Futur-E-Scapes

Living Game Worlds IV

October 22nd, 2008

The fourth annual “Living Game Worlds” will be held December 1 and 2. It is presented by Georgia Tech’s GVU Center and the Graduate Program in Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture,and the Experimental Game Lab.

FES WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE.

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From MSSM to KVCC: FES Prelude

June 5th, 2008

This is part two of my month long series about my work. Part one can be found here “From WVU to MSSM” and sets up what follows.

While I had a crazy idea brewing in my brain dealing with Video Games and Education, an idea which could eventually revolutionize education, while I await the revolution, this modern day educational Che Guevara had to pay the bills. And for me paying the bills means teaching and for me teaching means love…

Previous to formally receiving my PhD but after defending, I obtained a job at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (AAC) teaching “Topics in Physics” or as I like to call it “Physics for Artists”. At the same time, I was hired by Northern Kentucky University (NKU) for one term as the person they had lined up did not get her Visa in time and thus they hired me (I guess they like foreigners!). At NKU, I was in charge of teaching Thermodynamics and Astronomy. This was a great time for me for I did not even have my PhD and yet I was teaching at two schools for two widely different audiences. At AAC, I relied on “The Cartoon Guide to Physics” by Larry Gonik, which I felt was a great textbook for the class, very visual and very amusing and very non-mathematical. At NKU, we had a more traditional course with traditional textbooks and traditional math. It was great to be at NKU as I taught at AAC for I could borrow equipment from them (such as dry ice, Van-de Graff Generators, and Air Tracks) and perform fun demos for my students at AAC. Likewise, having to take all of math out of Physics for my students at AAC as well as trying to reach an artistic, visual audience was a real learning experience and helped me understand myself, teaching, and physics better.

By the summer of 2002, I had formally received my PhD, but really didn’t have a job. Fortunately, NKU liked my performance so much that they decided to take me on as a Non-Renewable Non-Tenure Track (NR-NTT) adjunct which, to me, meant this was a job, not an opportunity for advancement or permanency (This assumption would eventually bite me in the ass). From 2002 through 2004, I taught three courses: a Trigonometry Based Introductory Physics class, a Trigonometry Based Intermediate Physics class, and an Algebra Based Introductory Physics class. This was the first time I had a full time class load and I loved it. I had a rough time at first though.

For example, during the first semester I taught, I had a bunch of biology students who would constantly complain about the workload. I would assign 20 problems to do over two weeks and in ANY Physics class this is normal and minimal: I simply can’t have them understand the material with any less. However, they would constantly berate me as to how unfair this was, as to how they were bio not phys and so why should they do this, blah, blah, blah. One day, I “lost it” (very uncharacteristic for me) and stated: “The content and what we do in class is not up to public vote. Understand that this class is not a democracy… This is a DICTATORSHIP AND I AM EL GENERALISIMO!”. Yikes. No fallout from this comment but much amusement among the staff and class. While I had incidents like this which I just chalked up to learning the ropes, I still excelled by my virtue of my teaching style. I have lots of energy and enthusiasm and I love teaching and I love Physics and this definitely carried through in my all classes. I was also an innovator. In 2003, I bought my TabletPC and hooked it up to the class projector. This was a great tool for it allowed me to write and edit class material such as equation solving and content, on the computer and while LOOKING at the students, never turning around and having my back to them as I would have done with a WhiteBoard. Eventually, I managed to use my TabletPC’s wireless card to project the screen directly to the projector and thus I would walk around class with my TabletPC in hand, solving equations, writing down content, all the while walking around the class and on occasion giving the Tablet to students for them to interact. I never had to erase the board and everything I wrote was saved permanently and I could post them on my website when I was done so students had access to EVERYTHING I wrote as soon as class was over. Students responded really well to this approach and it really solidified our Physics department as “high tech”. I also had the opportunity to do several outreach programs such as a Summer Science Camp for grades 5 through 7 inner school children and a special retreat for Hispanic youth (which my good friend Rebeccas (AND OLIVIAS) brother Ben attended and it was pretty neat seeing him there). These are fun events for it lets me try to reach and solidify what I believe is a childs natural love of science and discovery before life and hormones bitch-slaps these precious elements away from them.

In any case, 2004 was the end of many things. In May, I was told that I would not be rehired for a third term.

Since local schools weren’t hiring, I decided to try something else out: online teaching. Didn’t really know if Physics was taught online, but I was pretty sure that Math would be. So while it took me some time to tap into the online market, I eventually found, applied, and was accepted into the ITT online program to teach introductory math. It was pathetic. The classes were little more than discussion forums with email. No homework to turn in, no math to speak of, and the questions asked on the forums were sad. I basically “milked” ITT for all they were worth and did the best I could for my students with what I had, but the old theory of SISO applied (shit in; shit out) and there was no helping that ITT was putting shit in for teaching and so shit came out for learning. So while I taught for them for most of 2004, I didnt enjoy it and didnt get much out of it and the program was eventually disbanded in 2005 as a failure.

However, around summer 2004, I responded to a email request for a Video Game Online instructor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC) and I responded and they liked what they saw (how I got into Video games will be made clear in the next installment “From MSSM to MMUSCLE”). Point is that this little old physicist ended up teaching Video Game Design and the Business of Video Games for a little ol school up north and I LOVED it. It is the first time they have offered this class so I have a real opportunity to effect change and make a difference. I met some wonderful students in the class (some of which are reading this right now!) from all walks of life and we had some really fun discussions. The classes themselves where not as smooth as I felt they could be (for they were not designed by me and it shows: the choice of books for The Business class was abysmal) and given that it was the first time offered, its not surprising that some adjustments will have to be made for next time. But I have already been given the position to teach it again next year in the fall and I welcome it and will give some thought over the summer to how we can improve this already wonderful class.

But wait! Theres more! Next week, I start to teach an Online Physics class for Ellis College, part of the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). While its more accurately a “natural philosophy” class and will touch upon chemistry and other fields, its the first science class that I will be teaching online and I am very excited. There educational platform is fairly robust and should be pretty fun. They also provide a textbook (which I have to return when Im done… so weird) which is good and the content and the flow seem pretty good. This will be a very good learning opportunity for me to see how science teaching transcends into the online world as well as to experience yet another way that another school does things.

Also (did I say I was done?), Im currently in a four week training program to teach a Math for Game Programmers class for DeVry. This is great for DeVry is a VERY strong school, they pay incredibly well ($2700 for an eight week class), and this could be an opportunity to teach other physics and/or science classes for them. While they have strict limits on how many classes you can teach for them, I could still stand to gain an easy $20K teaching for them and more interestingly, another instructor is Mark Baldwin who in the eighties created a game called EMPIRE! For those of you into video wargames, you will recognize this game as a classic, as a legend, and it is really amazing that he is going to be teaching the same class as I and its really amazing that I would get to meet him as equals (a 30 year veteran vs. a 4 year newbie!).

Finally (now Im done), I am also applying to teaching Physics for the Art Institute Online!

The reason why I have to apply to so many schools is because all online classes are assigned based on attendance and need and thus there is no guarantee that I will get ANY classes during any period. Thus I have to have as many online gigs under my belt as possible to guarantee a steady cash flow. And here is the punch line: if I can keep even one class from each of the above schools, I could pull in $70k a year doing a 50 hour a week job that realistically would only take maybe 20 hours of concentrated effort a week. Uncertain, but worth it!! And this frees me up to do my REAL work, the one that will earn me MUCH more than $70k a year once realized…

…but that is a story for next time.

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From WVU to MSSM: FES Prelude

June 5th, 2008

As promised, this month I will be talking about my work and career. I will start at the start by discussing that which constantly inspires me and has carried me along and yet I do the least current development in: Theoretical Particle Physics.

UNDERGRADUATE: WVU

I received my undergraduate at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WVa where I had spent the better part of my teenage years. Being a university town I was no stranger to WVU and as a high school senior, actually joined AFROTC. This was the he actual, not the junior version. I went to the registrar to sign up for a University class called “Aerospace Engineering” because I liked planes and I later found out that I would REALLY have to like planes. Still, I stuck with it for a number of years. I spent my senior year Thursday lunches changing into my uniform in the bathroom then attending English class with Mrs. Capage — who eventually would became my brother’s mother-in-law — and then setting out to AFROTC lab. After two years, I had to make a decision to stick with the Air Force (problematic for I wasn’t a citizen) or go into Physics full bore (less problematic, but math has never been my strong suit). I chose Physics and all in all I had a good undergrad stay, worked on some projects with Dr. Myers and was helped along by Dr. Rotter (father of my good friend at the time Dave). After undergrad, The University of Cincinnati was the only school that took me into their graduate program (for in my ignorance, I only applied to 5 schools instead of 50 since I didn’t care to waste my parent’s money on application fees). I really would rather have gone out west which is why Matt and I borrowed his parents van and spent over a month traveling through the Dakotas, Washington, Cali, etc… but that’s a story for another time. This is how I ended up back in Cincinnati, for I had been here before (’77-’80).

MASTERS: UC

As in all US physics PhD graduate programs, you spend the first two years doing no research and just taking classes and taking it all in. It was about the second week of the program that I discovered just how out of my league I was. I had gotten consistent A’s and B’s in my physics classes at WVU but I soon understood my first physics lesson — “everything is relative” — as those grades meant nothing as to my actual understanding or practice of physics. Grueling, horrible times lay ahead and this is actually the last time I cried: when it was just all too much and I thought I couldn’t do it and I would have to abandon my dreams, my self, my image… I remember it so vividly: the sky was crying with me that day and I tried to hold back the tears but once a single raindrop fell, I could no longer contain the storm inside of me and the downpour flowed and raged. But I eventually punched through the classes and self-doubt by simultaneously learning the new material while re-learning the old (and the re- part is a gross overstatement) and passing my courses.

At the end of these two years, right after summer, came the Qualifiers, a series test covering the core Physics subjects: Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electrodynamics, and Solid State. Five subjects, three days, 4 hours a day. —– I studied, I tried, I failed. —— I fought with the department over this decision. I started blaming everyone else but the one responsible and once I found out who was really responsible and placed the blame squarely on my shoulders, I moved on. For these tests were given again in winter, a chance to redeem myself. I studied WAY harder, this time actually going to my professors for help (I know I know, it’s one of my intrinsic faults that I think I can do everything by myself), this time actually following others advice, and this time actually passing.

PHD: UC

Thus, by spring 1998 I was formally in the PhD program. I chose as my advisor Dr. Peter Suranyi in the area of theoretical particle physics. I initially wanted to do relativity with either Dr. Esposito or Dr. Witten but I know they sensed I did not have the mathematical know-how to cut it in those fields (and I know I didn’t as well). All the same, I was very excited at the work that Peter did: he was doing work on the Standard Model of Particle Physics and how to extend it to solve problems within this model. However, soon after I joined his team and we completed our first paper together, a paper that would ultimately be my thesis, Peter took a sabbatical to Oxford, England and I, being the precocious scamp that I am, invited myself along. That too is a story for another time, those seven months of being in the presence of some of the most intelligent beings I have ever met (and me just being me and not them) and most of them no older than 23 (and I was almost 26 at the time and those three years were a HUGE difference) and those seven months ending my relationship with Beth back home but starting my two months in Europe with Carly. So after nine months of untold history, I’m back in the states and I have progressed some on our new work on Quantum Chromo Dynamics, the physics of the atomic nucleus, but it would never get far. A stupid mistake on my part set my life in a whirl (a mistake that I am not ashamed to talk about, but not here, not now and thank you Sarah my love for sticking by me and staying with me during this time) and put me in a dark place for almost a full year. All the same I kept working, kept trying to crack this new nut until finally one day Peter confronts me and tells me that I should start writing my dissertation on the paper we had written at the beginning of my program. I was dejected, for I felt like a loser for not being able to complete this new project, but also excited for I had direction and I could finally focus on my PhD (BTW, my classmate Athula Heart and Peter kept working on this problem and finally cracked it two years later).

So, what was my Dissertation? It’s entitled “Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model parameter space exclusion by analyzing metastable scalar vacuum configurations“[1] and regrettably each terms requires a bit of explanation and I encourage you have www.wikipedia.org handy as you read this:

In Particle Physics, we have what is called a “Standard Model”. This model (note: a model is not reality… it is scientific maya… it is truth only as we see it) organizes and categorizes all the particles and interactions of the known universe, though perhaps more accurately of the known earth, into a two distinct and elegant categories: Bosons (integer spin) or Fermions (half-integer spins). The fermions represent matter and are further broken down into leptons such as the electron and neutrinos and the quarks that make up the proton and neutron. The bosons represent forces and include the photon (Electrical/Magnetic force; i.e. “light”), the gluon (Strong Nuclear force), and the W and Z (Weak Nuclear Force). The graviton associated with Gravity has been theorized but yet been found. AND THAT’S IT: two types of matter particles (leptons and quarks) and four types of forces carriers (photons, gluons, W/Z /Z-, graviton). That’s the universe in nutshell; the nutshell that was the big bang. But all is not well. This model is jenga-esque in a lot of ways… adding a new block or taking one away threatens to always topple the whole structure. And in this case, it’s the mass of the very object responsible for giving mass to other particles — the Higgs mass — that is unstable and threatens the Standard Model. Enter the MSSM to the rescue.

The MSSM is the acronym for the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model. It’s principle is simple: much like we have anti-particles that create partners to all particles by “flipping” the charge — for example, turning a negative electron into a positive anti-electron — this model proposes to create another set of partners to each particle by “flipping” the spin (to all you physicists, I know this is a poor choice of words). In other words, we assign a bosonic integer spin (0, 1, 2, 3, …) partner to every fermionic half-integer spin (1/2, 3/2, 5/2, …) particle and vice-versa. So the fermionic (1/2 spin) electron gains the seleptron (1 spin) and the bosonic photon (spin 0) gains the fermionic photino (spin ½). Now do this with every particle in the Standard Model and you have the MSSM and I won’t go into HOW this solves problems, but it does.

But the universal law of jenga must be obeyed and that leads us to my thesis. Adding all these partners to the model comes at a high cost: over 100 new parameters must be added to the model to describe all the interactions that all these new particles have with each other as well as with the original particles as well as with the anti-particles as well as with the force carriers! These parameters are undefined and we have no way to pin them down, but we can narrow the scope of our search, which is the core of my thesis.

We can reduce this “parameter space”, this space of over 100 new parameters, so that we are only dealing with 5 parameters out of the hundred. We do this by invoking several tricks which I won’t mention, but it’s akin to looking at at the heartbeat of a person to see if they are alive and ignoring the other organs. Then, we do the coolest thing in my thesis: in a computer, we start plugging in values for these five parameters and see if they will lead to the universe blowing up. That’s right, these five parameters lead to what is known as a “metastable” vacuum and under certain combination of parameters will actually lead to what is known as a “false vacuum” which would (quite literally) pull the rug out from under the universe and cause the ground energies of particles to plummit and this would have “explosive” results. So if we have a set of parameters that leads to the universe blowing up AND this event occurred in the past (before our current age of 15 billion years), then the values assigned to that set of parameters CANNOT be true for we are very much alive and stable (this is known as the Anthropic Principle). Now if the blow up occurs in the future or if it doesn’t occur at all, then we can’t say that these are in fact the true values or not so the best we can do is “exclude” the region we know can’t be real, the region that blows up in the past, and leave the other regions for further investigation. Below is a graph from my dissertation as an example: the axis represent the parameters we are investigating. Each circle represents a set of parameters we put into the computer that did not lead to the universe blowing up or blew up in the future. Every “X” represents a set of parameters where the universe DID blow up in the past. Hence, the region under the dashed line is our best estimate for a region in parameter space that is “excluded”, that can’t be real because if it were, we wouldn’t be here to draw the graph.

I defended my PhD in December 2001 on the eve of my 29^th birthday. I chose a time after lunch, opened up all the windows so that it was cool inside the room (since I knew I would overheat during the presentation and it ensure a maximum number of people would fall asleep), and I made sure to make my presentation as flashy as possible for all that stayed awake. I passed with flying colors (did I mention I love presenting and I’m actually good at it?) and formally received my PhD in July of 2002. It was around this time that I began teaching at local Schools and became interested in MMOGs…

…but that is a story for next time (From MSSM to KVCC).

[1] Both my Thesis and my Presentation will seem garbled because they require MathType to be installed; I’m working on fixing this for it hurts me to see such beautiful work garbled up.

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IMGD 2008

March 31st, 2008

The Independent MMO Game Developers conference was held in Minneapolis, Minnisota on March 29-30, 2008.

It is a new name for the IMGDC conference that debuted last year.

FES was in attendance.

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SGS/GDC 2008

February 20th, 2008

The Serious Games Summit was held in conjunction with the Game Developer’s Conference 2008 in San Francisco, California February 18th through the 22nd.

This is earlier than most other GDC’s and the second time that it was held in San Francisco.

FES was in attendance.

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I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase Submission 2007

September 11th, 2007

We recently submitted the following to the I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase and Challenge contest.

http://www.futur-e-scape.com/walkthrough.pdf

Wish us luck!!

Actual entry into our world to follow; in the meantime, all comments are welcome!

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IMGDC 2007

April 16th, 2007

The first (hopefully annual) Indie Massively multi-player Games Development conference transpired on April 14th through the 15th 2007.

http://www.mmogamedev.info/

This very under-publicized conference (at least to me) was held in beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beautiful the weather, beautiful the people, and beautiful the conference.

Day one’s keynote was GG’s CEO Josh Williams who reinforced the importance of the Indie game maker in today’s market and society. I was actually NOT at that keynote because I had a late night that Friday (I’m telling you, beautiful night life) but I heard it was heavy on the Indie and light on the MMO

I did however make it for the sessions. The layout was simple: two tracks, business and design. Two formats, class and roundtable.

That day was spent learning the basics of business plans and round-tabling about the role of a producer in an Indie game development company. We also learned of Georgia Tech’s Celia Pearce current work on “mermaids” as wells as a good talk on in-game advertising (a concept I was the only one to raise their hands as patently rejecting their use in my game but I was not so sure of that by the end of the talk!).

Saturday night was the usual drunken orgy of debauchery and sticky mistakes that happen after most conference… full of the types of events that you hope will stay back with the conference, but never do, never do. Ok, it was bit more toned down. Ok, actually, I didn’t make it to the after-party at “1st Avenue” since I would be there for blonde redhead the next day but I hear it was fun. So it “could” have been scandalous, right? I mean you can’t pack that much passion into four walls of sound and not have something happen, but hey what do I know, I wasn’t there.

In any case day two was the money. 9am: Dr. Richard Bartle. Did not miss that one, would not miss it for the biggest baddest hangover/walk of shame I could have had that morning (could have, not saying I had either). This one was heavy on the Indie, heavy on the MMO.

Dr. Bartle was positively gushy about the prospects of Indie MMOs at the present. He made an effective case for this by citing the last Indie MMO conference… one that I had NEVER heard of: 1989’s Adventure conference in Bartle’s own home of Sussex, England. He drew distinct comparisons between the factors around the explosion of commercial and Indie MUDs at the end of the 80’s and what is going on now with MMOs, especially or perhaps exclusively with Indie MMO. He went on to say that most of the people at that conference went on to do great things. He expected the same out of our group and went on to say that of the maybe 100 people there, two would stand out as leaders of the field in this field and go on and do great things (though I don’t remember if they were “great things” in a Voldemort kinda way though). He admitted to not knowing WHICH two but basing his prediction what happened with Adventure 89 attendees.

The highlight of the later sessions was again Dr. Bartle and his Slaughterhouse roundtable. In it, Dr. Bartle challenged us to “slay the sacred cows” of Virtual Worlds or to keep them in, but always question why you took that decision. I think we managed to talk of at least 5 cows to slay which is a good way to hone Vonnegut’s passing earlier that week. On the cow of “space”: Should Virtual Worlds be discrete or continuous? 2D or 3D? What about maps? Is space needed for a Virtual World? And these are just the calves of one slain cow! A great discussion was had about the meaning of space, persistence, identity and other fundamentals of Virtual Worlds. The other standout for me that evening was Eric Rheas discussion of cash flow. Using his efforts and company as a foundation, he went on to give practical advice on getting multiple cash revenue streams around your company/product as Indies. The tangent discussion of remote teams and business models was very informative for all as well.

The conference was sponsored by Multiverse and organized by Jonathon Stevens of local Last Straw productions. As the former are currently making a full MMO platform (currently at Beta 2) and the later does Virtual World consulting, they had a lot to say and offer to the discussion at hands. They were not pushy of their technology or services at all. Rafhael Cedeno’s talk about scalability and your business plan effectively turned into a Q&A about the Multiverse engine but also about general MMO concepts and Rafh was the first to want to discuss other MMO solutions (such as Bigworld or Keneva) as a way to motivate discussion. Rafh and Ron Meiners were present and helpful during the whole conference and did a great job of representing Multiverse at the event while Jonathon was just a blur of activity that you “think” you see out the corner of your eye, but you can’t be sure. I sure hope he has a few days rest coming up!

It was a personally invigorating conference. I have never been prouder of what I’m doing right now thanks to Dr. Bartle’s keynote. I can’t really say that about any other conference except perhaps my first Serious Games Summit. A feeling of “these are my people!”, that you are not alone, and that people are coming together to form community and support networks. As any first conference, there were the typical gremlins of tech problems and miscommunication. But the crowd was so into the conference that these minor annoyances did nothing to deter the lively communication and cross pollination of ideas in the hallways during the conference or during lunch at Jimmy Johns or wherever two attendees met!

Will there be another? This topic came up as Dr. Bartle and I were walking out of the Convention Center after the last talk of the last day. It was an unusually beautiful day and walking out into the sun temporarily blinded me. Upon recovery, I offered my opinion that since Multiverse was sponsoring and they are only in Beta, they still have release coming; so I’m sure there will be AT LEAST one more. Can’t wat!

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Living Game Worlds IV

From MSSM to KVCC: FES Prelude

From WVU to MSSM: FES Prelude

IMGD 2008

SGS/GDC 2008

I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase Submission 2007

IMGDC 2007

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