Introducing the Software Engineering
Game Bundle #1
80% off ($75 value) - $15
- Exapunks
Fake Assembler. Hack All The Things. The old days of BBS' and Webzines
Exapunks and It's close cousin Shenzhen I/O (below) both take players / programmers into assembly language territory except Exapunks is a better starting point for non programmers relating more to direct logic than circuitry. Here it's about hacking stuff vs building stuff.
This game harkens back to the old days of BBS' and downloading "zines", only they look a lot better than the ASCII and ANSI art driven Zines of the day when programming was less abstracted / frameworked where you could learn how to work with all the hardware of a machine in a short programming manual that could consumed in weekend (Kernighan/Ritchie C++ bible anyone?)
- Neo Cab
Should Uber drivers and gig economy workers be automated away?
Neo Cab puts you in the shoes of one of the last gig economy drivers left in a city that has largely been automated and Google-sized with more than a passing familiarity to techbro'd out San Francsico
There is a disappearance mystery here but there is a greater pleasure in enjoying a front row seat to a post automation world and how it's denizens still work and what they think about and occupy their time with.
It's also a commentary on just how much those working in tech are connected to humanity (if at all) and given the consequences of full automation.
Fantastic food for thought for anyone working in AI today. - Shenzhen I/O
Real Assembler. China Work/Life Simulator
In contrast to it's cousin Exapunks, Shenzhen I/O will have folks working directly with assembler and very similar structures to the mov AX, BX registers from X86 land. You'll also be using logic gates such as NAND, XOR and taking these as lego blocks to create more common circuit patterns such as flip-flops. This is a fun way to learn both real assembler and digital logic in a way that could count for college credit :) Everything learned here is applicable to real world circuit design and embedded systems programming.
Shenzhen's gameplay and puzzles is held together by a narrative that could be described as Chinese job simulator of what it could be like working as an average hardware engineer building gadgets for global consumption. This is one of the few Western made media pieces about China that doesnt focus on human rights or authoritarian govt.
- Eliza
Can chatbot psychology be effective without direct human experience?
This is a must play, especially for chatbot developers. Indeed the perfunctory "sentiment analysis" that is the heart of the pop psychology that Eliza criticises is just as rudimentary as many chatbots in use today.
Eliza is fundamentally a game about what unleashing such simple "intelligence" on a general human population and overselling it's capabilities. Much of the story is about what happens when real human behavior, feelings and emotions are affected when such bots are taken seriously up to the point where the usual disclaimers about things not being "real psychological advice" are involved.
For the OG nerds out there who get the Eliza reference in the game's name, you won't be disappointed
