On the weekend of August 29-31, teams of game developers will join the OLPC Physics Game Jam in a race to create a unique physics-based game for the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop.

An OLPC Jam is a sort of intense workathon where developers, artists, and other 'creatives' throw themselves at a problem over a short space of time. Previous Jams have created educational and medical resources for use with the OLPC in developing countries and the organisers are confident that the talented geeks putting themselves forward for the Physics Game Jam will come up with something special.

All the code will be open source, so it is not impossible that the games created in the Jam will see the light of day in web-based games or other platforms down the line.

If you have any coding, game design or artistic chops and fancy helping out, get in touch here. There are prizes — including XO laptops and other goodies — for the best creations, plus a lovely warm feeling from helping a good cause.

OLPC Physics Game Jam For an XO [Slashdot]

I'm sure by now most everyone has heard of the one laptop, one child program. Back in 2002 an MIT professor travelling in Cambodia was struck with the idea of getting affordable, durable, low-energy laptops into the hands of every child in the world. To do this he helped found One Laptop per Child, which worked to create a cheap laptop which met those needs.

The XO is that laptop. The XO is hard drive free, has a very low power consuming screen and super powerful Wi-Fi antennas, but the neatest this is the XO's design, which features a "transformer hinge", allows it to function as an educational laptop, and e-reader and even a gaming device. The laptop features what appear to be a D-pad and perhaps a thumbstick of some sort built into the front of the case on either side of the screen, according to the site.

Read More »

Speaking of SimCity, here's a summary of a talk by Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces for Simulation. Among other things, Wright addresses the question of exposing the simulation model, which often comes up in criticisms of the game (after the jump).

Read More »

One Laptop Per Child fans probably know that today is the first day of the Give One Get One program. Donate $US 399 to provide an XO laptop to a child in a developing country, and you'll also get one for the developing child in your house. $US 200 of the donation is even tax-deductible.

Last week EA announced that they are donating the original SimCity for use on the OLPC. Don Hopkins, who did the Unix, Linux, and now OLPC ports of SimCity, recently published his thoughts about how the new version of the game might allow kids to modify the underlying simulation model.

Read More »

You may know One Laptop Per Child (or the XO laptop) as the $US 100 computer for developing countries...that kind of snowballed into a computer that costs just shy of two Benjamins. Despite the inflated costs, It's still a good cause. And we're happy to see EA on board, donating the original SimCity to be pre-installed on all machines.

Before any of you start nagging that SimCity 2000 could probably run just as well on these computers, remember that storage is a commodity on the inexpensive laptops. And then punk EA by donating something better. Here's the full press release:

Read More »