OLPC Physics Game Jam

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 organizers 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.

OLPC SimCity to allow simulation mods

One Laptop Per Child fans probably know that today is the first day of the Give One Get One program. Donate $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. $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.

You may know One Laptop Per Child (or the XO laptop) as the $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: