Ludicidal Tendencies

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

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

Posted by at 5:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congratulations to all the IMD teams that participated in last week's GDC: Kid the World Saver and The Unfinished Swan were IGF finalists. Ian also presented The Unfinished Swan at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop. And, of course, the Reflection team won the IGF Mobile Next Great Mobile Game contest!

Reflection began as an intermediate project and is now being developed further in the advanced projects class. Here's Peter checking out the latest build.

Posted by at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the folks at Come Out & Play -- I encourage anyone working on large-scale games to think about applying. This is a great conference!! Here is the info:

The 2009 Come Out & Play Festival, now in it's fourth year, will be running the weekend of June 12-14 in New York City. This year's festival is being graciously hosted by The Tank.

Come Out & Play is a three-day festival of street games.  The festival seeks to provide a forum for new types of public games and play. We want to bring together a public eager to rediscover the world around them through play, with designers interested in producing innovative new games and experiences.  Oh yeah, and we want to have city-size fun.

Right now we're accepting applications for games.  We like to feature everything from the low-tech to the high-tech.  We're primarily interested in fun, innovative games that make interesting use of the city.

The festival spreads out across New York City, but will be based primarily around Times Square.   This area is rife with spaces where great games could run--from Grand Central to Bryant Park to the West Side Piers--just waiting for the right game designer to put them to use.

Details
Festival Dates: June 12-14.
URL: http://www.comeoutandplay.org
HQ: The Tank
http://www.thetanknyc.org/
354 West 45th Street, NY, NY
Application: http://comeoutandplay.wufoo.com/forms/2009-come-out-play-festival-game-submission-form/
Applications due: April 19, 2009

Have questions?  Email info@comeoutandplay.org.

Posted by at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a reminder, and an encouragement, to submit papers to Siggraph 09. This year's Sandbox papers will be integrated into the main conference and will be published as the Sandbox 2009: ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Proceedings. Topics include: analysis of player experience, ethics and values in game design, cinematography in games, game AI, procedural art, and more.

For complete submission info go here. Deadline for paper submissions is February 18.

Posted by at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The student showcase winners for the IGF were announced last week -- big congratulations to the two IMD projects that were chosen: second year Ian Dallas' The Unfinished Swan and Kid the World Saver by first years Michael Silverman, Hua Chen and Daniel Ponce.

I also want to send out congratulations to all the other IMD teams who worked so hard to submit games this year -- some amazing games were made and are now in various states of production. Keep going because there are a lot of other festivals and opportunities out there!

Some games I particularly like from the student line-up are FEIST, a beautiful little scroller and Where is my Heart, a clever, mind-boggling visual puzzle. More info and the list of all the games here.

Posted by at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)