Ubisoft fights back against EA hostile takeover

CEO Yves Guillemot projects doubled profits over 2 years. Urges shareholders to keep their stock.

"We are working hard to remain independent," Mr Guillemot told the BBC News website.

EA bought 20% of Ubisoft last December, and held talks in February.

EA's block of shares were purchased from Dutch media tycoon John de Mol, and his investment vehicle Talpa Beheer BV. At the time, Ubisoft CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot commented of EA's purchase: "I have stated on the record that I view this action on the part of EA as hostile", and further marked of future concerns: "When looking at the longer-term, our only concern is the risk that we may not be allowed to fully realize our vocation of being creators of high quality games."

With a market capitalization of $18 billion, sales of $2.9 billion, and cash in hand of $2.5 billion, Electronic Arts could easily afford to outright purchase Ubisoft, which enjoyed sales of $680.1m last year.

Digital Pearl Harbor

Film, life, games, and war all mixed into one. I'd love to see what thier sim looks like, what the experience is, how it feels to be a player within such a sytem? I can't help but imagine the graphics from the film.

From My Way
WASHINGTON - The CIA is conducting a war game this week to simulate an unprecedented, Sept. 11-like electronic assault against the United States. The three-day exercise, known as "Silent Horizon," is meant to test the ability of government and industry to respond to escalating Internet disruptions over many months, according to participants.

The simulated attacks were carried out five years in the future by a fictional new alliance of anti-American organizations that included anti-globalization hackers. The most serious damage was expected to be inflicted in the closing hours of the war game Thursday.

"You hear less and less about the digital Pearl Harbor," said Dennis McGrath, who has helped run three similar exercises for the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College. "What people call cyberterrorism, it's just not at the top of the list."

read more at the link above

E3: Odd MMORPG Marketing

Saw this ad for a massively-multiplayer game called Ryzome. Something about it just seemed...off. I think it's the conservatively-dressed teenage girl standing on what looks like a nude beach.

I guess they were trying to say that "it's like you're actually there." Maybe if she'd been wearing a swimsuit at least? As it is, it seems more voyeuristic than they were probably intending...

Guess the Google

Grant Robinson has made a web-based game "Guess the Google" - look at a series of images and guess what keyword pulled them all up. A perfect IMD distraction! Too bad it's summertime.

Play-Centric Games Education Whitepaper

This document shares the philosophy and thinking behind the creation of the EA Interactive Entertainment Program at the USC School of Cinema-Television. This is a program that combines a broad liberal arts background with specialization in the history, theory and practice of creating games and interactive entertainment. The purpose of the program is to develop critical thinkers and designers who can produce the next generation of interactive entertainment. The program's proximity to both the graduate program in Interactive Media and the School of Cinema-Television provides a unique opportunity to
integrate the creative process of traditional media with the new medium of games and interactivity.

The program embodies the concept of "play-centric design" which puts player experience at the heart of the design process and teaches a system of prototyping, playtesting and iterative design that has been proven in almost a decade of student work. This play-centric process, combined with the strong tradition of collaborative practice in place at the Cinema school, is the heart of the production cycle for the games program. Additionally, a strong emphasis on critical game studies will draw on the experience of the Critical Studies Division of the Cinema school. And, valuable input from the IGDA's Curriculum Framework has helped us to form the core topics for specialization and
elective coursework within the major.

Download paper (1.8M)

Vectors launch party at MoCA Thursday March 3

Please join us on Thursday, March 3, 7-10 pm at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (250 S. Grand Ave.) for the launch of Vectors, USC's new electronic journal of culture and technology. Thursday night's party features multi-player mobile gaming led by Julian Bleecker and Jane McGonigal, large-screen projections, live music and free food and drink. Vectors editor Tara McPherson will facilitate a discussion of a new era in digital publishing featuring work by Erik Loyer, Raegan Kelly, N. Katherine Hayles, and Alice Gambrell. Free and open to the public.
RSVP
More info

Surrealist Games Experiment II - Come Play with USC Game Design Community

Join the USC Game Design Community as we explore what the Surrealists' games have to offer us as players and designers and how can we apply these experiments in chance to our own designs.

From "A Book of Surrealist Games":
"Playful procedures and systematic stratagems provided keys to unlock the door to the unconscious and to release the visual and verbal poetry of collective creativity . . . They borrowed children's games and invented techniques to exploit the unpredictable outcomes of chance and accident."

From the Surrealist Manifesto:
"Surrealism leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substituion for them in the solution of the principal problems of life."

Where: USC Annenberg Institute for Multimedia Literacy
When: This Friday, Feb 26 3-5pm

Casual Game Evolution Challenge Co-Sponsored by Shockwave.com

From the press release: "Open to any and all game developers, the contest seeks to identify the best single-player Shockwave game concepts for online, tournament, and download play. The contest is designed to help developers successfully release their games and to help the casual game market evolve with innovative new game concepts. Five finalists will be awarded Game Trust licensing contracts with a revenue share and guaranteed distribution to millions of casual game players worldwide including an exclusive premiere on Shockwave.com. The Grand Prize winner will also receive a specially modified, high end Vespa."

More info at: http://www.gametrust.com/solutions_developers_contest.php?pid=solutions

The line blurs... Film/Game

Talk about experience. I can't belive with this school and my networking @ E3 last year I got into WBIE and gave me the chance to work in a studio on the edge of convergane, WB.

While there I was able to work on Constantine the Video game as well as sit in on some film shoots.

While the reviews havn't been as good as it might deserve, I think Constantine still holds up as a great crossover between, Comicbook, Game, and Film.

My father tipped me off on the NY Times Article

It's Official!

Read it here!
(Registration required to read Gamasutra articles. It's free and they don't spam!)

Here's an excerpt:

"Electronic Arts co-founder, executive vice president and chief creative officer Bing Gordon has been named as the first holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Faculty Chair at the USC School of Cinema-Television.

Resident in the School's Division of Interactive Media, the Electronic Arts Endowed Faculty Chair is a rotating position that will be held for one to two years by leading figures in interactive entertainment that will join the school's faculty as visiting professors." (courtesy David Jenkins, Gamasutra)

Kutaragi Responds to PSP Flaw

Here's the article in Gamespot.

Make of it what you will... >_>

Rupert wants a piece

According to the Financial Times, chief operating officer Peter Chernin said that News Corp is "kicking the tyres of pretty much all video games companies".

Santa Monica-based Activison is said to be one firm on its takeover list.

Video games are "big business", the paper quoted Mr Chernin as saying. We "would like to get into it".

bbc article

Holiday Video Game Sales Record

"The video game industry is poised to enjoy a record-breaking holiday season. For that, it can thank Charlie Paulson, a 22-year-old garden store employee, and other 20-somethings."

"Aided by sales of games tailored for older teens and adults, the game industry is doing better than expected at what industry analysts say is the beginning of a normal cyclical downturn. Two games in particular - "Halo 2" and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" - have each sold more than 3.3 million copies in the last two months."

"Overall sales of video games have been 11 percent higher so far this year than last year, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. Last year, the industry made 47 percent of its $7 billion in sales during the holiday quarter; this year, the holiday sales are expected to represent 50 percent of total sales, said William Lennan, an analyst with WR Hambrecht, a financial services firm. "It's going to be the biggest Christmas ever for video games," Mr. Lennan said. But he said the big question was whether sales would drop sharply next year as consumers put off buying games in anticipation of a new generation of game consoles expected in late 2005 and 2006."
Read the NYTimes Article
(you need to sign up if you haven't a membership)

Unrealscript Programmer Needed for Proof of Concept Demo - Paid

Found this ad on Gamedev.org, and thought I'd pass it along...

"We have been contracted to provide a limited gameplay proof of concept demo for a publisher that is deliverable before E3 this year. The majority of the work would be implementing the control scheme and creating systems our designer could use to author and tweak a simple melee combat system. We are producing all content and the demo will be on the Unreal 2.5 Runtime."

Read full ad & get contact info at Gamedev.org

EA buys 19.9% of Ubisoft

"We have no control over what Ubisoft's management chooses to do with the company," said EA spokesman Jeff Brown.

EA's stake would give it access to 18.4 % of the voting rights against 22.8 % held by Ubisoft's founders, the Guillemot family, Ubisoft said.

"Pending further information, we consider this operation as hostile," an Ubisoft spokesman told Reuters agency.

"We think this operation is aimed at securing the studios of Ubisoft that are ready to face the next generation of gaming consoles," he added.

bbc article

"Cloud" chosen for Game Innovation Grant

Thanks to all the teams that developed game proposals for the Game Innovation Grant for Spring 2005. They were all really well conceived and very interesting ideas.

It was a difficult task to choosing a single team, but the winner is "Cloud" proposed by Jenova Chen. Congratulations to Jenova and his team. Cloud has unique core mechanic that will take a lot of testing and creative focus to execute. There will undoubtedly be a lot of opportunities for playtesting next semester for anyone who is interested in participating.

For more info on the project as it develops, check out Jenova's page for updates.

ESP Game

Nice use of online game framework to generate metadata:
It's a simple game -- players who visit the www.espgame.org Web site are automatically and anonymously paired up and shown photos or other images. Each player types in words that describe the image until, without seeing the other's list, they have a match. Then they are shown another image and the game repeats. The less time it takes to match words, the higher the score...The players may not realize it, but the lists of descriptive words that they're generating could eventually be used by search engines such as Google to improve Internet searches for images. They also are doing something that no computer program has ever managed to accomplish: analyzing an image and accurately describing it in words. In effect, what von Ahn is creating with his game is a giant, special-purpose supercomputer that uses human brains to do the computing. And the 24-year-old von Ahn, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, says this approach, which he calls "Stealing Cycles from Humans," could be applied to a wide variety of problems that are too great for any individual but also beyond the capabilities of conventional computers.

CMU student taps brain's game skills

Illinois Seeks to Curb Explicit Video Games

Today, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will formally propose the nation's first statewide legislation to regulate the sale and rental of these games, propelling Illinois into a national debate over what to do about this burgeoning and controversial form of entertainment.

The two bills he is promoting would make it a crime for retailers to rent or sell such violent or sexually graphic material to minors, policing video games in much the same way as cigarettes and alcohol.

If approved by the Illinois Legislature � and upheld in the courts � the bills would make it a misdemeanor to sell or rent sexually graphic or violent games to anyone younger than 18, punishable by as much as one year in prison and a $5,000 fine per offense.
Read More

Rethinking The Narrative Thread

Panel description for next SIGGRAPH:

Rethinking The Narrative Thread: Where Do Movies End And Videogames Begin? Discussing The New Storytelling Paradigm
The narrative novel used to be held between two covers and a binding. No more. The video game market unites the traditions of storytelling and character development. For the most part we're still absorbing these stories as a whole, rather than interacting with them. Will this change? And if so, how? This panel seeks to answer these questions and others: What will it take to change storytelling? How has narrative changed, if at all? What are new storytelling forms, and have they changed the way we think? Is the book obsolete? Panelists involved in various aspects of the storytelling process will discuss the evolution of interactive story; where we might be going; the fully-immersive story experience; how we might experience interactive stories composed of not only plot and characters, but also visuals and audio.

Panel Topics | Panels: SIGGRAPH 2005

ea monopoly on football games

excuse me if i come across as bitter about this.
i dont play sports games, this wont really matter to my personal life too much.
but the liberal in me is outraged.

ea has bought the right to be the exclusive video game developer for the nfl.

from the article:
"Under the terms of the deal, no one else will be allowed to develop or publish a video game (for any system) featuring NFL teams, players, stadiums or footage for the next five years."

this is outrageous. totally legal, but totally whack. or jacked. or whatever term you want to use.

ea managed to create (or rather, managed to buy) a complete monopoly on football video games. madden is now the only game in town. because not too many people are going to buy games with completely madeup players, teams, stadiums or footage.

im amazed.

Nintendo's Game to Produce Own Pix

Hmm, another way to combine film & computer games...not so sure about this approach..."

from Daily Variety: "Mario and friends are on their way to the bigscreen, this time in their own way. Japanese vidgame giant Nintendo is preparing to get into the film biz, likely by creating an inhouse unit to develop animated features based on the numerous properties owned by the company behind the GameCube and Game Boy systems..."

Continue reading at: Daily Variety's Website

grand thieves audio

from we-make-money-not-art

bunk magazine is doing a cool hack of GTA Vice City where they hijack the soundtrack, and put someone into the car with you (via the new audio).

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, an earth-shaking game of theft, prostitution, drugs, and beautifully animated racist depictions of Cubans and Haitians. You are free-wheeling Tommy Vercetti, driving any car you can pop the lock on, taking hookers out to the lighthouse, enjoying all the pixilated pleasures the 80s can offer you.

Bunk is making the game that much better because we're putting somebody in the car with you. We're carjacking the game with a mod of our own. Choose from one of the many options.

This is only the beginning, the first in a series of monologues (or modologues) and performances we're testing out. Send us yours and we'll feature them on the page. Download too slow, send us a few bucks and you can get the entire CD!

samples of some of the audio "personalites" are at the link below.

link

"Localizing Digital Games"

This month's Journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) contains an article by Alexander Thayer and Beth E. Kolko. The article "focuses on blending, the most challenging and potentially effective form of game localization and asserts that technical and professional communicators should learn more about blending, digital game localization and their place within this burgeoning industry."

Journal is available by subscription or by loan in my office...

Come play Surrealist games with the Game Design Community, 2-4PM Friday 12/3 at the Annenberg IML

Enquiry, discovery, poetry, and epiphany � unlock the door to your unconscious in a day of Surrealist games with the USC Game Design Community.

Word games, visual plays and re-inventions are the heart of Surrealist games and activities, a sort of �provocative magic� that results in unexpected and surprising results. Come explore imaginative games like �The Exquisite Corpse� and �Would You Open the Door?� By playing these games, we hope to spur creative thinking in our community and introduce playful practice and procedure into our game designs.

2-4PM on Friday 12/3 at the Annenberg IML.

Cranium

Yet another article from last Sunday's NYTimes magazine special issue on "The Thoroughly Designed Childhood":

Most classic board games are all about winning and losing. When you play Monopoly or Risk or Sorry! there is always someone crowing in triumph while others quietly sulk in defeat. But Tait, 40, founded Cranium in 1998 with the opposite idea: to produce games ''where everyone has a chance to shine,'' a phrase he repeats like a mantra in every conversation. Tait designs games that no single player can dominate; at some point, every player will be the hero. ''And then they have that moment of glow, that moment of shine, that moment where everyone celebrates them,'' he says, speaking practically in the cadence of a preacher. That makes the games particularly appealing to young children, who can be unhinged by the sting of losing. And for parents, it means that playtime is unlikely to end in tantrums. You can win a Cranium game, but no one really cares. It is, as one Cranium designer delicately puts it, ''a softer win.''

Complete article here:
The New York Times > Magazine > Phenomenon: The Play's the Thing

Babes in a Grown-up Toyland

some excerpts from a thought provoking ny times article:

...As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers?

Young children who have active imaginary lives tend to be adept reasoning about unknown situations and taking on another's perspective, studies suggest. "I think there are deep continuities between the functioning of the imagination in early childhood and its functioning later," Dr. Paul L. Harris, a psychologist at Harvard and author of "The Work of the Imagination," wrote in an e-mail.

There is little doubt that electronic gadgets engage the mind in different ways than dolls and Legos. Building blocks come to life only with the aid of imagination, while computer games direct and provide their own action. They also bleed into one another, with Donkey Kong skills feeding Mortal Kombat chops feeding Halo, until parent and child are playing on the same screens, competing at games or, later on, designing Web pages or publishing online diaries....

"We've been worried about the presumed innocence of children being destroyed by too much exposure to media for a hundred years, and this is another iteration of the same phenomenon," said Dr. Peter Stearns, a historian and the provost of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "I do worry that we have an idealized view of a past childhood that hasn't been true for a long time, and perhaps was never true."

any comments by the faculty parents? such a complicated issue. i feel like there obviously needs to be some sort of a balance, but how do you make a decision of what to expose them to, and what to shelter them from, and when? what is going to enhance or confine creative development? not too mention the effects of violence in games...

continue reading for full article...or read online with a free subscription.

Babes in a Grown-up Toyland (NY Times)
By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: November 28, 2004

WHATEVER happened to toys? Real toys, like dolls and model airplanes? A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that half of all 4- to 6-year-olds have played video games, a quarter of them regularly. Game makers are aggressively marketing to children as young as 3, while researchers report what parents already know: that children as young as 8 and 9 are asking for adult toys, like cellphones and iPods, rather than stuffed animals or toy trucks.

The trend has squeezed both makers and sellers of traditional toys, from the electric train company Lionel to retailers like Toys "R" Us and F. A. O. Schwarz. "I have seen 1-year-olds wanting to play with their parents' cellphones," said Irma Zandl of the Zandl Group, a youth-marketing research company. And they know the difference, she said, between a real and a fake one.

Which raises a question: As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers?

"The span in which children play with certain kinds of toys certainly has shrunk," said Dr. Gary Cross, a historian at Pennsylvania State University and author of "The Cute and the Cool," an analysis of children's consumer culture. "It used to be that 14-year-old girls could still play with dolls, and 14-year-old boys would still get Erector Sets as gifts."

Young children who have active imaginary lives tend to be adept reasoning about unknown situations and taking on another's perspective, studies suggest. "I think there are deep continuities between the functioning of the imagination in early childhood and its functioning later," Dr. Paul L. Harris, a psychologist at Harvard and author of "The Work of the Imagination," wrote in an e-mail.

There is little doubt that electronic gadgets engage the mind in different ways than dolls and Legos. Building blocks come to life only with the aid of imagination, while computer games direct and provide their own action. They also bleed into one another, with Donkey Kong skills feeding Mortal Kombat chops feeding Halo, until parent and child are playing on the same screens, competing at games or, later on, designing Web pages or publishing online diaries.

The increasing use of electronic toys troubles Dr. Jerome L. Singer, a professor emeritus of psychology at Yale. "One thing we know is that kids in preschool years need to be in touch with the real world," he said. "No matter how brilliant they are, they're not going to learn to walk, to move, to interact with others unless their hands or feet have a direct role in such activity. Plopping kids in front of a TV or computer cuts away a whole aspect of that development."

At the same time, psychologists say that childhood has always been a long rehearsal for adulthood, and in this context wired play is both adaptive, and natural, behavior.

"This is such a deep-seated part of human nature that changes in technology would be very unlikely to stunt it," Dr. Alison Gopnik, a psychologist and author of "The Scientist in the Crib," wrote in an e-mail. "Instead, children in a technological world will explore technology and use technological means for their pretend play. Babies already 'pretend' to work on computers, and older children who once may have listened to or told mythical stories, and later in history read books, may do similar things with a computer game like Myst. That makes sense, given that children will end up as adults in a world in which technology and electronics play an increasingly important role."

Some psychologists say that young imaginations, even of preschoolers, are surprisingly good at appropriating electronic imagery. Images from games and shows may linger, but they often mingle with dreams, blend with other fantasies the child has, and are reshaped and recast in a running, magical movie whose script psychologists cannot always predict or interpret.

For example, in a 2001 survey of 1,800 children aged 5 to 12, British researchers found that more than 45 percent had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives, a much higher rate than the authors expected. Imaginary friends, believed by some researchers to foster the development of empathy and sociability, typically are not based on toys, and have more social dimension than would be provided by a game character, a recent analysis found.

It is not even clear how closely the children playing with adult gadgets or games follow their guidelines or intended story lines, researchers say. "A lot of people put down action figures and video games, but kids are acting out their scripts when playing these things, and that ability is going to survive," Professor Cross said.

One piece of childhood that may not endure, as succeeding generations become more plugged in, is the adult notion that children can live for long in their own fantasy world, guarded and preserved by parents.

This idea of a protected childhood is itself an adult invention, a product of the latter part of the 19th century, when Europe's growing middle classes began to shelter children from adult work. A distinct child literature developed soon after: J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan first appeared in 1902; Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic, "The Secret Garden," was published in 1911.

But the protected space of childhood slowly eroded, as children were increasingly exposed to the consumer market - through comic books, then radio, then television. In the accelerating rush toward more wired play, it is not so much childhood that is under threat, some say, as society's idealized and perhaps sentimentalized view of it.

In fact, the move away from reading "The Secret Garden" in a quiet corner, and toward the public extravaganza of Harry Potter - the books, the movies, the action figures and video game - has been going on for a long time.

"We've been worried about the presumed innocence of children being destroyed by too much exposure to media for a hundred years, and this is another iteration of the same phenomenon," said Dr. Peter Stearns, a historian and the provost of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "I do worry that we have an idealized view of a past childhood that hasn't been true for a long time, and perhaps was never true."

Holo-dek game sphere

The Holo-Dek gaming center in Hampton displays a series of innovations for video game addicts.

One of them is a room with a 13-foot screen, lit by a powerful projector, which is in turn controlled by an Alienware computer, a machine built just for gaming. When projected at this size, video game unfolds at human scale. An opposing soldier appears about six feet tall, and railings and fences come up about waist-high.

"Basically, this is a video gaming theater... like a movie theater for gaming. Everybody gets a state of the art PC and at least a six-foot screen," says Mike Fortier, co-founder of Helo-Deck.

Another of the company's gaming creations is a 20-foot-diameter globe screen with a robot at its center. When finished, the interior will be wholly lit with the game of your choice, 360 immersive degrees of tropical island or race track or deep space, and the robotic seat at the center will simulate acceleration, or the oscillation of driving over gravel, or the continuous spin-out of a car that has lost traction.

From we make money not art

Cooperative Games Experiment

The USC Game Design Community will be hosting its second event, The Cooperative Play Experiment, inspired by The New Games Movement. The event will consist of four hours of unadulterated fun. After feeding our spirits, will we feed our bellies during a late lunch/early dinner feast. T-shirts will be granted to all participants, because once you have learned the games, you qualify to be a referee in the future!

Also taking place at the event will be the USC Game Design Community first elections for officers!

When: Fri, Nov 19 12pm-4pm
Where: Annenberg IML

ZML games

Cooperative Play Ref Training w/Bernie Dekoven

Last Friday, Bernie Dekoven came to train our referees for the upcoming USC Game Design Community's Cooperative Play Experiment. Bernie Dekoven, author of "The Well Played Game" and "Junkyard Sports" was a part of The New Games Movements of the 70's, from which we have taken our inspiration for our play experiment.

Bernie first allowed us to pick his brain on everything from concepts of play to prototyping to edu-tainment. He then showed us some of his favorite games inspired by The New Games Movement, including Prui, The Lap Game, and Rock-Paper-Scissors Tag (pictured above, and a group favorite).

Everyone had a blast and we all look forward to sharing our knowledge with everyone at this upcoming Friday's event. Thank you so much to Bernie DeKoven for sharing his wisdom with us. I encourage all participants to comment with your thoughts on the day!

Virtual Economies Get Real

EverQuest geeks have been pawning virtual weapons for real cash on eBay for years. Now the big boys are finally getting into the game. Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony's U.S. video game division, has says that his company will begin selling downloadable game items for Playstation 2 players. These so-called "mini-transactions,"� as Hirai described them, could range from lethal swords to pimped-out rides. This new spin on personalization is expected to debut with the upcoming racing mega-title, Gran Turismo 4. "In the past, it has always been about the performance of the cars," he says, "but now it's as much about the human element."

Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation

Bernie DeKoven, New Games author at Annenberg IML Friday 11/9/04, 10AM - 12:30PM

In preparation for the Cooperative Games Experiment on Friday November 19, Bernie DeKoven, author of the Well Played Game and Junkyard Sports will be speaking at the Annenberg IML this Friday. Bernie has graciously offered to give us some history on the New Games Movement and some advice on holding a New Games Tournament. Whether you plan on attending the Cooperative Games Experiment or not, this is a great opportunity to hear about the New Games Movement from one of its most articulate spokespeople.

Here are some links that Bernie sent along in preparation for the talk:

- here you'll find a clip of a game of "Panther Person Porcupine," and a game of "Roll Over" (a variation of "Numbers")
- http://www.deepfun.com/clips.htm

- you can find the game of "numbers" here = http://www.deepfun.com/numbers.html

- images of people pass, knots and the lap game:
http://www.deepfun.com/album.html

- a bit about the "Schmerltz" of New Games fame - http://www.deepfun.com/schmerltz.html

- group juggling - http://www.deepfun.com/juggle.htm

- dum dum da da - http://www.deepfun.com/dumdum.htm

- people to people - http://www.deepfun.com/dubious.htm#people

Call for Papers: Ludologica Retro, Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971- 1984), edited by Ian Bogost & Matteo Bittanti

�Ludologica. Videogames d�Autore� is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for a book on classic video games that will be published in mid-2005.

Provisionally titled "Ludologica Retro, Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971 � 1984)", this interdisciplinary critical anthology will explore a range of topics regarding the aesthetic, cultural, and social significance of seminal vintage arcade games. The volume will be edited by Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Matteo Bittanti (Libera Universit� di Lingue e Comunicazione, IULM).

The editors are looking for original contributions from a variety of fields, including game studies, new media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology. Papers are sought that take new and innovative approaches to examine classic games as texts, as cultural artifacts, and as social practices.

For more info & submission guidelines: www.ludologica.com.

Cooperative Games Experiment

A CALL FOR REFEREES
The USC Game Design Community will be hosting a day mid-November to examine the games of The New Games Movement of the 70's. The New Games Movement took on the task of affecting culture through the games people play, and created/adopted games that accented cooperation and fun over winning. "Play Hard, Play Fair, Nobody Hurt" became the mantra of the group, and they held "New Games Days" to experiment with and teach these New Games.

We are currently looking for referees to help teach and referee the games. There will be one or two meetings, including a practice day to run through all of the games.

Interested? Email me at ksantiag@usc.edu.

Dynamic ads in games

Innovative development for product placement in games by Massive,"an audience aggregator and technology provider". Have asked their VP of Technology, David Sturman, to stop by next time he's in LA.

From their website:
Until now, all advertising appearing inside video games was hard-coded into the software during the development process. This means that those ads appeared in every copy ever shipped for as long as the game was sold.

Massive and its game publisher partners have replaced this with a dynamic approach that eliminates hard-coding. Instead, the Publishers denote certain areas inside of games as zones where ads will later appear. When the eventual owners of these games log onto the Internet to play against human opponents, to download additional game elements, or for any other reason, the Massive Ad Server swaps ads in and out of those zones. Those ads will remain in the game even if the gamer heads offline and will be refreshed the next time they log on.

In this way, games are transformed from static, permanent billboards for a single or handful of Advertisers into a dynamic, evolving advertising channel.

Recent Press release:

Massive Incorporated Launches In-Game Advertising Network

New York -- Massive Incorporated, developer of an in-game video game advertising network, on Monday announced the launch of its network targeting the lucrative audience of 18-34 year old males. The company's network enables advertisers including RealNetworks to deliver ads that are embedded into popular online game titles in real-time, from publishers including Vivendi Universal Games, Ubisoft and Legacy Interactive. The service allows advertisers to target according to consumer demography, title genre, behavioral data, day part and other dimensions. Massive said at launch its ad network includes 15 game titles and reaches a weekly audience of close to two million young men.

"What Do Women Game Designers Want?"

New York Times (10/14/04) P. E1; Hafner, Katie

Female computer game designers, programmers, and producers are as rare as female game players: About 10 percent of gaming industry professionals are women, and most of them hold jobs in customer service, quality assurance, and marketing, according to informal estimates. Ion Storm executive producer and longtime gamer Denise Fulton observes that a major obstacle to women's pursuit of gaming industry careers is gaming's reputation "as a boy thing." Harvey Mudd College computer science professor Elizabeth Sweedyk, who is designing a female-oriented game design course with a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, thinks that women find computer games unappealing for the most part. At last month's Women's Game Conference in Austin, a common complaint against games in general was graphic violence and sexually suggestive depictions of female characters, while some attendees expressed a desire for games with more immersive story lines and more relatable characters.

Programmer Nicky Robinson, also a game enthusiast, says she felt obliged to improve gaming's appeal to women by designing less cluttered, more intuitive user interfaces. Sony Online Entertainment's Sheri Graner Ray says the first step to getting women interested in careers in game design is to get them interested in playing games by raising awareness. "As we do that, and get more women into the industry, the games they make will have much broader appeal," she remarks. Robinson points out that some game companies are overwhelmingly male-oriented, which can be a further discouragement to women; she notes, for instance, that employees often discuss business in terms of sports metaphors, while upper management harbors a macho attitude.

New York Times (10/14/04) P. E1; Hafner, Katie

Digital Street Game

via we make money not art

Digital Street Game is a mobile game set on the streets of New York and conceived by two graduates of NYU's ITP program -- it is an internet-enhanced street game in which players stage and document small interventions or "stunts" on the street corners of New York in order to claim turf on a virtual map of the city. So once players have gone to the street corner, performed the stunt, and taken some pictures, they upload them to the website to claim their turf. The photos of the stunt are the proof that a player is the official new owner of that corner.

USC Game Design Community

Inspired by independent and alternative games culture, the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Interactive Media Division at the USC School of Cinema-Television are jointly forming the USC Game Design Community, a grassroots, student-governed organization that is dedicated to bringing likeminded students and faculty together to discuss game design history, explore the fundamental characteristics of play culture, and collectively create connections between games and other disciplines.

Monthly meetings will alternate between the IML and Interactive Media Division, and will include salon events, directed dialogues and a call for participation. Through these interactions, the IML and the Interactive Media Division hope to raise social consciousness and empower students to design play experiences that cultivate new freedoms of expression in the 21st Century.

In addition to bringing together talented students, faculty and staff from across the campus, this initial meeting will also unveil the details of the USC Game Innovation Lab Research Grant. The $20,000 award is issued in the fall, spring and summer semesters through the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab in the School of Cinema-Television's Interactive Media Division. It will be granted each semester, starting this spring, to multiple student design teams based on project submissions for innovative games. Winning teams will also receive a team office and equipment in the EA Game Innovation Lab for one semester; access to the lab�s usability testing facility; and support from a faculty advisor/executive producer.

The first meeting will take place Friday, Oct 22nd. For more information, visit our website!

Internship Opportunity

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is seeking interns for this and next semester.

In case you haven't heard of it, the Academy puts on the DICE conference every year which includes the Interactive Achievement Awards. The DICE conference is attended by top executives and designers in the game industry.

USC students have been interning at the Academy for the past few years and say it provided them great contacts for work in the game industry.

The president, Joseph Olin, is a USC alum. If you are interested in e-mail Joseph at joseph@interactive.org. For more about the Academy see http://www.interactive.org.

USC Game Researchers seek assistance

Two people within USC have contacted me recently looking for assistance from our community with game-related research.

The first is an opportunity to provide game design services (and be paid by the hour) on an Annenberg research project. Here is more info from the researcher/PhD candidate, Wei Peng:

"We want to conduct a study on the impact of competition and narrative on the learning outcome of educational computer games. We need to develop a storyline for a biology game which intends to reinforce the lecture materials of a introductory biology class for freshman. The background of the game is that in 2020, metalloman needs to produce human organs. We also wants to incorporate faked online competition to test the effect of competition on learning. Because of our limited resource, the storyline/narrative and competition can only be presented through pop-up text message. Therefore, we really need to get a professional game designer rather than a layman to think of a compelling storyline and 'believable' faked online competition results."

Wei can be reached at wpeng@usc.edu.

The second is a request to fill out a Video Game Usage survey for a project by USC student, Ethan Levy. The survey is available at http://www.resisoft.com/resisoft/ethan/. Ethan can be reached at ethanlev@usc.edu.

EA Posts Record Sims 2 Sales

WSJ.com - Electronic Arts Posts Record Sims 2 Sales

Electronic Arts Posts Record Sims 2 Sales DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
September 28, 2004 1:15 p.m.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP)--Playing virtual God apparently has its appeal.
In what it called the biggest video game launch in the company's 22-year history, Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) says it sold more than a million copies of "The Sims 2" within the first 10 days of its release. The personal computer game, released on Sept. 14, lets players control virtual humans from birth until death, making myriad decisions ranging from romantic entanglements to personal hygiene. The sequel adds sharper three-dimensional graphics and other improvements over the original Sims game, released in 2000. Company spokesman Frank Gibeau said more than half the "Sims 2" sales came from Europe. Combined sales of the original Sims and its numerous expansion packs, meanwhile, have topped 41 million units. "The Sims franchise has become a cultural phenomenon and 'The Sims 2' is a game that changes the way we think about our industry," Gibeau said. EA, the world's largest video-game maker, put out an online version in 2002 but it suffered from disappointing sales and tepid reviews. Next up on the Sims roster is "The Urbz: Sims in the City." Expected in November, plyers must test the reputation of their Sims in an urban environment.

Unreal Scripting Demo

This is an open invitation to anyone interested.

This Wednesday (29th) at 9 pm after the seminar, there will be an Unreal Tournament 2004 scripting tutorial held in the IML by Prasan Samtani from the ITP 380 game programming course. All interested may attend. It will be about an hour in length and will contain the basics of coding in the Unreal Script language. This is beind done in conjunction with my thesis project for my final year, entitled "Clownerstrike" Please check my blog or the website clownerstrike.com for more information pertaining to the goals of this fine seminar!

Digital Hat Tricks

For all you hockey fans, in today's NYTimes:
Endangered NHL season to hit ice via video games
David Becker, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: September 27, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1043_3-5384290.html

As a tussle between players and owners threatens the National Hockey League's 2004-2005 season, cable network G4techTV is promising to make it happen one way or another by staging video game versions of the games...

"Millions of die-hard hockey fans on both sides of the border are upset," Charles Hirschhorn, CEO of the network, said in a statement. "Until the lockout ends, G4techTV will be there." Video games have frequently been used to re-create key games in real-life sports, with faux Super Bowl and World Series events common--and sometimes uncannily accurate--in predicting real-life results."

Command Kerry's Swift Boat

Kuma Reality Games is planning to release a game that sends players on a simulation of the Swift Boat mission that won the Democratic presidential candidate the Silver Star.

The game is the latest in a series of missions from the New York-based company that allow users to reenact actual battles mainly modeled on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other titles include "Uday and Qusay's Last Stand" and "Battle in Sadr City."

2 more interesting articles

Campus Life Comes to Second Life

College professors are taking advantage of Second Life's fully three-dimensional virtual world and are the first to teach classes in a world where the students can fly, change body types at will and build fantastical structures that can float in the sky.
Read More @ Wired News

Better Health Through Play

"Games and game technology have become much more capable," said Ben Sawyer. "There is a lot more appreciation in the health industry for what games can possibly do. And there's the money in health care looking to develop games. I think we're beginning to see a critical mass."
Dozens of games have been developed in recent years to train physicians, educate patients, improve fitness and help treat the addicted and the mentally ill.
"We need a vision or plan as to how to make progress," Howell said in a statement.
Read More @ Wired News

kurt macdonald dominates at rainbow 6

on wed, sept 23, 2004, kurt 'veganboy' macdonald tried to dominate 'rainbow 6: black arrow' on the xbox (live) console.

while he consistently had the highest number of kills, his team still managed to lose.

his team, made up of silicon valley employees, just failed to capture the flag. (the game is called retrival.)

'i cant explain it,' kurt said. 'i busted ass and they just let me down. it's like playing with amateurs. this isn't why i pay for an xbox live subscription. i pay 5.83 dollars a month to win. not lose.'

there is no word on whether this wed night spectacle will expand to other members of the im division.

###

ALT+CTRL

ALT+CTRL is happening at the Beall Center in early October -- a festival of independent and alternative games. More generally, check out the Beall Center for Art + Technology's current calendar for a great lineup of works that last until next summer.

SMU to Offer Women's Industry Scholarship

The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has announced that it has partnered with WomenGamers.com to "present the first-ever women's-only, industry-funded scholarship to attend SMU's one-of-a-kind digital games education program in Dallas, Texas."

Funded by businesses that recognize the need for more women in the game developer workforce, the Game Development Scholarship for Women will help cover the cost of tuition ($37,000) during the 18-month Guildhall program. MaryMargaret.com, a sponsor of the Women's Game Conference, will be assisting WomenGamers.com and SMU in finding publishers or developers who may be able to donate to the scholarship program.

The Guildhall at SMU Executive Director, Peter Raad, PhD, commented, "Game development studios and publishers must learn to capitalize more effectively on the increasing numbers of women playing games. We believe the most important step toward achieving that goal is for game developers' staffing choices to be reflective of the growing market of female gamers."

A press conference concerning the women's scholarship will be held at the upcoming Women's Game Conference during September 9-10 in Austin, Texas.

Slamdance Game Competition

BAWLS Guarana and Slamdance join forces to honor the work
of aspiring game developers

Los Angeles � Aug. 19, 2004 � BAWLS Guarana, a favorite high
caffeine soft drink among gamers, and The Slamdance Film
Festival, known for nurturing independent filmmakers, have
created The BIG C � the BAWLS Independent Game Competition
� to help aspiring game developers showcase their work in a
national competition.

Presented by Slamdance, The Big C is calling for entries of all
new games from emerging talent. Selected games will compete
at The Slamdance Film festival in Park City, Jan. 21 to 28, 2005
and will be judged by festival attendees, with a Jury Award and
Audience Award that include cash and prizes presented at the
end of the festival.

Game submissions have an early-postmarked deadline of Oct.
1, 2004 and a final postmarked deadline of Nov. 14, 2004.
Entrants may submit games on disk or provide a URL for judges
to download. Entry forms and application information are
available through the Slamdance website at
www.slamdance.com or by calling Slamdance Games
Competition Manager Carolyn Cohagan at (323) 466-1786.

(via Twitcherati)

Video Game to Fight Hunger

Comments from Tech Review blogger Erika Jonietz:

The United Nations' World Food Program has created a video game called Food Force to help educate kids about hunger and the aid agency's work. Billed as a cross between Tomb Raider and a lecture from the World Food Program, the game is targeted to children between 8 and 13 years old, according to BBC News.

The game is due to be released later this year for the PC and Mac, and will be available in the U.S. as a free CD or download from the Internet. It starts with a short video that explains a crisis in an imaginary country due to drought and civil war. Players then complete a series of missions such as dropping food parcels from the air or using food aid to rebuild the country's economy.

While the goal is admirable, I have to wonder about how helpful it is to target this sort of information to kids as young as 8. This is a growing trend among aid and conservation groups, with A-B-C books on endangered species and elementary school pamphlets on rainforest destruction. Young children should be encouraged to do basic things such as recycle or bring canned food to a food pantry. But it's questionable how much information they can--or should--absorb on the depth of the world's problems and their own (future) responsibility for solving them.

Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation

Women's Game Conference, September 9-10

The Women's Game Conference focuses on women in the computer and video game industry. The conference program includes career paths for women in the industry, gender inclusive game design and women and girls as consumers of games.

The Women's Game Conference runs concurrently with the Austin Game Conference September 9-10, 2004 at the Austin Convention Center and is open to anyone interested in the game industry and game development.

>> Looks like some very good speakers here, if anyone is able to attend!

new web game

so you missed playing 'the beast' (the ai web game a few years back). well, time to make up for it - it appears that halo2 now has a similar game being launched. looks like it might even be the same design team doing this one.

more info from /.

Game Mod Contest

From the Los Angeles Independent Game Developers' Association:

At the chapter meeting on July 29th, we are holding a Game Mod design
contest. Now is your chance to be the game designer. Make the
pitch. Everyone is eligible to submit an idea for their dream mod.
No artistic or programming talent needed. Take your favorite modable
game and then improve or reinvent it. Your entry should at the bare
minimum contain:

From the Los Angeles Independent Game Developers' Association:

At the chapter meeting on July 29th, we are holding a Game Mod design
contest. Now is your chance to be the game designer. Make the
pitch. Everyone is eligible to submit an idea for their dream mod.
No artistic or programming talent needed. Take your favorite modable
game and then improve or reinvent it. Your entry should at the bare
minimum contain:

• Description of mod (style, presentations, gameplay, etc.)


• The Engine/game/tech it would be modded from.


• List of required mod assets (3D/2D art, sound, etc).


• List of required technology/script/code.


• Milestone schedule and required team member breakdown.

Entries will be judged by a panel of the chapter experts and prizes
will be awarded based on the following criteria:

• Design


• Fun factor


• Innovation


• Realistic production feasibility

Entries must be received by Monday, July 26th.
Email your entries to la@igda.org with the subject Mod Design Contest.

Camera Phone Scavenger Hunts

Simple and fun, from Picturephoning:

I picked this up from an article published in the Miami Herald on various mobile campaigns (mostly text message) launched by wireless companies. But this one involves camera phones:

"In April at six colleges, Verizon sponsored the Urban Challenge on Campus -- scavenger hunts with camera phones. College students had to decipher clues at 12 campus locations and photograph them in 90 minutes."

GPS enabled Gameboy

A GPS affixed to your Gameboy!? Pretty cool. Now all we need is an open API for creating games on there.

From We-Make-Money-Not-Art.

RedSky Mobile

Play with Purpose: Cultural Critique + Gaming

Seems to me that the computer gaming interface may represent the next portal through which cultural critique is articulated, which is promising so long as the coupling of narrative, critique and action doesn't dry out the game play to point that you can't tell its a video game anymore. Parenthetically, I love the way Rafael Fajardo has packaged his border-politics games with a well-written essay. It lends scholarly heft to his serious yet tongue-in-cheek re-working of Frogger!

The violence of the computer game world is thrown sharply into relief when
characters do not represent the cultural hegemony typically seen in a
First-Person Shooter. "Play" does not necessarily equal "amusement" or
"humour" in these games; the opportunity to put on an identity that sees a
formerly friendly (?) world as oppositional can be shocking. Developers
from four recent games discuss their works on -empyre-..

Based on the struggles of a Palestinian youth during the Intifadah,
UnderAsh and Under Siege were created by AFKARMEDIA under the direction of Syrian cofounder, programmer Radwan Kasmiya. Kasmiya also acts as media advisor for the Middle-Eastern publisher DAR AL-FIKR.

Depicting the plight of a foreign asylum-seeker in Australia, Escape from
Woomera asks a player to attempt to
break out of four refugee detention centers. Melbourne-based Kipper is
the Creative Director from the development team.

Rafael Fajardo explores the complexity of the real-world US/Mexico border
situation through the paired games Crosser and La Migra. The games depict border
crossings from the point of view of the illegal immigrant, and as a border
patrol agent who attempts to prevent the crossing.

Collaborative group C-level has produced Waco Resurrection. Several of the artist/developers, including
Brody Condon, Eddo Stern, and Peter Brinson will join us, examining issues
of colonialism, violence, and documentary versus fictive presentation.

Students and Scholars Take To The Streets - Mixed Reality Gaming

Recently, some NYU ITP students put together PacManhattan - a PacMan game played in the streets surrounding Washington Square Park. It was a fun stunt that got lots of media attention and for good reason: there's something compelling about re-imagining physical, lived space in such a way, especially if it's playful and pulls elements from resonant pop-cultural idioms like video gaming.

Curious for more substantive insights into why this sort of re-imagining has appeal?

The Human Pacman project, originally developed at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University in Singapore, share their insights in a very cogent way. Their publications page indicates that there are (at least) 7 different audiences to which their Human Pacman project has something to say about mobility, ubiquity, entertainment, social computing and more. (By comparison, Pacmanhattan's Press page has links to 19 press clips, and no reference to the MRL's Human Pacman seems to exist anywhere on the site.)

The game is fun by itself, to be sure. Drawing out how the essence of this sort of activity lives beyond a press blip is the hard work of solid, collegial reseach+development.

Mobile Gaming - Who Says Women Don't Play?

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. mobile gamers are women, compared to 42 percent who are men, according to the recent Yankee Group U.S. Mobile Entertainment Survey. In addition, 29 percent of male mobile gamers purchased games compared to 17 percent of women. The Yankee Group is one of those market research operations, and their Media & Entertainment Strategies senior analyst gives some top line insights in the release.

"Our survey clearly disagrees with the common stereotype that men, especially young men, are the most ardent mobile gamers. The largest market may be getting the least attention in a space that's increasingly competitive. This could be important news for games manufacturers and other content providers making large investments in game design and marketing programs that target men and adolescent boys."

Phone-based Virtual Drama

We Make Money Not Art reports on a Virtual Soap Opera for your Phone:

Produced by pervasive game developers It's Alive, Supafly is a location-based virtual soap opera in which players have to resort to intrigues and gossip to appear in the online newspaper "Hype" and become a virtual celebrity.
They have to beat competitors, find allies, belong to the right group, and follow the latest fashion trends in order to stay on top.
The game is played by using SMS and MMS. From the Website the player can read the latest gossip in the newspaper, get new clothes or accessories for the character, chat with other players (logged on to the website or connected from their mobile phone), keep track of friends, and check statistic.
The character stays in the mobile phone and - since the game is location-based - it follows the player everywhere, to help him/her find nearby friends or maybe find a date, till a command from the mobile phone orders the character to leave the phone and enters its home on the Web.

Game Ads

Viacom Eyes Game Ads - GameMarketWatch.com - Insight for the Electronic Entertainment Industry

"I think the jury is in, people are spending a lot of time in interactive," Bressler told attendees at the Global Digital Summit, sponsored by OgilvyOne, the interactive marketing division of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. "The interesting thing for us is to figure out if there's a market for advertising in video games."

XFIRE

All The Other Kids Are Doing It :: AO

Xfire, made by the eponymous company formerly known as Ultimate Arena, is an application that gamers run on their desktop, like an instant messenger client. The application tracks what game you are running and lets you see which games your friends are playing. You can just click on any friend's name and, if his (or her) game server has room on it and you have the game software, you'll find yourself in the same game, on the same server as your friend, so you can play with your pal.

Sounds a lot like what the Microsoft Researchers presented..

Spot On: Do Better Graphics Make For Better Games?

"The secret weapon is interactivity," said Will Wright. "It doesn't really matter what graphics you map on top of [the game]." Wright added, pointedly, that he doesn�t equate high-end graphics and photo-realism with a good game. To muffled laughter, he added, �Movies have had it for a long time and there are still plenty of bad movies.�

by Curt Feldman, GameSpot

Against Realism in Game Design

The Undead Zone - Why realistic graphics make humans look creepy. By Clive�Thompson

In 1978, the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori noticed something interesting: The more humanlike his robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. If an android become too realistic and lifelike, suddenly people were repelled and disgusted.

The Quest for the Rest

now I'm a bit biased b/c I dig the polyphonic spree, but this is the coolest promotional game/interactive experience I've ever encountered. Visually, it's great, and the point-and-clickness of the whole thing really worked for me. Very fun the first time (replays not as much), so I would strongly recommend clicking through all 3 levels. Plus, each is accompanied by a new song from the upcoming spree album together we're heavy. So BUY your copy today and get a robe! LINK to game more images on my blog

Rumble Seat

New game accesory demo'd at E3 and reviewed in the WSJ:

Is this a great country, or what? Thanks to technology, you soon will be able to not only hear your favorite music and the sound effects of videogames, but to actually feel these sounds, and not just in your heart and soul. An outfit called Guitammer Co., from Westerville, Ohio, has developed a $150 home gadget that actually transmits sounds as vibrations through your body, starting from the bottom up. The product's name says it all: the ButtKicker Gamer. This gizmo attaches to the bottom of your chair and sends low-frequency sound waves from music or games through the chair's back and, especially, its seat -- hence the name.

Story vs. Interactivity Discussion on Gamedev.org

I'm a moderator for the webboard, Gamedev.org. Generally, this site is dominated by beginning-to-intermediate level programmers, but the Game Design subsection is slowly growing. I started a topic on Story vs. Interactivity in Games. This topic will probably be central to my eventual thesis. Perhaps some of you would like to weigh in--it would definitely up the academic level of the discussion. You can log in as a guest. You will find the discussion thread here.

Golf Launchpad

Electric-Spin

Golf Launchpad is a revolutionary way to play golf anywhere, anytime. Use it to play life-like golf on one of the world’s premier golf courses in EA SPORTS™ Tiger Woods PGA TOUR� 2004 or Microsoft Links, or use it to practice your game. Feel the real thing.

Golf Launchpad replaces the mouse with a sophisticated swing path analyzer with a tethered regulation golf ball, sensors and electronics that enable you to play computer golf with your own clubs with unmatched realism and feel.

Backseat Gaming

The Pocket PC in my hands, covered in strange purply plastic, beeped and whistled as our van passed an ancient oak tree in the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden. "Grab the documents, quick!" shouted professor Oscar Juhlin riding shotgun. I flailed the Pocket PC in the air, desperately snatching for virtual documents. Squirming in the air, I caught two documents. Good enough - now on to the docks, where we hoped to find some undercover operatives.
No, we weren't two geeky professors reaching for a papers flying out the window. We were two geeky professors playing a new type of location-based game, called "backseat gaming" from the Interactive Institute in Sweden. Basically, the idea is to create digital games that bring the real world into the game. If you've ever taken a family trip, you know how boring a 15 hour drive in the family mini-van. Remember counting license plates, or making games out of surrounding cars and drivers? Well, backseat games leverage this natural inclination to layer a game on top of the real world, but they use GPS, compass, and wireless internet technologies to bring action, role playing, and story into the backseat gaming experience.

Joystick101.org || getting in-depth, with games.

playing games = fame and riches

Last year, Mr. Lim made about $300,000 from player fees and commercials. Another top earner, Hung Jin-Ho, whose fingers are insured for $60,000, recently signed a three-year deal with telecom provider KTF Co. that will pay him $480,000 altogether.

article via /. post

game innovation, or an alternative to the 'perfecting the formula model'

nice article

URBZ@E3

IMD Booth @ E3

E3: state of gaming

did they mean: 1996-2004?

ALT+CTRL Festival of Independent and Alternative Games

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS/SPONSORSHIP

ALT+CTRL
Festival of Independent and Alternative Games

Festival: October 5-November 23
Conference: October 8-9, 2004
Beall Center for Art and Technology
University of California Irvine

SUBMISSION DEADLINE JUNE 1, 2004.
For information, to place an online submission, or to learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please visit:
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/gamelab/events/alt_ctrl_04.html

Presented by:
Cal-(IT)2 Game Culture & Technology Lab: http://www.ucgamelab.net
Beall Center for Art and Technology: http://beallcenter.uci.edu

Center for Computer Games Research

Center for Computer Games Research IT University of Copenhagen

Center for the study of digital games - currently, most of the Ph.D. students have "backgrounds within the Arts and Humanities, Psychology and Sociology", with courses such as "Ludology Vs. Narratology? A Critical Investigation of the Essential Aesthetic Properties of Digital Media, led by renowned scholar Marie-Laure Ryan" - and many pioneers such as Jesper Juul, Espen Aarseth and Gonzalo Frasca seem to be affiliated with the center.

Playtesters for Sony PlayStation Games

Ariel Lawrence, a former CTIN 488 student, is now working over at Sony and has extended an opportunity for students to participate in playtests of new PlayStation games.

The first test is rather short notice: May 1. If you're interested, fill out this questionaire and send it to Ariel at ariel_lawrence@playstation.sony.com. If you have any questions, you can contact her at 310-829-6686.

JSB on Storytelling and the Art of Science

John Seely Brown, the media innovator who helped make XeroxPARC such a center for creative thinking in the 1990s, has interesting things to say about games, narrative, and education in an interview conducted at the Smithsonian Institute and recently posted on his site. Brown has become involved in the new Institute for Media Literacy at the University of Southern California.
From Henry Jenkin's blog at Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation

And a related site with several additional viewpoints at "Storytelling: Passport to Success in the 21st Century" sponsored by the Smithsonian last weekend.

Will Wright speaking at OHE, 4/22/04

Rumor has it that Will Wright will be speaking Thursday in OHE 542 from 12:00 noon until around 1:30. Wright is Chief Designer and Co-Founder of Maxis, developers of the SimCity series and The Sims. For those of you who missed his speeches at the GDC, this is an excellent opportunity to meet one of the most interesting and unique game designers in the industry.

Wright explains the concept of a fitness landscape in terms of game genres.

Simprov's Wedding Construction Kit for The Sims

Thursday, April 15
Simprov's Wedding Construction Kit for The Sims
with Don Hopkins

The Sims is a game about everyday life, like a virtual dollhouse populated with simulated people. You can build homes, decorate and furnish them, create families of characters, and direct their lives, and tell stories about them. Players can create their own character skins, object graphics and programmed behaviors. Simprov supports improvisational storytelling with The Sims. The "Wedding Construction Kit" is an independently developed set of specially programmed characters and objects, which you can add to the game. You can plug them together like Legos, to build your own dream wedding, or the shotgun wedding from hell. Don Hopkins, one of the original Sims programmers who worked with Will Wright at Maxis, will demonstrate the Wedding Construction Kit, as well as behind-the-scenes tools used to create and program Sims objects, including Transmogrifier, RugOMatic and SimAntics.

Don Hopkins programmed a multi player networked version of SimCity for Unix workstations, and developed The Sims character animation system, user interface, content creation tools, and ported The Sims Online to Linux for Maxis. He also programmed the robots for Will Wright's "Stupid Fun Club" studio, for two one-minute reality TV programs about a Broken Robot and the Robot Waiter.

http://www.TheSimsTransmogrifier.com
http://www.TheSimsTransmogrifier.com/Objects/simprov-scene.jpg
http://www.TheSimsTransmogrifier.com/Objects/simprov-moonlight.jpg
http://www.TheSimsTransmogrifier.com/Objects/simprov-bride.jpg

Location: Blue Bongo Cafe (Little Pedros)
901 E. 1st Street, 90012
One block east of Alameda...
plenty of free safe parking.
Donation :: $5.00 [for our dj's!]
Evening kicks off at 8pm

CA Legislation on video game sales pending

On April 13th, the California General Assembly will consider two bills (AB 1792 and AB1793) regarding video game sales. AB 1792 prohibits the sale or rental of video games to minors that contain violent material by reclassifying games as "harmful substances" such as alcohol and pornography. AB 1793 mandates segregation rules for retailers to display games based on ratings issued by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).

Full details on AB 1792 and AB 1793 can be found at the California State Legislature website.

A letter to the members of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences states that "These bills treat video games differently from other forms of media." And, that they "would frustrate new major efforts undertaken by our industry and retailers to voluntarily increase awareness of the video and computer game rating system and prevent the sale of M (Mature) rated games to kids under 17."

In another letter from the International Game Developers Association, Program Director Jason Della Rocca states that "The IGDA firmly believes that games are a medium of expression that should receive the same level of respect, and protection, as other forms of art and entertainment. These bill are one more step on the slippery slope of government regulation, oversight and control over our creative endeavors."

CTIN 488 Speakers

Game designer/producers Stuart Platt and Stevie Case will be speaking in CTIN 488 on Tuesday 13th at 7PM in G142, under the Carson stage. All interested students are welcome to attend. Platt is Executive Producer at THQ Wireless and has produced ports of classic Intellivision games for wireless as well as the FPS Red Faction for N-Gage. Stevie "KillCreek" Case is perhaps best known for her skills as a professional cyberathlete.

Collateral Romance, et al.

for those not at GDC (and even those who were) --> discussion / etc. from slashdot re: the GDC panel on Game Design Challenge: Love Story

CALL FOR ENTRIES: INTO THE PIXEL

INTO THE PIXEL
A Juried Exhibition of Digital Game Art
in celebration of the 10th anniversary of E3Expo
May 12- 14, 2004
Los Angeles

Into the Pixel is a celebration of computer and video game art curated by interactive entertainment industry art veterans and experts from the art establishment.

Premiering at E3Expo 2004, Into the Pixel is an opportunity for published video game artists, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Members, and E3Expo exhibiting companies to be reviewed and recognized by their industry and the art establishment.

Up to sixteen images will be selected and exhibited in a gallery setting at E3Expo, where more than 60,000 entertainment and interactive industry executives, designers, developers, animators, journalists and retailers will view the exhibition. Artists will be recognized at a VIP Opening Reception on Wed., May 12th from 5:30 pm - 8 pm.

Deadline for submission: April 5, 2004

Eligibility:

* Open to Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Members and E3Expo Exhibiting Companies
* Submissions must be taken from or been used to create published,
or soon to be published (ship dates confirmed), video games.
* Artists may submit up to 3 original works

Go to http://www.iqmailer.net/rt.asp?I=11E82X9DCX0&L=26253 for additional information on the exhibition, jury members, and submission requirements.

In Video Games, What's New?

The industry faces a creative dry spell as developers rehash proven material for an aging demographic, insiders say.

SAN JOSE � The video game industry is facing a hardening of the creative arteries as aging gamers' tastes increasingly shift toward sequels and games based on movies, industry participants said this week.

LA Times Article: In Video Games, What's New?

Video Games as Art

Nice article by Alex Pham in today's LA Times on " Action Morphs into Art" with several pithy quotes from CTIN Professors Chris Swain and Tracy Fullerton and some slick snaps (by Luis Sinco/LAtimes).

Who's heads are those....

Electronic Arts Game Design Program at USC CNTV

ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCES MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR GIFT
TO USC SCHOOL OF CINEMA-TELEVISION�S
INTERACTIVE MEDIA DIVISION

Funds Will Expand School�s Global Leadership
in Computer Game Research and Education

Press release below

ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCES MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR GIFT
TO USC SCHOOL OF CINEMA-TELEVISION�S
INTERACTIVE MEDIA DIVISION

Funds Will Expand School�s Global Leadership
in Computer Game Research and Education

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 22, 2004, 2004 � Electronic Arts (EA) (Nasdaq: ERTS) announced today that it has made a multi-million dollar donation to the USC School of Cinema-Television (USC-CNTV) to advance interactive media education and create a launch pad for the next generation of interactive entertainment. The contribution, part of EA�s global educational and talent development effort, will fund two new facets of USC-CNTV�s Division of Interactive Media: the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program and the Electronic Arts Endowed Faculty Chair. The EA Interactive Entertainment Program is a 3-year Master of Fine Arts degree program. The program will help forward USC-CNTV�s goal to educate the next generation of high-level gaming design and visionary thinkers in what will be one of the 21st Century�s primary entertainment media.

�The School�s rich storytelling tradition and long-standing commitment to technological experimentation make it an ideal partner for EA,� said Don Mattrick, President, Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. �This is an excellent opportunity for EA to invest in the future of the industry by providing today�s students with the skills and knowledge they will need to push technology and entertainment forward.�

Mattrick, the newest appointee to the School�s Board of Councilors, will be part of a high-profile team � the ranks of which include entertainment giants Jeffrey Katzenberg, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Wells, and Robert Zemeckis � that will work to ensure that interactive media studies at USC continues to move confidently in the direction of growth and innovation.

�This gift clearly demonstrates EA�s commitment to expanding the frontiers of game design, and to developing a well rounded, highly skilled, and forward-thinking talent base overall,� said Elizabeth M. Daley, Dean, USC School of Cinema-Television. �The School�s position as an international academic leader is further solidified by its relationship with the world�s number-one interactive entertainment developer � a partnership that will set new standards of excellence in a field that is truly changing global culture.�

The EA gift will fuel the growth of the School�s Interactive Media Division�s gaming component, and enable the Division, headed by Scott Fisher, to define and expand this nascent, multi-faceted field. With the aid of these funds, the School will grow its efforts to graduate students who are visionary thinkers, but who also have a deep understanding of the crafts and skills required to produce quality content for a diverse media array.

Specifically, the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program will spawn the creation of a curriculum and research lab to explore the boundaries of interactive entertainment and to study the emerging discipline of game development. The gift will enable the creation of an intra-USC gaming community that will bring together creative and technical expertise in cinema-television, the arts, and technical sciences, and will provide students with invaluable real-world experience through internships and work-study programs at EA, including its newest Los Angeles campus.

The Electronic Arts Chair will enable the Division to meet the intensifying demand for talented game developers who are solidly grounded in story and content. The endowed funds to support faculty specializing in game development elevates the field into the ranks of other professions, such as law and engineering, worthy of scholarly study and specialized training.

"It's astonishing how quickly games have become an essential part of the entertainment arts, and there is no better place than USC to nurture the creative and conceptual thinkers who will take the medium to places we can only imagine," said USC alumnus George Lucas, a longtime supporter of the School of Cinema-Television, the founder of game-design studio LucasArts and the filmmaker behind the Star Wars series. "USC is a major force in cinema education, and thanks to Electronic Arts, it can become a leader in interactive arts education as well."

�To create the next generation of entertainment, we need the next generation of talent,� said Rusty Rueff, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Electronic Arts. �Melding storytelling, art, music, game design, and technology has become so complex that it is imperative for tomorrow�s designers and producers to acquire an education with both depth and breadth in order to achieve success in our ever-growing industry.�

�Our new development studio in Playa Del Rey and this investment reflect EA�s long term commitment to Los Angeles and Southern California,� said John Batter, Vice President and General Manager, Electronic Arts Los Angeles. �We are proud to be expanding our presence within the region by fostering creativity through education and by stimulating current and future growth within the entertainment industry.�

###
About Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts posted revenues of $2.5 billion for fiscal 2003. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under three brand names: EA SPORTS�, EA GAMES�, and EA SPORTS BIG�. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

Electronic Arts, EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS BIG, and EA GAMES are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About the USC School of Cinema-Television
In 2004, the USC School of Cinema-Television celebrates 75 years of training the next generation of creative talent and scholars in film, television, and new media. Co-founded by the University of Southern California and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929, the School offered the first bachelor�s degree in film in the country and today is consistently ranked as the top program of its kind. Its more than 8,000 graduates � the ranks of which include such stellar figures as Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, Ron Howard, James Ivory, Randal Kleiser, George Lucas, Michelle Manning, Bill Mechanic, Neal Moritz, Walter Murch, Jay Roach, Gary Rydstrom, Edward Saxon, Stacey Sher, Bryan Singer, John Singleton, Robert Zemeckis, and Laura Ziskin � are among the entertainment industry�s most distinguished animators, scholars, teachers, writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, sound experts and industry executives.

USC Student Wins Scholarship to Game Developers Conference

Steve Woyach, a CTIN 488 Game Design student (Spring 03), is one of 25 students who were awarded a GDC Scholarship this year. Recipients are awarded a Classic Pass, with access to all sessions, roundtables, and keynotes. Past USC game design students to receive this scholarship include Virginia Suchodolski (2002).

This is a great opportunity -- keep it in mind for next year if you're interested in attending the full conference!

Game Design Workshop on Gamasutra

There's an excerpt on Gamasutra today from the book that Chris and I wrote. It's the "cover feature" -- though I'm not sure how a website mag can have a cover ... :)

Blast Theory's new game

I LIKE FRANK IN ADELAIDE by Blast Theory

2-13 MARCH 2004

The world's first 3G mixed reality game by award-winning artists' group
Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab, University of
Nottingham is starting today and runs for the next two weeks.

PLAY

molyneux interview

nice article about some current game design trends.

Women in Gaming Event at GDC

From Bill Fulton at Microsoft:

The third annual "Women Celebrating Women in Gaming" event is happening this month at the Games Developer Conference in San Jose. I would like to invite you and any of your fellow women colleagues in the industry to attend this event. The event's objective is to promote networking opportunities for women, reflect on women's contributions to gaming, and just have fun making connections and meeting new people. This event is free and requires no pre-registration.

3rd Annual Women Celebrating Women in Gaming Event--hosted by Microsoft
Date: Wednesday, March 24 2004
Time: 4:30 � 6:30 P.M.
Place: Hyatt Sainte Clare
302 South Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113

interactive entertainment awards

This Thursday in Las Vegas, the video game industry will be holding its equivalent of the Academy Awards, the Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Okay it�s not as glamorous as Hollywood�s big night, and Joan Rivers would probably have a field day with her worst dressed list, but it�s a notable event, put on by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, recognizing talent in a too often unrecognized field.

Link via technology review

adventure gamers

a nice site that reviews and discusses both commercial and independent/amateur games. the site also just released the winners of the first Underground Awards.

Although the days of classic adventures may have passed, the heart of adventure gaming lives on through the work of amateur designers who create adventure games in the true spirit of the classics, and make them free for all to play. This site is dedicated to throwing a spotlight on those independent, free adventures.

Link via Grand Text Auto

Experimental Game Lab at Georgia Tech

There's a new Experimental Game Lab at Georgia Tech.

Check out the range of current projects.

Do Games Need Stories?

"�Do games need stories? No! Any questions?� starts LucasArts producer Haden Blackman. Odd first words, perhaps, for the keystone panel of a conference on storytelling and computer games."

A nice summary of the panel discussion with Will Wright, Haden Blackman, and Sheldon Pacotti at the Fictional Worlds, Virtual Experiences event at Stanford on Friday.

msnbc: emotion in games article

quick read:

Link

"Translating Nintendo"

Justin Hall on issues of localization and translation in video games:

"When movies are brought between countries, subtitles or dubbed vocals are added - requiring textual translation. When video games are brought between countries, not on the words of the script must be translated, but also the video game commands. Do gamers in one nation favor different buttons on their controller? Do they understand movement on the screen differently? Often because games can involve dozens of hours of play, there are specific moments of content that must be excised or altered for different national markets. Videogame translation or "localization" is a fascinating way to examine regional differences in gameplay."

Full post at: Chanpon.org

Game Studies Volume 3 Issue 2 2003

Articles in the new issue (12/31) of Gamestudies.org include:

-- Edward Castranova "On Virtual Economies" discussing whether the game economy can be a model for fleshworld economy or not.
-- Gonzalo Frasca discusses freedom of speech and the dangers of computer games in "Sim Sin City � some thoughts about Grand Theft Auto 3"
-- Shuen-shing Lee discusses politically charged games such as New York Defender and Kabul Kaboom in "I Lose, Therefore I think."
-- Jan van Looy reads the graphic expression and gameplay of Head over Heels in the context of 1987 Britain, showing how popular culture has influenced the creator of the game in "Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown."
-- Laurie Taylor discusses the spatial domains of computer games in "When Seams Fall Apart."

Gamestudies.org

Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Jan 17�Apr 4, 2004
Presented in conjunction with the Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Game Scenes addresses the pervasive influence of the computer gaming industry on artistic invention, and explores a variety of areas, from the evolution of the video game and its roots in military training applications to the current popularity of virtual reality and online gaming and the growing use of elements of digital gaming by contemporary artists.

Artists include: C-Level, Paul Johnson with Sunny Kim, Futurefarmers, Katherine Isbister with Rainey Straus, Shelley Eshkar with Paul Kaiser, Shirley Shor in collaboration with Aviv Eyal, Fur, Brody Condon, Mauro Ceolin, Jon Haddock and Janek Simon, including Wattis Artist-in-Residence Jason Wiener and our Young Artists at Work. Game Scenes will also feature a machinima film series curated by Galen Davis and Henry Lowood. Machinima is a form of low budget, computer generated filmmaking that uses video game engines for production and is distributed at almost no cost over the Internet.

www.yerbabuenaarts.org/va/current/bang_mach.html

Story in Games

From an editorial in a recent game industry newsletter:

�Story in a game,� says John Carmack
of Id Software, �is like story in a porn
movie. It�s expected to be there, but it�s not
that important.�...

"There are many arguments consuming
the business: How bad will the downturn
be? Where are we in the console cycle?
Will EA ever slip up? But those are squabbles
of the moment that will be replaced,
in time, by other squabbles of the moment.
Carmack�s provocative volley strikes at the
heart of the videogame industry, recalling
some seminal issues. What�s the point of a
story in a game? While the genius writers
at Infocom were roundly praised for their
devious, hilarious story lines in games such
as Zork and Deadline a generation ago,
the most popular games of that era were
those that were all play and no story, such
as Pong and Space Invaders.
The case against weighing down games
with stories has centered on the idea that
stories are linear things�with a beginning,
middle, and end�while games only work
with looser narratives. If people want stories,
they watch a movie or read a book.
Games are about escape, release, imagining
you�re someone else. You don�t need a
story to enjoy a racing game, sports game,
or shoot-em-up. All you need to know is
which button to push to make your car go
faster, sneak past a defender, or exterminate
an opponent.
A look at today�s most popular games
blows that particular case to smithereens.
The Sims and EverQuest are all about the
story created by the people who play the
open-ended games, and games such as
Battlefield 1942 and Castle Wolfenstein
succeed in large part because players want
to reenact historical tales�or make up
some new story that changes history to
their liking.
And what of Carmack? He made his
millions on Doom and Quake. He�d tell
you they�re just shooting games, enormously
successful due to their great technology
and design. But talk to those who
play these games in their homes and at
high-profile public events like QuakeCon,
and they�ll talk with equal enthusiasm
about the story underlying those games
and the extra charge they get from destroying
a wraith because they know where it
came from and how that character got into
the game. They care about the story lurking
behind the shooting. Quake and Doom
players imagine themselves as characters in
a story that Carmack and his inspired colleagues
created�even if the creators think
it�s cool to say that the weapons and the
kills are all that matter. He�s working in an
industry with an audience that pays close
attention to a game�s story, even if the
game maker pretends there is no story.
When Carmack says story doesn�t matter,
he�s just doing what he does in his games:
telling a story".

GDC scholarships

IGDA's GDC Scholarship Program Now Accepting Applications
---------------------------------------------------------
The IGDA has just launched the 4th annual Student Scholarship Program.
Twenty-five college students will be awarded complimentary full access
passes to the Game Developers Conference. Students can now apply online.
The deadline to enter is Wednesday, January 28, 2004. Recipients will be
announced in early February 2004. Applicants are required to be full-time
college students (or equivalent) and IGDA student members for
consideration. The IGDA's Education Committee and board members will judge
scholarship applications.

New Class open to EVERYONE!

re-invasion

Japanese game machine maker Taito Corp said on Friday it plans to restart sales of "Space Invaders" in the United States, almost 25 years after the game first appeared in video arcades.

link

Action Stick

From David Kushner's tech review blog:
Work it, Bill, work it. According to CNN, Bill Gates took a break during this week�s Comdex convention to try out Action Stick: a new video game controller that uses 18 infrared sensors to respond to kicks and punches. The $100 gizmo is supposed to go on sale next month, and will be compatible with PC, Xbox, and PS2 systems. Video games are not just for your thumbs anymore.

there inc - propagating the bad of society?

from slashdot:

"An anonymous reader writes "A former beta tester has written up a negative, but interesting, review of the 'virtual world' MMO title There. While it mainly contains sarcastic remarks directed at the game mechanics (or lack there-of), near the end it also claims that There is 'a mirror of the shallowest possible view of American consumerist society.' It concludes by saying that There is missing anything that would classify it as a game, and that as a chat service it capitalizes on 'our society's tendency to believe that being attractive is a prerequisite for being accepted by others.' Should developers try to be aware of whether their game will reproduce negative trends already present in real life?" We recently ran a story on the official launch of There, a game that has its fans as well as its detractors."

i still havent had a chance to play it. i know some emails were bounced around a few weeks ago about it. anyone have anthing new to say about it? (or brinker: second life updates?)

War Games

From Henry Jenkins' Technology Review Blog:
Early next year, Kuma Reality Games plans to launch a service that will allow players to re-enact contemporary news events. Kuma's first product�centered on the war in Iraq�will brief players with information derived from real-world news reporting, and then allow them to play out missions based on actual troop deployments. On its Web site, Kuma claims that the new game "presents our soldiers' acts of patriotism and bravery as never before possible.� And then, the kicker: �In a world being torn apart by international conflict, one thing is on everyone�s mind as they finish watching the nightly news: 'Man, this would make a great game.'�

OpenGL Tutorials

(Repost of an email I sent out)

For anyone who wants to get a head start on C, C++, and OpenGL, there are some great tutorials at the following sites:
www.gametutorials.com
http://nehe.gamedev.net

If you have specific questions about OpenGL, DirectX, or general game design, try:
www.gamedev.org
(I frequent it as SDGamer--thinking about changing it to SCGamer)

Immersive/Pervasive Gaming

Useful overview of some new developments in collective mobile entertainment including analysis of "The Beast" interactive narrative (not a game) designed to support/hype Speilberg's movie AI and written by Sean Stewart

This Is Not A Game: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play

Jane McGonigal, Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, University of California at Berkeley. E-mail: janemcg@uclink4.berkeley.edu.

Abstract
The increasing convergence and mobility of digital network technologies have given rise to new, massively-scaled modes of social interaction where the physical and virtual worlds meet. This paper explores one product of these extreme networks, the emergent genre of immersive entertainment, as a potential tool for harnessing collective action. Through an analysis of the structure and rhetoric of immersive games, I explore how immersive aesthetics can generate a new sence of social agency in game players, and how collaborative play techniques can instruct real-world problem-solving.

Keywords
Massively-multiplayer gaming, virtual reality, collective intelligence, extreme networks.

Full Text
Full text 172KB PDF. Adobe Reader or PDF viewing software required.

Update: Here's an even better description of the design objectives for "the beast".

Mobile Games to "tempt women'

i found this article on bbc.co.uk about how mobile gaming is going to make all women gamers... i would take some of this with a grain of salt, but i think it's worth a look-see.

"Mobile gaming is set to become big business in the next year and the industry is hoping it will attract a different breed of gamers, women.

While the games industry is churning out better, brighter games, mobile makers are coming out with more colour-screened handsets on which to play them.

Both sides of the industry are hoping mobiles will drive more women to gaming because they are easy to use.

But games makers still have to break some of the stereotypical ideas about which games will appeal to men and women, say experts. "

Read more here.

Hidden Agenda games-to-teach contest

Here's the game design contest that Andrew announced. Anyone interested in forming an IM team?

Welcome to Hidden Agenda—a contest designed for the college student with a penchant for video games, a passion for innovation and a hankering for $25,000. If you think you’ve got the skills, pull together an ace design team and build a fabulous new video game. The winners will get it all—the fame, the fortune, bragging rights and maybe even a date with that hottie in economics.

So what’s the hidden agenda? Well, you can’t build just any game for anybody. It has to be a genius game for a middle school crowd. So fun, in fact, that they don’t notice it ‘s also teaching them something. That’s the “stealth education” aspect. Shh!

Should Have Bought Stock in EA . . .

Fortune had an article this month that makes me wish I had invested in EA years ago. Good insight into the current world of video games and the impending market effect.

Online Games Grab Grim Reality

by Matthew Mirapaul in today's New York Times recounts reaction to "9-11 Survivor" a grisly game version of 9-11 survival. The game wasn't for commercial release; it was a sketch in a game design class in San Diego (taught by local artist Brody Condon). Artists working with game imagery and game worlds, gamer revisionism -- it's a timely article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/17/arts/design/17GAME.html?8hpib

Is Open-Ended Gaming The Future?

From a recent post on slashdot
(via Kellee Santiago - 1st year IM grad)

Thanks to GameSpot for their 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing whether open-ended, emergent gaming works better than linearity in videogames. The author asks: "Should more games aspire to be "virtual sandboxes," inviting the player to run amok and experiment as much as possible? Or is there still something to be said for the tightly scripted, carefully contrived, more-cinematic gaming experience? He goes on to suggest that more open-ended titles often work better for him: "I like for a game to last me a good, long time. I also like being able to come back to a game every once in a while and not necessarily feel pressured to reach a finite conclusion", but cites Grand Theft Auto III as "representative of where emergent and scripted gaming can and should converge."

And suggestions for related readings from Leonard:

Mindjack: Thinking Outside The MUD http://www.mindjack.com/feature/gne.html great interview w/ Stewart Butterfield (whipsmart, been working on Game Neverending for the past couple of years)

also: http://www.craphound.com/stewartetcon2003.txt

and on muds:

A Rape in Cyberspace
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Mindjack in general is really good. Also for those into gaming theory:

Game Girl Advance - great features, by Justin (links.net) and Jane
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/

Corrante Got Game? blog
http://www.corante.com/gotgame/

Joystick 101
http://www.joystick101.org/

Ludology
http://ludology.org/

Justin Hall on mobile games

WGR Article: E3 2003 Nuggets, Baby

A massively multiplayer online game would seem a natural extension of mobile phones' capabilities; the devices are already networked and always online. Maybe you don't want to stare at a 3D person wandering around a postage stamp, but there are ways to set up resource trading and social groupings for play with friends and strangers. This happened with WAP games like Atomic Dove. It's sure to happen with Java or BREW games too

GBA game with sun sensor

There's a new Game Boy Advance cart out in Japan that has an on-board light sensor. The main character uses a "sun gun" that the user has to charge up by actually going outside to collect sunlight...cool.

More info here.

Game research

"The more we talk, the smarter we get: the conversation between game designers and researchers" - useful editorial by Janet Murray for Digital Games Research Association.

History of Computer Game Design Course

"The History of Computer Game Design" is part of "How They Got Game: The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Videogames," (at Stanford)

This course provides a historical and critical approach to the evolution of computer and video game design from its beginnings to the present. It brings together cultural, business, and technical perspectives. Students should come away from the course with an understanding of the history of this medium, as well as insights into design, production, marketing, and socio-cultural impacts of interactive entertainment and communication.

The course will offer reading, discussion, guest presentations and projects on the developing culture and technology of computer and video game design. Historical contexts include entertainment media, computing technology, applications of gaming technology and business history. Topics include: play in human culture; early computer games from Chess to Spacewar; the role of artificial intelligence research; history of computer graphics and sound technology; the evolution of techniques and genres of computer game design; business competition; games and the microcomputer revolution; networked gaming; gadgets and games as factors in the evolution of software and hardware; marketing; gendering of games and game play; virtual worlds; simulation; video and computer game industries; technology transfer (e.g., military simulations).

Simson's unplugged

From About.Com VR:

Fox and THQ are planning a complete wireless gaming community based on the Simpson's town of Springfield, among other games.

Videogame Industry Goes Hollywood

"Clearly, this industry is big enough to have its own Cannes. But one sign of a large and mature creative business is that it produces not only megahits, but also intelligent or quirky independent releases. That hasn't happened yet in videogames. Gamers won't be really grown up until they get their own Sundance."
from: Videogame Industry Goes Hollywood
And Picks Up a Lot of Its Bad Habits
WSJ 5/19/03
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,portals,00.html

Half Life 2

My favorite game of all time now has a sequel. It will be shown at E3 this year. Needless to say, I am having an awfully hard time controlling my excitement! You will probably here me talk about it for the next few weeks.
For some more info, but not much more...go here. If you have never heard of this game or if you have not played it, schedule a time to come over to my house and we will play it. Not only is the game fun, but the story line is rather intrigueing. Also the enemy AI is rather cool too. I bring this up only because the initial release in 2000 was rather astounding. The original title set the benchmark for ingenuity, story and gameplay. I can only hope the sequel will be every bit as good if not better in order to contend with Doom 3. From what I have see, HL2 has it's work cut out for it. Also, for you non-gamers out there...it is definetly worth your time to play.

You really need to go here, and you can't say it isn't funny, cause it is...well maybe not the gamespy part...

Genderspace

I'm reposting this because it has been ignored thus far. This topic is deserving of our attention.

Character design in games is notoriously limited in its depiction of women (there is a broader range of male characters even though they still lack depth) and the effects of this shortsightedness by the industry will prevent a large female audience from developing.

This article starts the discussion.

Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Videogames