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WP-M wishes you a Happy 4th of July!

Charlie Silver, incoming IMD undergrad has a featured post over at Gamasutra about Painkiller.

I think he is talking about a couple of underexploited areas in game design. For one, space is too rarely used as a meaningful gameplay mechanic. Also, few games use intelligent agents, not necessarily as better killing machines, but to impart a feeling on the player. Interesting stuff Charlie.

This GOTW is in honor of father's day. One of my earlier gaming memories was playing "A-Train" with my dad back on our old machine. It was published in the states in 1992, but it was first released even further back in Japan under the title: "A Ressha de Ikou" -> "Take the A-Train"



(Image and facts via Wikipedia) You can get the game to run on a DOS emulator, and I recommend it. It still holds its own as a well designed piece.


Studio: Artdink

Format: PC, 1 Player, DOS - Emulator version here.

Core Mechanic: Build and operate a railroad which indirectly causes urban growth.

Control: 3rd person isometric via HUD.

Many of you guys know Eddo Stern, whose work in included, also former fellow c-level'er Cyril Kuhn is as well.

http://lagunaartmuseum.org/Current-Exhibit.html

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon explores various forms of cultural production based on World of Warcraft in particular and on gaming in general. While surveying Warcraft's Fifteen-year history, the exhibition looks at artistic practices that have been influenced by game culture. The actual works by the producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment (headquartered in Irvine, California), provide a starting point and reference.

Fourteen international artists were selected to consider this movement with the following themes in mind: elements of desire, the collapse of fantasy, medievalism, creative critiques, and public intervention. Artists in this exhibition take on the visual marker of World of Warcraft to consider, implications of gaming, and their greater impact on our culture. In addition to the works of these artists, fan art and the growing culture of machinima (computer animation that uses the graphic engines from video games) will be explored in this exhibition.

Congrats Diana!



click on the link to see what the L.A Times wrote
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/06/e3-an-indiecade-pluff-profile.html

http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/games/20090523-intermedia.php

The games developed in CTIN 484/489 from the Spring are available for download. It was a great batch this semester, so please check them out.

"The package starts with Peter Brinson's documentary video game about U.S.-Iran relations; art director Kurosh ValaNejad, a Spacialist in the virtual sciences, discusses a game design that takes on psychology, history, conservatorship, and orthogonal math." Carrie Paterson, Worlds of Science, Artillery magazine, May/June 2009

Moving Forward by Looking Back:
Documentary Videogame Illuminated by Persian Miniatures
by Kurosh ValaNejad

The Cat and the Coup embraces the nature of videogames as participatory media to tell a dramatic biographical story of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran. Mossadegh was democratically elected in 1951 and overthrown the night of August 19, 1953 by a U.S.-sponsored coup d’état. The documentary game focuses on an aspect of warfare that has little presence in videogame history - covert military interventions carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency - while implicating its players in the result.

This week we have an indirect control shooter. This game was part of the "Sense of Wonder" night at the most recent Tokyo Game Show. (USC also had 2 games there. Represent.)




Creator: "Dong"

Format: PC, 1 Player, Download/Unzip

Core Mechanic: Avoid/Indirectly command attackers.

Control: Arrow keys move your ship, attackers follow. X dashes. Z creates a lock on circle/ stops attackers from following. Attackers shoot locked on enemies.

May 9-15, 2009

Full details at http://interactive.usc.edu/thesis2009.

Time: Wednesday, April 29, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :

- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile (Carter & Stein)
- CTIN 406 Sound Design for Games ­(Diamante)
- CTIN 483 Programming for Interactive Media (Brinson)
- CTIN 488 Game Design Workshop (Swain/Arey/Diamante)
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson & Fullerton)
- CTIN 501 Interactive Cinema (Kratky)
- CTIN 542 Interactive Experience Design (Bolas)
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity (Hoberman)
- CTIN 590 Directed Research (Bolas, Brinson, Hoberman, Fisher)
- Immersive Research Group (Bolas)

and more....

Food and Drink will be provided starting at 5:45.

***SCHEDULE below*****

Experience what it's really like to fly like a bird, improve your ability to destroy enemies by controlling your brainwaves, explore ambiguous morality in games, feel objects from across the room, explore new forms of teamwork, compose music on a multi-touch surface, remember what it was like to experience magic through the eyes of a child, reimagine the potentials of visual interfaces in games, remake all of humanity with your own genetic engineering practice. In other words, come see what two years in the Interactive Media MFA program does to you! Today from 3:00 to 6:30 in the ZML, second year IMD students will present their thesis ideas to the IMD community at large. Refreshments will be served! Read on for full schedule of presentations.

A very interesting op-ed in today's New York Times, by Mark C. Taylor.




Taylor explains that the 18th century model of mass-production university education we inherited (from Kant) "has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization."

He proposes six major steps to a complete restructuring of American higher education...

1.. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural... There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate on their own premises.

2... Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs... Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.

Point #4 is of particular interest to our very own iMAP program:

Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification, is almost impossible. (The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.) For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce “theses” in alternative formats.

... and to add to Tracy's post, there will be a panel on this year's Games for Change Festival entitled "Documentary Games" with Tracy, Steve Anderson, Emily Verellen and Judith Helfand, and myself as moderator. To reiterate Tracy's point, this is an incredible event, with a unique and exciting merge of game industry folks, NGO's, and academics.

Documentary Games:
As game theory and the practice of making games become recognized as valued pedagogical and cultural processes across a broad spectrum of disciplines, we see forthcoming a movement specific to a new genre — documentary gaming — which will position game systems within a framework that questions the practice, ethics, and identity of games. Can documentary best practices help us negotiate the socio-political and cultural significance of a game? Do the same ethical concerns and the validity of the “truth claim” affect games the way they have historically influenced the efficacy of documentary and journalistic media? Panelists: Steve Anderson, Assistant Professor, Director, Media Arts & Practice Ph.D. Program, University of Southern California; Tracy Fullerton, Professor, USC, Interactive Media; Emily Verellen, Senior Program Officer, Fledgling Fund; moderated by Susana Ruiz, Ph.D. Candidate, Co-founder, Take Action Games.


Any thoughts/suggestions about the notion of documentary games - I'd love to hear them!

For anyone interested in serious games, activism in games, learning in games, etc. the 2009 Sixth Annual Games for Change Festival is a must go. This Festival brings together the world’s leading foundations, NGOs, game-makers, academics, and journalists to explore how best to harness this incredibly powerful medium to help address the most critical issues of our day, from poverty, climate change, global conflicts, to human rights.

This year's speakers include:
Sasha Barab, Professor in Learning Sciences, IST, and Cognitive Science, Indiana University
Ian Bogost, CEO of Persuasive Games and author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
Heather Chaplin, journalist (NPR, NYT) and author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution.
Nick Earl, General Manager of Electronic Arts Redwood Shores Studio
Mary Flanagan, Director of the Tiltfactor Lab
Tracy Fullerton, Director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab and author of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Designing Innovative Games
Judith Helfand, Independent filmmaker
John Nordlinger, Senior Research Manager, Microsoft
Ian Rowe, former head of Public Affairs at mTV
Katie Salen, Executive Director, Institute of Play; Associate Professor, Design and Technology Department, Parsons The New School for Design
Seth Scheisel, New York Times game critic and technology journalist
Kurt Squire, Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Constance Steinkuehler, Assistant Professor Assistant Professor Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Clive Thompson, Contributor, The New York Times, Wired
Eric Zimmerman, Award-winning game designer, Co-author of The Rules of Play

At our meeting last week, MEGA held Executive Board elections. The five leadership positions will be filled by a mix of Interactive Media and Computer Science students. Please help me congratulate the new team that I know will take this club to the next level.

President- Jared Greiner
Vice President - Gabriel Deyerle
Secretary - Michaela Morris
Treasurer - Mihir Sheth
Development Director - Rowan Belden-Clifford

We have two more meetings this semester. They will be on Friday April 24th and May 1st, in SCA 214 at 5pm. We are also planning on taking a field trip to either Activision or a Burbank game voice recording studio during stop days. This trip will only be open to MEGA members.

The good news is that anyone can become a MEGA member by completing our census. You will get access to our database of game developers and if completed today, you have the chance to win a free EA game of your choice!
Click here to complete the MEGA Census now

April 24th **Today**
Round Table and Raffle
+We are giving away a free game
+Jared is presenting a CTIN class Post-Mortem
+Jordan is deconstructing Noby-Noby Boy

May 1st **Last Meeting**
Special Guest Ian Dallas
+Ian is coming to talk about his IGF Finalist game The Unfinished Swan

Speakers: Lisa F. Grand, PhD Visiting Scholar (USC) and Jeff Watson, IMAP PhD Student (USC)
Time: Wednesday, April 22, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Abstract: This presentation will explore the evolution and trajectory of ubiquitous computing technologies that enable designers to embed media artifacts and computational systems in physical space. By placing custom bar code glyphs, GPS/Google Earth markers, sensor systems or other smart-phone-readable triggers in physical locations, designers can create hyperlinks connecting real-world objects or places with a wide variety of media -- from video, audio and text content to dynamic data feeds and opportunities for interactions with both human and non-human agencies. Crucially, however, this layering practice does not stop at the level of the hyperlink or the traditional notion of Augmented Reality. Rather, designers are beginning to perceive opportunities for embedding responsive computational power in physical space, enabling environments to track, profile and communicate with their inhabitants, providing customized, adaptive and anticipatory user experiences. After surveying this nascent practice of layering information and computation atop and within physical space -- the latest step in the gradual disintegration of the boundary between the Real and the Virtual -- the presenters (Lisa F. Grand, Visiting Scholar and designer of the TRISH Responsive Environment, and Jeff Watson, IMAP PhD Student) will lead a discussion exploring the profound implications of these new technologies on the nature of entertainment, storytelling, game play, privacy, and social organization.

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS
Zoe Beloff: Conjuring Specters
Mon Apr 27 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$9 [students $7, CalArts $5]

New York artist Zoe Beloff’s unique and mesmerizing films are philosophical toys: objects with which to think. Her work has especially borne on “phantoms,” on images that are “not there,” and on a precinematic version of the virtual, created by means of a stereoscopic Bolex camera that produces spectral 3-D images. Shadowland Or Light From The Other Side, starring Kate Valk of The Wooster Group, locates a link between Victorian spiritualism and the birth of cinema in late-19th century “Ghost Shows,” where actors interacted with magic lantern slides and stereoscopic views. Charming Augustine is an experimental narrative inspired by one of Charcot’s most famous patients at the Salpétrière in turn-of-the-century Paris. It explores connections between photographic documentation of hysteria and the prehistory of narrative film: Augustine captivates the doctors with her theatrical and photogenic hysterical attacks and in the process becomes a star, the “Sarah Bernhardt” of the asylum.

In person: Zoe Beloff

“Beloff exists as the consummate time traveler, floating between the two eras of cine-technology.”
Jeffrey Skoller, Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film

LINK

Speakers: IMD's Mobile and Environmental Media Lab (Fisher, Stein, Watson, Gotsis, Kratky, Preuss, Carter, Yasuda)
Time: Wednesday, April 15, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: “Mobile Storytelling”
Abstract: The overall objective of our Mobile and Environmental Media research program is to design and prototype new capabilities for unique entertainment and out-of-classroom educational opportunities available to anyone, at anytime with the added benefit of being embedded in the rich context of specific “place”. The recent focus has been on content development for location-specific museum, game, and arts installations in which the ‘virtual’ contents are embedded on site and perceived through mobile display or viewing devices. This presentation will describe several of the group's projects ranging from crowd-sourced cinema and mobile advertising to " Ambient Storytelling".

Machiko Kusahara
Device Art: A Japanese Approach to Media Art
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6:00 pm

Device Art is a Japanese project that explores new ways of bridging art, design, technology, science and entertainment. Works by the team members vary from Maywa Denki's funny gadgets to Hiroo Iwata's Robot Tile (currently shown at the Milano Salone 2009) and Kazuhiko Hachiya's functioning "personal" jet glider inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's animation film. In theorizing the nature of Device Art elements of Japanese culture, such as the importance of "tools", the appreciation of playfulness, the continuity between art and entertainment, and the importance of popular culture become key issues.

The lecture will introduce the concept of Device Art and discuss questions it raises, accompanied by a wide selection of examples by Japanese artists and designers. Machiko Kusahara is a Visiting Scholar, UCLA, D|MA, Art | Sci Center and a Professor at Waseda University.

Link

Stone Librande, the Lead Designer on Spore, will be talking about game design on April 16th at Gamepipe. Having had the privilege of working with him, I'd highly recommend his lectures.

Information can be found here: http://gamepipe.usc.edu/USC_GamePipe_Laboratory/Seminars/Entries/2009/4/16_Designing_Playfully.html

His personal website is here: http://www.stonetronix.com/ and has some awesome discussions on game design

Via Kotaku