Knit 1, Pwn 2: Learning Programming Via Knitting Games

Description: Illustration of a knitting work in progress of a heart
pattern using a knitting guide. Illustration courtesy Idea Studios.

Writing for Vice.com's Waypoint section, Nicole Carpenter muses on how knitting has connected her with two things very important to her: her grandmother, and computer programming. It's not as unlikely a connection as one might think, As she explains:

Knitting is an exercise of binary code: knit or purl. One or zero. Knitting patterns—and patterns for other yarn crafts—can be considered some of the first programming languages. 

"Computers ultimately started off partially inspired by weaving and the Jacquard loom," electrical engineering professor Karen Shoop of Queen Mary University in London told Mind/Shift in 2013. "Arguably, some of the earliest programmers were the people making paper punch hole patterns for weaving patterns."

While yarn and its aesthetics have been a part of video games over the years, present in titles like Yoshi's Woolly World or the more recent Unraveled, Carpenter explores designer April Grow's work  on two games that center on yarncrafting as actual game mechanics: Pattern and Threadsteading.

Both games use craft in its literal sense—the act of making something—as well as as a storytelling theme, in a more abstract way. They bridge the perceived gap between technology and craft, a perception that Shoop discusses, too: "I loved the fact that there is a perception—usually wrong—that there's a world of computer (soulless, technical, 'geeky') and a completely different domain such as knitting (traditional, 'female', craft)—yet there is a clear overlap." 

Pattern is knitting as binary made literal, using crochet as the craft of choice. Like knitting, crochet uses patterns. Grow's game intends to teach players to decipher a pattern's programming-like expressions; she wanted to highlight the math, systems, and equations she saw in crochet—the ones and the zeroes.

The entire article is an interesting exploration of the way knitting as a mechanic bridges the gap between technology, craft, code and personal memories. Read the whole article here.
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In Memory of the Late Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo

This is the official QR code for Iwata's Mii, usable in 2DS, 3DS
and Nintendo WiiU. 

Satoru Iwata, age 55, passed away last week. He started in game development for Nintendo, was appointed company president in 2002, and then assigned the role of CEO for Nintendo of Japan in 2013. He was not only the first CEO that was not a member of the company's founding Yamaguchi family to be given the position, but also the very first CEO to come to the position from a game development background.

His game development history started at HAL Laboratories, a company that has worked closely with Nintendo since the early '80s. His first game developed for Nintendo was the NES version of Baloon Fight. The character movement on the home console was so much smoother than the arcade version that the arcade developer ended up coming to Iwata for advice on how to improve the game!

This wasn't the only time his development prowess awed his team. Even when he was president of HAL, Iwata wasn't afraid to step in and do the heavy lifting on programming by himself to help out. When HAL was working on Earthbound for the Super NES, the development team kept running into lots of difficulty. Iwata, recalling the story in 2013, said he told the team

"I don’t think you’re going to be able to finish if you go on like this. I can help you if you would like but there are two ways to proceed. If we use what you have now and fix it, it will take two years. If we can start fresh, it’ll take half a year".

Iwata helped the team start from scratch and pitching in with the coding himself, revamped the code that Earthbound ran on in about a month.

When Super Smash Bros. Melee's release in 2001 looked uncertain due to stubborn bugs and glitches that threatened to overwhelm the development team and push back the game's release date, Iwata was moving into posh offices in Kyoto as the head of Nintendo's corporate planning. Instead of just letting the problem grow worse, he headed to HAL Laboratories in Yamanashi, and became the acting head debugger. As he told 4gamer:

"I did the code review, fixed some bugs, read the code and fixed more bugs, read the long bug report from Nintendo, figured out where the problem was, and got people to fix those.. All in all, I spent about three weeks like that. Because of that, the game made it out on time".

Not only a talented programmed, Iwata was also a passionate game player and compassionate boss. When asked why he didn't resort to layoffs in 2013 when Nintendo's financials looked shaky that year he said,"I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world." In a keynote speech in 2006, for the GDC, Iwata said about video games, "Video games are meant to be just one thing. Fun. Fun for everyone."

Reggie Fils-Amie, President and CEO of Nintendo of America released this statement:

"Mr. Iwata is gone, but it will be years before his impact on both Nintendo and the full video game industry will be fully appreciated. He was a strong leader for our company, and his attributes were clear to most everyone: Intelligence, creativity, curiosity and sense of humor. But for those of us fortunate enough to work closely with him, what will be remembered most were his mentorship and, especially, his friendship. He was a wonderful man. He always challenged us to push forward…to try the new…to upset paradigms—and most of all, to engage, excite and endear our fans. That work will continue uninterrupted."

Two More Great Tributes To Gary Gygax

There are two more great articles released in the wake of Gary Gyx's death that I wanted to call your attention to:

Jeremy Parish and the 1UP.com editorial staff compiled a wonderful article entitled Five Things Games Have Learned from Dungeons & Dragons that shows just what sort of far-reaching effects on video games and computer games Gary Gygax has wrought.

From the 1Up article:

It's taken three decades, but videogames are finally catching on to one of the most fundamental elements of D&D: emergent gameplay. Because the rules and guidebooks for the tabletop game were merely a suggestion, a set of conditions and constraints for building an adventure, the actual content and outcome of every group and every session varied wildly. This wasn't a matter of the random math, though -- it was the human factor. The dungeon master was a sort of guide, nudging the heroes in the right direction and adapting rapidly when they strayed. Not surprisingly, videogames have generally kind of sucked at this. The computer serves as a dungeon master by proxy for the creators, and computers aren't known for their boundless imagination. But they're catching up thanks to canny design. MMOs are very much the successors to D&D, bringing people together to deal with the randomness that results from so many real players gathered in a single place (not to mention the occasional interference of the game masters). But even smaller-scale games like Battlefield and Halo 3 have become sandboxes for goofing around, and single-player games like The Sims and Grand Theft Auto give players enough freedom to make their own fun.

And Wired has a great article chronicling the life of Gary Gygax, and includes lots of little-known games and some photos from Gygax's family. A choice personal bit of trivia from the article:

Gygax and a few of his buddies carried that DIY spirit even further, devising a game of their own around WWII tank combat. He was determined that his game would avoid the "goofy bell curve"that resulted from rolling a pair of six-sided dice (2s and 12s are rare, while 6s, 7s, and 8s are comparatively frequent). To achieve a more linear curve, he determined that players must pluck 1 of 20 numbered poker chips from a hat, so that there was an equal 5 percent probability of each outcome. Gygax later found the perfect replacement for this clunky system: In a school supply catalog, he discovered dice shaped like all of the Platonic solids, including the icosahedron: A 20-sided die.

But don't just take my word for it; check 'em out!

Remembering Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons

Last week, Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, the grandfather of tabletop roleplaying games, passed away at the age of 69.

On a personal level, news of his passing made me very sad. I had hoped to meet him at GenCon some day, shake his hand, and thank him for creating a product that had such a profound impact on not just the person I am today, but the writer I strove to become. The house I live in now, with the friends I have down here in Texas, I would not have if it was not for D&D. My work with RPGX? A fellow D&D player in our gaming group introduced me to RPGX's head honcho. One of my best friends, a man who became ordained just so he could be the one to officiate at my wedding was someone I first got to know via a few sessions where he ran some amazing Dungeons and Dragons games.

Tributes have been pouring in from all over the 'net in ways personal, profound, profane, hilarious, and heart-warming.

Here's a run down of some of the best tributes:

Web comics:

• The Order of the Stick
• Penny Arcade
• Full Frontal Nerdity
• XKCD
• Dork Tower
  

Online Communities:

• Metafilter
  
• RPGX.org
• RPG.net
• Gary Gygax Facts
• Worst Forums Ever

Also of note are three illuminatingt looks at Gygax: a cute interview with Gygax from 2001,
and video of Gygax reflecting upon the influence of D&D in the movie Uber Goober: A Film About Gamers, and an article about Gygax from The Believer published September 2006.

Every tabletop or fantasy gamer owes this man a debt of gratitude. I'd say if you're a nerd of any stripe, you probably have a memory of your first encounter with Dungeons and Dragons.

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