Oh, the beauty of game design. This definitively looks like a fun. According to this description of the game, the rules have slightly changed: it's a two player game (against the machine or another player), lights tell you which token to drop next, and you score by creating rows that are marked through a switch on the side of the board. It definitively looks like elegant design but, it's always hard to tell without trying the actual thing. Maybe Santa will bring me one...
By way of Jesper, a link to a new games journal! For some reason I can´t access the articles right now, but I´m sure it´s some kind of bug and it should be fixed soon. The name, Eludamos, is somehow unfortunate in Spanish (it literally means "let´s avoid something" or, maybe "let´s beat around the bush"). In any case, it´s a great thing to find more venues for research in game studies. I'm looking forward to reading them and so should you.
Over the years, I gave multiple talks and presentations. I have always been trying to find the perfect tool for showing my slides until I found it a couple of weeks ago. It´s the Kensignton Presenter, a little remote control that includes 3 buttons (previous slide, next slide and hide slides) plus a laser pointer. I have previously tried different alternative options, including Salling Clicker which sounded like a good idea at the time (basically, it allows you to turn your cellphone into a bluetooth remove control). The problem with the Clicker was that it is not compatible with all phones but also that some phones do not have good clicking feedback and it is hard to know for sure when you pressed a button. In theory, it was the perfect solution, because it uses a tool that you already carry with you: your cellphone. Sadly, it was not that great and it became obsolete when I switched to my new Samsung phone, which is not supported. The Kensignton Presenter solves the problem with elegance. Even though it must use a USB dongle, it is a perfect solution because it does not require any setup and it works with almost any OS (the secret is that the dongle works as a USB keyboard that connects to the remote via RF, so there´s no nee for drivers at all). Besides, the dongle is elegantly stored inside the remote itself (which, by the way, is covered in rubber and has an excellent grip). I normally do not blog product reviews, but I thought that such a great tool had to be shared with colleagues. I paid about 50 Euros for it and I couldn't be happier with it. It's the perfect companion with Apple Keynote (which, needless to say, works like a charm). Notice: the presenter that I bought, unlike the one in the picture, is all black. The one in the picture seems to be the US model, which doesn't run on 2 AAA batteries but uses a flat CR2032 instead. Here's a link to the European model.
The Communications and New Media Programme at the National University of Singapore has openings for tenure track positions or visiting appointments in the area of New Media Studies. They are seeking people with interests in different areas and Game Design is one of them. You can learn more about this position on their website.
ISEA 2008's Call for Papers has been extended until September 30th. This bi-annual event is being held next year in Singapore. I'm co-chairing the Ludic Interfaces symposium but there are many other themes that you could submit to. Go ahead and check out its website for more information.
Thanks to everybody for their support all these years. A few hours ago I defended my PhD dissertation at ITU and I leveled up to Doctor Frasca! The event was fun and it was great to be again among old friends. It'll be a while before the dissertation goes online but I promise it'll get there.
I'm really exhausted, time for me to rest a bit. Cheers from Copenhagen!
PS: thanks to Solana Larsen for taking pictures of the event!
Right from the out of the blue department. I'm preparing my PhD defense and, naturally, I wish I was doing something else (I'm in Madrid but jetlagged and with tons of work to do. Still, I'm in Madrid with friends and that's all I should care about).
In any case, I've been playing a lot with my new roommate: a 3 month old cat. And that got me thinking about kids, babies and play. Traditionally, scholars argue that children play in order to either understand the world or to practice skills that will be useful later. But what if children only play because that makes them entertaining for adults who, otherwise, would not pay attention to them. In other words, what if evolution turned babies into desirable toys for adults? If babies didn't play, they would only do all the nasty things that babies do when they're not being cute: and that should be reason enough for parents to toss them away (well, at least during the good ol' Darwinian times). So, playing could be a survival strategy for children. Who knows? Maybe play is one of the things that kept our species alive all this time...
For those who are wondering, the kid in the pic is Maia, my goddaughter, queen of the toyroom.
Unholy things you see at Powerful Robot Games.
I have something to confess. I'm an addict. Or at least I have been addicted to travelling for the last few years. I used to hop in and off planes like other people take buses. Or at least so it felt. Well, the good news is that I've been clean for 6 months now. Not a single flight since February, since I flew back to Uruguay from Denmark. And it felt great. It really cleared off my mind (and helped me finishing my dissertation and getting back on track at my game studio).
It's now time to fly again. This Wednesday, I'm taking a flight to Madrid first, for a couple of days, and then to Copenhagen, where I'll be defending my dissertation on August 27th at ITU (if you enjoy watching another human being suffering, you'll more than welcome to show up :) I'll let you know how it goes.
Then I'm back to Uruguay and, a couple of weeks later, it's Tokyo time (for DiGRA and the Tokyo Game Show). I was struggling so hard with my dissertation that I didn't even have time to submit a paper for DiGRA this year. It's a shame but I don't regret it. I enjoy taking things slow now and I just hope that these two transoceanic flights won't get me too tired.
As it usually happens, dissertation-writing is quite a stressing activity. And once I thought it was over, here comes the defense and probably at least some revisions. But it'll be nice to see friends again and hopefully get a little sun in Europe and Tokyo (in order to forget about the Uruguayan winter). Now I need to start stuffing my suitcase.
I woke up this morning and I read that Masaya Matsuura just released a new game... for the iPod. I immediately bought it, without knowing much about it. Now that I think about it, it's a nice feeling: it's not often that you do a game impulse buy based solely on the author's name. Matsuura has a history of making incredible games and some really weird stuff, too. In any case, I loaded up my iPod with Musika and got ready to play.
This is how the game works. You get to chose a song and then different letters are displayed on the screen. As soon as you recognize a letter from the song's title, you must press a button. Otherwise, just let it go. That's it. The letters have different color and animation effects but the game mechanics is as simple as I just described. Oh, and I forgot the most important part: you get to listen to the song while playing!
My first impression was total disbelief. I couldn't believe the game was so awful! The good thing about knowing Matsuura's track record is that I knew he would never release something unplayable –great artists can make mistakes but they generally keep certain minimum standards. So I gave the game a second chance.
Amazingly, the game works. Against all odds, it really does. Notice that I'm not saying it's a great game. I'm not even saying it's a very good game. But I was very surprised that, at least, it's a good game: the one-button mechanics, as silly as it sounds, works.
It's not the first time that my first impression about a game is wrong. However, my first impression here was that it's one of the worst games ever! And that's why I'm so surprised to find out that I was dead wrong. Now I realize why this happened (it was actually my colleagues at Powerful Robot who hinted what might have been going on). When I judged the game, I solely focused on its gameplay. Big mistake. I failed to take into account how, where and when the game is used. More than a game, Musika is sort of a toy to play with while you are listening to music. Music is your #1 concern here, gameplay comes second (at least on the casual game mode). It's a game you play while doing something else. It's a more sophisticated way of drumming your fingers, humming or playing air guitar with your headphones on. Unlike traditional videogames, you don't need all your attention to play this game. And that's why it succeeds when traditional game criticism says that it should fail.
Do you have to rush and spend 5 dollars on this iPod game? Not really (get Zuma first if you don't have it). But anybody interested in ludology should at the very least check it out. My advice is that just don't be in the mood for playing a game. Be in the mood for music. Let it flow, start on the medium difficulty level, and you'll realize that there's something very interesting going on in there.
