, as opposed to the typical training where the soldiers go out and they fire a couple rounds a day when they're in training. If you look at the future, your training system suddenly becomes your mission-planning system. Before I go attack that hill, I'm going to run a simulation of it with my squad over the next 10 minutes, and we're just going to simulate it and we're going to do it virtually while we're waiting here for orders to move out. Before you do anything you go out and you run a simulation."
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Sep-03-01 12:20 PM
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Grandmothers are Cooler than Trolls
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Gonzalo Frasca discovered that the problem of simulating reality is that it can easily become too real. After playing The Sims for a few weeks, Frasca spent many days cleaning his virtual house up, while his own apartment was left untouched. Frasca claims that as soon as you simulate human behavior on a computer, things go awry. The Sims' most powerful statement is that human life, both on its personal and social levels, can be simulated.
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Aug-04-01 10:30 AM
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Climate Research: The Devil Is in the Details
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NEW YORK TIMES FREE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Models of the earth's climate simulate not only the air but also the oceans and other features including shifting ice and glaciers, vegetation, and the soils. The most important research for climate simulations is now at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, near London. Simulations have improved substantially in the last few years, with many no longer requiring "flux adjustments," fudge factors that were once needed to prevent the simulations from drifting out of the realm of the possible.
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Jul-06-01 02:01 PM
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Here Comes Hyperinnovation
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In this article from Strategy+Business, Michael Schrage explains why the world's most innovative firms have invested in tools and technologies that let them model, prototype, and simulate new ideas and innovations. The costs of prototyping decisions, simulating services, and modeling business systems are rapidly declining. The result of these prototyping cost reductions is Hyperinnovation. Companies like Boeing, Dell, DaimlerChrysler, Industrial Light & Magic, and Federal Express have discovered how to quickly and successfully bring innovations to market by rapidly iterating through prototypes using simulation.
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Jul-02-01 07:34 PM
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1 Votes
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Rating: 9.0
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Dynamic Competitive Simulation: Wargaming as a Strategic Tool
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In a war game, teams of the managers play their own company, against simulated competitors and the marketplace. Booz-Allen identifies four real-world conditions that make competitive simulations useful: 1. your decisions will influence the decisions of competing firms, 2. market reactions are partly unpredictable, 3. the problem can change over time, 4. the problem you are analyzing has so many dimensions that it is difficult to analyze all the possible interactions that might take place.
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Jun-28-01 12:42 PM
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1 Votes
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Rating: 1.0
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Spreadsheet Simulations and Prototyping
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Michael Schrage describes how spreadsheet prototyping revolutionized computing. Schrage claims that a genuinely creative spreadsheet simulation evokes a "suspension of disbelief" that activates the adrenal glands along with the mind. Models turn out to be more about mediating interactions between people than mediating interaction between information. Spreadsheet simulations are also successful because they have a short "Mean Time to Payback." Dan Bricklin, cocreator of VisiCalc, attributes the success of the spreadsheets to the financial analysts who believed that the system paid for itself in under a week.
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May-31-01 10:25 AM
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2 Votes
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Rating: 9.5
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Learning From The Sims
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J.C. Hertz, a reporter from The Industry Standard, writes how Maxis, with meticulous attention to usability, has been able to make The Sims one of the most popular simulations of all time. Hertz cites two important lessons for other simulation creators: 1. User interaction is more important that graphics and 2. Online businesses need to show benefit from becoming more interconnected, as their customer base grows.
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May-22-01 03:41 PM
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The Anatomy of a Simulation Game
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Don Hopkins summarizes a talk by Will Wright (the designer of SimCity) where Wright describes the anatomy of a simulation game. He breaks a simulation down into four parts: the simulation model, the game play, the user interface, and the user's model. Surprisingly, some of the cause-and-effect relationships that people perceive in SimCity aren't really there. SimCity successfully fools people into believing that it is more sophisticated than it actually is. To quote Hopkins, "Implication is more efficient than simulation." Reinforcing this point, Hopkins quotes an article where Wright was asked something like, "Which ontological urban paridigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play." Hopkins also does an interesting post mortem on other Maxis simulations explaining that SimEarth was too complex for most users, SimAnt too simple, and SimCity just right.
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May-14-01 10:45 AM
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2 Votes
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Rating: 10.0
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Is Simulation Better than Experience?
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Three McKinsey consultants argue that experience may not always be the best teacher. The reason is that in real-life, cause-and-effect relationships are blurred because real-time is too slow. Using simulation to collapse time and space may be the best way to change people's understanding and behavior. From The McKinsey Quarterly.
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Apr-13-01 11:09 AM
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4 Votes
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Rating: 8.5
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A Skeptic's Guide to Computer Models
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John Sterman, Director of the System Dynamics Group at MIT explains that the best use of computer models is to improve our own internal mental models of the way the world works. Computer modeling is an essential part of the educational process rather than a technology for producing answers.
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Apr-12-01 07:37 PM
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1 Votes
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Rating: 10.0
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A self-paced guide to learning system dynamics
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System dynamics is the simulation modeling methodolgy that underlies Forio's business simulations. Road Maps is an on-line guide for learning the basics of system dynamics. Provided by MIT's System Dynamics Group with several articles by Jay Forrester, the orginator of system dynamics.
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Apr-12-01 07:28 PM
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2 Votes
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Rating: 10.0
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