Ludicidal Tendencies

Here is a huge announcement from today's Hollywood Reporter online:

Activision Inc. and Vivendi's Vivendi Games will merge in a multi-step deal that will create Activision Blizzard, a new gaming giant with what would be a combined 2007 calendar year revenue of $3.8 billion. Executives said the combination would make the new player the largest and most profitable gaming company.

After the transaction, whose overall value the companies put at $18.9 billion, French entertainment and telecom conglomerate Vivendi, the parent of Vivendi Games, will own 52% of the new entity. It is set to boost that to 68% under a planned share tender offer.

The new company's name comes from Vivendi Games label Blizzard Entertainment, which produces "World of Warcraft," the world's biggest multi-player online role-playing game with more than 9.3 million subscribers worldwide. The companies said the deal will shine a spotlight on the value of "Warcraft" and Vivendi's overall gaming operations, which also include such popular titles as "Spyro" and "Crash Bandicoot" but are currently hidden in the larger conglomerate structure of Vivendi.

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The ValuesAtPlay project is collaboration between Hunter College’s Tiltfactor Lab (http://www.tiltfactor.org) and New York University which is an NSF-funded research project looking into the ideas and belief systems latent in video games. The project is creating design tools and methods for consciously imbuing games with values.

This week, the project launched its website: http://www.valuesatplay.org, which offers a wealth of game design ideas and scholarship about games and human values.

Also, the project announced the Social Impact Game Contest 2007: the first in a series of Values At Play sponsored game contests, this is an opportunity for non-professional designers to attempt serious issue game design. The contest is accepting submissions in three categories: Social Impact, Community is Revolutionary, and Greenwoods. Designers can create games that deal with an issue, value, or mechanic listed on the website, an issue specific to their community, or a game that addresses a social issue within the context of a big box retail store. Submissions will be accepted until January 1, 2008.

The CTIN 484/489 intermediate games class has been testing some of the tools and methods from ValuesAtPlay this semester and has generated some very interesting work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinojabber/sets/72157601895655254/

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