So here’s a little hit from the Game Developers Conference archives. Gamespy has a sweet and entertaining report on the GDC 2004 Game Designer’s Challenge. Will Wright (The Sims), Warren Spector (Deus Ex) and Raph Koster (Star Wars Galaxies) were challenged to create a love story game!!!
If you’re looking for a smile…have a look!

Well here’s a nifty little article by Lost Garden’s Danc (steered to by my flavor-of-the-month, Game Tycoon). He mentions that the games industry has adopted their methods from film making, writing narrative scripts a.s.o. and that we’re lacking an informational technology to describe the ‘important systematic interactions’! I COULDN’T AGREE MORE!!!

• We need to understand the basic mechanical elements that describe the game play experience
• We need to create a notational language for expressing, analyzing and manipulating these key elements of game design

Yes! Yes! Yes!!! This is really a brilliant piece of work! I feel like rewriting the whole theory right here, but this would be unfair! But he’s taken into account the player’s psychological experience, rhythm and created a notational system which include Buzz notes, Reward Channels, Verbs, Master Buzz Meter and Statistics. Urgh…this probably isn’t making any sense to you right now…I’m just too excited to think straight! Reading this just gave me such an insight on what is lacking in game design methodology, specially for a person like myself, who’s just analyzing a game! And I just know that I’m going to end up in tears because I can’t use any of this brilliance…sigh!! I mean this is a great system for measuring when the socialisation in MMORPGs is most active according to gameplay or when the players are more creative and and and I could go on forever!!

Well…my media studies mind went wild thinking about the connotations of this <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2713994116796945354&q=zelda+commercial
“>Nintendo commercial from way before my time (hmmm)! I mean, what’s with the extremely stereotypical white nerd and the rap music? Something’s really weird about this!!!

Well this certainly is interesting!!! Apparently non-english World of Warcraft players are being discriminated against! Jepp! In order to join a guild, several players are demanding one or two gramatically correct English sentences. If the player fails, they’re shunned and rejected. It all started as an attempt to block out gold farmers, but this happened in the most discriminating manner! the ‘campaign’ assumed that all gold farmers were indeed ‘foreigners’ (what a laugh!)! I’ve often seen racism, sexism and any other form of discrimination in MMORPGs but I have to say…this is the first time I’ve heard of it being completely organised! Hmmm…

Thanks to Game Tycoon for making me aware of this.

… but I absolutely adore Illegal Art!

Can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it earlier, or have I?! Anyways…I’m at work and bored and don’t want to do anything constructive and well…needed a little pick me up, and this stuff always does the trick! Would ofcourse, never have found it without incredible Stay Free!

This is just too perfect! Lawrence Lessig is visiting Second Life on Wednesday (January 18th) to talk about his book Free Culture, at 5.30 pm Pacific Standard Time (which means 2.30 am for us lowly Europeans)! I’m having trouble with my Second Life installation but I’m going to try my bestest to be there! This is just an event you can’t miss!!!

For more info: New World Notes

I was just going to let this pass silently…but felt guilty in doing so!
I’ve fallen in love with yet another academic, James Grimmelmann – seriously reading his stuff has given me some interesting outlooks on quite a few questions I’ve been carrying around for some time! Therefore his papers on Virtual World Government and Law have now been added to the ‘Papers’ section of this blog (jeeeezzz…you’d think I could come up with a more creative title than that!
I’ve also added a guy called Lars Konzack…initially just to keep him available because I haven’t finished reading his paper yet. But it’s really interesting! He writes that computer games have 7 layers: hardware, program code, functionality, game play, meaning, referentiality and socio-culture. I haven’t really made my mind up if I agree with him or not….but if anything…this is a brilliant try on creating a method for computer game analysis (as usual it can all be torn apart if you’re analysing an MMORPG, but I’m used to that now…sigh)! I haven’t finished it yet because I already got stuck on page two. He writes that the description of a computer games “…should be made from two different perspectives, because a computer game consists of two different levels: a) the virtual space, and b) the playground. From what I can gather…the playground seems to be what is in ‘real’ space, controls and so forth. Now…this is how big a looser I am! I started to wonder if the actual view on the screen was ‘the playground’…I mean…should the description that it is a First Person Shooter game…be in the virtual space description or the playground? It confused me and I just had to move on before I ended up wasting my time and pondering about something meaningless for hours. But I do think that it also demonstrates the difficulty of defining the borders between virtuality and reality. I remember me and the ‘game lads’ (urgh…I have to find them a better name) ended up in endless discussions about what were ‘real’ resources and what were ‘virtual’ resources in computer games! But look at me! I’m rambling again…oh you poor thing…did you really read all the way to the end? I’m sorry!!

There’s some new screenshots of Funcom’s upcoming MMOAge of Conan out…and I have to say…it really does look beautiful!!!

Nerve.com has gathered some of the most prestigious names in game academia for an online discussion called; Voicebox: Sex, Violence and the Furture of Video Games. It’s kinda old news, I just forgot about it for a while…so sorry about my lateness!
The panel is Steven Johnson, Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Bogost, Eric Zimmerman, Henry Jenkins, Rob Levine and Katie Salen.
And the questions are:

1. 1. Is the sex-and-violence content of video games a legitimate social concern? Or are Hillary Clinton et. al. criticizing games for easy political points? And why is there so much more violence than sex?
2. If the average age of a gamer is 30, when did video games become more for grownups than kids? (Was there a Gladwellesque tipping point?) Did the Nintendo generation grow up without growing out of games, or was there a latency period in between? Is it attributable to regression or midlife crisis?
3. How will video games affect the future of online social interaction? Will they develop into an extension of online dating and IMing?
4. As video games’ interactive worlds become more complex, what ethical issues might arise that need regulation? What about commerce in gaming – do you foresee it?
5. What is the future of sex in video games, and where does the 20th-century idea of virtual reality fit in?

Right…I’ve only read the answers up to and including nr. 3! I’m saving nr. 4 for my next break! Yup…that’s right! Instead of 5 pages I’ve only written 5 sentences so far! But it’s sooo great cause I found Synthetic Worlds, Half-real and My Mother was a Computer at Studia yesterday!! Isn’t that great?! Maybe my university is finally waking up and smelling the strong virtual coffee! Ofcourse…they only had one copy of each! Urgh…how can I be expected to write when there’s just soooooo much interesting to read?!

Sorry about that little sidetrack! Just also wanted to mention my favourite comment from the above mentioned discussion, so far. For question nr. 3 Steven Johnson concludes with the question:

“…as the AI gets increasingly powerful, and your avatar starts to act more autonomously, will avatars develop flirtations on their own? You’ll log into your account in the morning, and your avatar will greet you by saying: “I med the greatest guy last night…”” – and I say “COOL!!!!“

Here’s a little charming and amusing song by comedy act Tripod all about the conflicts of a gamer’s love life! I think we can all recognise ourselves here somewhere!!!