Will Wright is interviewed in Chapter 5 – Play. Will and Bing Gordon are both articulate about the nature of play. Brenda Laurel describes designing games for girls, and Brendan Boyle talks about a process for inventing toys and games.
Will Wright is the best-known guru in game design, partly because the Sims is the best-selling game of all time for personal computers, but more significantly because he is so articulate about what he does and how he does it. He remembers the books he has read, and quotes the titles and authors as he talks. He thinks through the reasons behind his design decisions and presents an analysis in simple and accessible terms. His manner is direct and unpretentious, and although he normally seems serious, there is often a twinkle in his eye. Will bought an early Apple II in 1980 and found himself immediately sucked into writing programs and building simulations. His first game was published in 1984, and the first version of SimCity was developed a year later, running on a Commodore 64. He founded Maxis in 1987, with managing partner Jeff Braun, and created a series of simulation games, culminating with the Sims. The games in the series have earned a reputation for intelligent and creative design, with a sense of social responsibility. If you add up all the different games, they have sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.
Will admits to having spent too much of his childhood making models and simulations, leading to his vocation of game design. He talks about designing the Sims, a game that is about social interactions and soon becomes a hobby. He describes the way in which a game designer can keep the player entertained, offering rewards in progressive iterations.


The Pacific Locomotive Association, Inc. operates the Niles Canyon Railway as a living history museum interpreting the importance of our heritage railroads in the development of California and the nation. The purpose of the organization is to preserve the physical aspects and atmosphere of Pacific Coast railroading during the period from 1910 to 1960. Our mission is to develop and operate a working railroad museum for the benefit of the general public.
Operating historic railroad equipment using standard railroad practices for train crews, signaling, block operations, and equipment maintenance.
Preserving the atmosphere of railroads in small-town America before the 1960s by connecting the historic communities of Sunol, the Niles District of Fremont, and eventually Pleasanton.
Providing educational programs for schools, civic organizations, and community events.
Instructing the public in railroad history, tradition, and the evolution of rail transportation technology.
The Pacific Locomotive Association also has railroad artifacts on display and interpretive educational exhibits at the Sunol Depot.
The history of trains in Niles Canyon dates back to the building of the original transcontinental railroad. The first Western Pacific Railroad Company (formed in 1862) started construction in San Jose towards Sacramento. It built twenty miles of track that reached into Alameda Creek canyon in 1866. Its first passenger excursion entered the canyon on October 2 of that year. Construction was halted shortly thereafter, however, because of disagreements between the railroad's contractors and its financiers.
In September, 1869, four months after the famous golden spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, the Central Pacific Railroad completed the transcontinental rail link between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay, finishing the track through the canyon.The CP had acquired the Western Pacific and other local railroads and built track to connect them at a waterfront terminal at Alameda Point.
The Central Pacific constructed a freight terminal at the west end of the canyon and a town quickly sprang up around it. The town was named for Addison C. Niles, a prominent judge and former railroad attorney.
The Central Pacific eventually became part of the Southern Pacific railroad system. Over the years, the SP invested heavily in a main line to the north through Benicia and Martinez. The tracks in the canyon became a secondary main line.
Very few rebuilding programs by the railroad left the Niles Canyon line with much of its original cut stone bridge abutments, culverts and retaining walls from the original Western Pacific's right of way (circa 1865). These unique constructions can still be seen today.
Steam locomotives pulled trains through Niles Canyon for eighty years before diesels took over in the 1950s. In 1984, after twelve decades of railroading in the canyon, the Southern Pacific ceased operating trains on the right-of-way, pulled up the tracks, and deeded the land to Alameda County.
The Pacific Locomotive Association entered into an agreement with the county and began rebuilding the rail line in 1987. Association volunteers worked for over a year on the first part of the track reconstruction between Sunol and Brightside.
On May 21, 1988, almost 122 years after the first Western Pacific excursion, the Pacific Locomotive Association brought railroad passenger operations back to life in Niles Canyon.
Presently, Niles Canyon Railway provides train rides to the public year-round between Sunol, California and Niles in Fremont, California.


text:
Hungry in Gaza
In Palestine, the failure of the peace process, and Israel's destruction of the economy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster
Tue 4 Mar 2003 21.03 EST
The world has grown used to the idea that severe hunger manifests itself only in the hollow cheeks and distended stomachs of an African famine. But today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip. Hidden in the anaemic blood of children or lost in the statistics of stunted growth, a dreadful, silent malnutrition is stalking the Palestinians.
The populations of Gaza and the West Bank have lived for over two years with checkpoints, closures and curfews that have ravaged their economy. Over half are now unemployed and more than two-thirds are living below the poverty line.
The effect of this economic collapse was felt first in the erosion of family savings, followed by increased indebtedness and then the forced sale of household possessions. The Palestinian extended family and community networks have saved the territories from the absolute collapse that might have been found elsewhere in the face of such rapid decline.
Every dollar is shared in the occupied territory. Anyone with an income or a cousin working abroad supports as many as seven other adults. Nevertheless, after 30 months of the intifada, poverty is increasingly being felt in the stomach.
In the experts' terminology, the Palestinians are suffering in the main from micro- nutrient deficiencies - what the World Health Organisation calls the "hidden hunger". It may be less dramatic than the protein-energy malnutrition that stalks African emergencies but, on the scale that it is found among the Palestinians, it is just as serious. Micronutrient deficient children fail to grow and develop normally; their cognition is damaged, often severely and irreversibly; and their immune systems are compromised. In both adults and children, mental and physical capacities are impaired. In extreme cases blindness and death result.
The mental and physical development of a generation of Palestinian children hangs in the balance. A study funded by the United States Agency for International Development has found that four out of five children in Gaza and the West Bank have inadequate iron and zinc intake, deficiencies that cause anaemia and weaken the immune system. Over half the children in each territory have inadequate caloric and vitamin A intake.
The stark fact is that almost a quarter of Palestinian children are suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition for purely man-made reasons. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster.
Nursing and pregnant mothers too are suffering. On average they consume 15-20% fewer calories per day than they did before the outbreak of strife in 2000. The consequent anaemia, low folic acid intake and lack of proteins, threaten both their health and the normal development of their children.
The UN's relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is the largest aid organisation in the territories. Before the start of the intifada it was providing food aid to around 11,000 families in the West Bank and Gaza - families that had lost their breadwinner or who were otherwise especially at risk. For the last two years, as part of its emergency programme, the UNRWA food programme has grown to 220,000 families, or almost half the Palestinian population of the territories.
UNRWA has been forced to expand its food aid pro gramme because only 12,000 of the 150,000 Palestinians who once depended on jobs in Israel for their livelihood now receive permits to leave the occupied territories. And even inside the territories themselves, movement is barely possible. The Palestinian cities are encircled by Israeli troops and cut off from each other. This, and the frequent military incursions into the cities, prevents people travelling for work and stops factories and farmers reaching their markets. The narrow Gaza Strip is regularly choked off by checkpoints on the only open north-south road. House demolitions and farmland clearances near settlements have combined with the closures policy to bring near total economic collapse.
The decline in the Palestinian economy has been so rapid that only the efforts of the United Nations, the Red Cross and other aid agencies have prevented the economic collapse becoming a total social collapse. UNRWA alone feeds 1.3 million people and all but a few Palestinians now depend to some extent on foreign aid to survive.
To fund this huge food security effort, and its other emergency activities, UNRWA has turned to the international community with a number of emergency appeals. The latest appeal, to cover emergency operations for the first half of 2003, was launched in December and contains a request for $32m to provide food for Gaza and the West Bank. It is worrying that after two months only $1.5m has so far been received by the Agency. Competing demands in Afghanistan and Africa, combined with concerns about the likely humanitarian impact of a war in Iraq, seem to be holding donors back from making pledges to our emergency fund.
There are as yet no skeletal faces in Gaza for the television cameras to record, no bloated bellies to shock the world to action, but it would be a sad indictment of the world's priorities if funding for this feeding programme were not forthcoming because of the invisible nature of the crisis.
· Peter Hansen is the Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
www.unitednations.org.uk

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl