Justin's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Another nice easy trip home.  Hopping on the 35 bus at half past six this morning (GMT) and pulling into my driveway in Wolcott by 2pm.  I have  had much longer trips home from places east of the Mississippi let alone the west coast!  Kara must be home, Continental delivered me to Newark the best part of half an hour early.

On the flight back I discovered this little gem that I didn’t know was even on my computer!  I’m quite a fan of puzzle games and this one is perfect for planes.  Look and see if you have Microsoft Tinker!

Now it’s back to getting the world up and running on Therap!

:: Justin ::

OK, it’s not a Christmas game, but it is a game and it is yuletide.

Although I was disheartened to read the intro on the 19th Floor: “There are no homicidal zombies or vengeful aliens to be found here”. “Boo”, “Hiss” says I in best panto style.

However it is actually a whole lot of fun, so stop working and go play Auditorium. 

:: Justin::

This is really cool.  Now when you are using Stu’s Double Jeopardy, you can name your teams (less chance of me messing up!)

In my case they may be called Kent, Sussex, New Castle or East, Central, Mountain/Pacific.

Whatever it is, this is a great new feature for a wonderful training tool.

:: Justin ::

For many, many months now I have been on a selfless quest to find you all a game as entertaining, addictive and generally productivity destroying as Desktop Tower Defense.

But to no avail.  There have been so goodies:  Vectoroids and the latest Bloons are pretty cool, but they are no DTD.

However, with apologies to Warren for the guns and gore, this might just have a chance.

Thanks to Niall via Facebook and Mushkush I present:

 

Click here to lose an hour or two!

Let me know what you think, I am having way too much fun!

:: Justin ::

We are now getting rather close to next week’s conference in Overland Park, Kansas (right next to Kansas City) that we are running alongside The College of Direct Support.

As well as putting the finishing touches on the schedule, we are also putting together our evening activities.  We’ll be adding to our existing video games night with some new games, and also taking a look out there at what’s cheaply (or freely) available on your PC.

Not only is this a whole lot of fun, but after playing all these games you may well discover that learning to play Guitar Hero has a really positive impact on the way you work with your staff and support people with disabilities.

See you in Kansas!

:; Justin ::

I have played a lot of asteroids clones over the years, most of them annoy me just about as much as the original one did that ate all of my 10p bits up at the Electronic Experience on Lothian Road.

This one however is a lot of fun.  You can bounce off the asteroids for a while which is much better and the sounds and explosions and very satisfying.

Give it a try, it’ll only cost you a few hours!

:: Justin ::

For some reason Iona asked for a video game yesterday, other than several versions of Dance Dance Revolution this was pretty much a first so we complied and picked up a copy of Super Smash Brothers or some such for the Wii.

I am not entirely sure, but jumping around all over the place attempting to beat up your daughter, her boyfriend, and your wife, is really rather amusing! (especially when you are wearing a tiara)

Now if I only knew how to actually control my character!

:: Justin ::

PS If you want a shot at this or more fun, better show up at the Nurses and Clinician’s Conference!

Today we launched the latest version of our DSP on Plant Ehtpar video game. It’s really cool and you should really go and take a look.

One of the interesting things about this version is that it introduces to you all a character you have probably heard about many times if you have attended live or web based Therap Training sessions: Mary Active.

The interesting question for us, is how do we represent Mary? Should she have an obvious disability? Should she use a wheelchair?

If we were to choose to have Mary use a wheelchair, would that be exploiting a stereotype, or recognizing the fact that a lot of the individuals whose data is recorded in Therap happen to use wheelchairs?

We also have to bear in mind that for the game player it should be easy and obvious to distinguish between characters in the games and what their roles are.

While I have always been a champion of People First Language and do my very best to police Therapville and enforce it, this is a new twist that I have never had to work with before.

We would really like to know what you think and it’s something we’ll be discussing both on our Forum and at our conferences, so please, let us know what you think.

:: Justin ::

If you haven’t tried our new 3D game “DSP on Planet Ehtpar” you need to! It’s great!

You can play it here.

:: Justin ::

Have you checked out all the cool stuff on our games page?

You can get there by going to Support.TherapServices.net, going to the training menu and choosing Therap Games.

There you will find a whole bunch of scavenger hunts that you can do yourself or run as a training activity.

You’ll also find version 0.0.1 (sounds like an early draft!) of our E-Quiz. Keep an eye on that because I have had a preview aof the next version which is looking really cool.

We really think that games are a very powerful way to train people and are looking at all sorts of exciting ideas for the future. So don’t forget to get involved in the discussion about them over on Therap Ideas.

:: Justin ::

PS I took the screenshot above using FireShot, a free Firefox plugin! You can click on it to see it in all its glory!