On May 9th and 10th, UCLA is having a game festival. (It’s organized by Eddo Stern at the Design Media Arts department). Here are the IMD games that made it into the show. Congratulations! TALES FROM THE MINUS LAB by Alex Beachum, Sarah Scialli, Steve Wenzke, David Young THE HOLD by Adam Liszkiewicz and Alex [...]

Indiecade Finalists Announced Congratulations Elizabeth AND Tracy, Sean, Jesse, Jonghwa, David Turpin, Andrea, Anna, Simon, and Elizabeth again (The Witch and Application Crunch) “The International Festival of Independent Games is the only stand-alone independent-focused game event in the nation, open to both the industry and the general public. This year’s edition will be held October 6-9, [...]

Kurosh and I just released The Cat and the Coup – the week before Games for Change. You can download it either from the site or Steam. http://www.thecatandthecoup.com (mac and pc) http://store.steampowered.com/app/95700 (pc) We’re nominated for the Knight News Game Award . It’s a good year for IMD and G4C. Three Generations and Mother Nature will be there as well. [...]

Intermural Game Carnival http://games.ucla.edu/resources/1st-annual-intermural-game-carnival/ Come one, come all, to the first annual Intermural Game Carnival !!! 5:00pm – 9:00pm on Thursday May 19, 2011. Presented by the UCLA Game Lab, this year’s event showcases student game projects from several southern California schools – UCLA, USC, and UCI – with plans to expand in coming years. [...]

Feb 17, 5pm http://blog.games.ucla.edu/?p=286 The UCLA GAME LAB presents Scott Stoddard, the creator of the web phenomenon Robot Unicorn Attack. With over 35 million plays online, the game has inspired people around the world to create thousands of fan art images, youtube movies, homemade costumes, and custom plush toys. Robot Unicorn’s use of Erasure’s song “Always” made [...]

There’s no catch here.
http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com

I enjoy being an adviser for CTIN 490/590 – Directed Research – in part because it is where the mentor/mentee dynamic is the least imposing and predictable. That is, I often learn more from the class than the student might. In the case with David Mershon’s prototype and paper, “Banker’s Dozen: From Economics Paper to Playable [...]

Kurosh and I want to thank everyone for your support leading up to, during, and after Indiecade. We did take home the “Best Documentary Game” Award and were surprisingly nominated for “Sublime Experience”. And they asked us to make an “about” video for the festival that you’ll find below. Here you’ll find credits, thank you’s, [...]

Looking forward to seeing many of you at Indiecade. Here’s the schedule.

Here’s a nice review of The Cat and the Coup at indiegames.com and another by Holly Willis.

thecatandthecoup.com

…and don’t forget to check out Jim Taylor’s
Gentleman of the South Sandwiche Islands

The Interactive Media Division and Electronic Arts have partnered in a student machinima contest. We are offering four winning USC teams $1000 for making machinima! All current USC students are eligible to participate in the contest, ” HOW THE TOYOTA PRIUS CHANGED THE WORLD IN THE LAST TEN YEARS “.  Four student teams will win $1000 each.  Teams [...]

I’m posting this section of a paper I’m writing so students in the Intermediate Game class will use it as the basis of their first assignment. (It’s a refresher for the first lecture).  They will use this ‘indie game schema’ to discuss a game that I ask them to play.  That is, they will describe [...]

Here’s the paper excerpt that is largely a review of Week 1′s lecture.  For next week, you will play a number of videogames. And in class you will discuss a number of questions as a group. Part of that includes describing a videogame as innovative, experimental, or avant-garde in order to better understand the value [...]

This is an impressive team. Two years ago, the first version was developed in the Intermediate Class (here: http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/games/20080514-intermedia.php), got more ambitious (and on the DS) in the Advanced Class (a collaboration with CS) and now it being released commercially. I’m sure they have a good story to tell. —————– Divergent Shift (aka Reflection) is releasing [...]

This was curated rather than accept entries, but it’s still nice to see another game festival happening as there aren’t many out there.

http://www.fantasticfest.com/arcade/

…and here are the list of games:

http://fantasticfest.bside.com/2010/films/category/Arcade