Category Archives: Gameplay

Espen Aarseth’s coming to town!

21 April 2007

Leave a comment

Yay!!!

Bergen Media By is organizing a social event on Wednesday for the local media industry and they’ve invited Espen Aarseth to speak. The title of his talk is “The Games Industry – skills needed (kompetansebehov) and trends”.

I’m still trying to define what skills I have to contribute to the industry – do I in fact have any? I’m feeling a tad lost in the dark hoping that I’m going to stumble on to some job description that just screams Linn! So these events are truly important to me and I’m so glad they’re organizing them. And it’s so lovely seeing Bergen involving itself!

Networking, networking, networking! One should’ve thought I had the knack of it now, but I still have trouble selling myself. I feel like such a desperate geek and wish I could just lean back, nod my head knowingly and just casually say “You know, you should hire me because I could do this and that and thingamabob for you” and then completely relaxed just hand them one of my flickr cards with a little wink and a “give me call”. I sometimes blame a university education for my insecurities, because they, at least my department, don’t exactly scream to the world “look at all the incredible wonderful stuff our students are doing”! Instead we just walk around feeling like disturbances in the faculty’s research time. I still feel the pain I got when I realised that there was a gaming conference going on at my department without anyone telling me about it. Meeting someone who had finished his thesis over a year ago and being asked “Why weren’t you upstairs? I was sure you’d be there!” – was just devastating!

But where are my manners? I shouldn’t be pouring my hurt feelings onto this blog! I should be looking ahead and beyond into the bright glowing future! I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I actually do know a few things. And I’m loving the fact that I can now write articles because I have a degree that says “Linn knows what she’s talking about” that gives me the right to well…write! Hehe! It’s a nice feeling!

So – Wednesday! Espen Aarseth! I’ll be there! Digital cinema, Its Learning and Bergen in the Movies (Varg Veum) are also on the agenda. Looks to be an inspiring night!

Bogost finds the words

19 March 2007

Leave a comment

Just stopping by to share this amazing quote by Bogost in Gamasutra’s ‘Are Games Art? “Here we go again.”

“Film can be used for deeply charged emotional expression, or it can be used to show you how to use the oxygen mask in case of cabin depressurization. If video games are indeed a medium, then they too will speak on different registers. “If you look at the world of ‘serious games,’ a lot of those titles are much closer to the airline safety video than to ‘Citizen Kane,'”Bogost adds. “And like film or TV or painting, there will be different modes of video game craft. There will be pop-art games and self-referential postmodern games and exploitative games and games made solely to cash in on intellectual property like Sponge Bob.”

Naw – I haven’t actually read it – but found the quote at Water Cooler Games and I’ve been thinking about it all day! So much so that I’m getting very distracted from work. But I suppose I knew that would happen eventually!

flOw

5 March 2007

Leave a comment

I remember reading small tidbits of information about this game – but hadn’t tried it until now. It’s absolutely stunning!

flOw is a masters in fine arts thesis by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark at the University of Southern California. From what I understand, they’ve used Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow to investigate why some games are more mesmerising than others. I haven’t read the thesis yet, but the game is just luscious and beautiful!

I can’t help but feel like I’m meditating while playing! So play!

Win a Wii

27 January 2007

Leave a comment


The Norwegian Oil Industry Association has a website to encourage education within the oil and gas industry – and they’ve got a competition to win a Wii!!!
Roughly translated:

The new Nintendo console is very reminiscent of tools the oil industry has used for several yars. When geologists use their advanced 3D programs and virtual room to look for oil and gas – it’s just as first rate as any computer game design.

It’s only for those between 13 and 25 that can enter, though – so I’m out.

Columbine game is all about art!

16 January 2007

Leave a comment


It’s funny how certain tragic events can spawn new luscious things!

There’s been a whole lotta uproar these past few weeks because Super Columbine Massacre RPG was pulled as a finalist from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition.

Personally, I can’t believe they waited for it to get so far only to pull it off the list – which makes me rather suspicious. They write that:

“There are always legal checks and balances with any Slamdance program. Specifically with the subject matter of Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game Slamdance does not have the resources to defend any drawn out civil action that our legal council has stated can easily arise from publicly showing it.”

Man! Capitalist society can be such a ruthless freedom-of-speech stomping evil dictatorship!

Then, other game developers start pulling their games from the festival in an act of solidarity. TGC (thatgamecompany) explained it very nicely:

“As game designers, each project we have done so far, and plan on doing in the future, aims at showing games as a serious and expressive medium. We cannot help but wonder, if SCMRPG were a film, if the reaction by the Slamdance organizers would have been the same. Removing it from the festival is discouraging, because it implies that games are still not to be taken seriously, that games are only for mindless fun. If we are trying to work against this stigma as artists, then we also have to fight against this stigma as entrants in the festival as well.”

So this incident has really triggered an inspirational discussion about games as art! Which I think is really exciting! And my heart pounded even more when I read Clive Thompson‘s excellent piece, ‘I,Columbine’ in Wired this week! I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying it’s the best artistic critical analysis of a game I have ever read!

You’re constantly reminded of how creepily unbalanced Harris and Klebold were. One minute they’re tossing off nihilistic riffs: “When I’m in my human form, knowing I’m going to die, everything has a touch of triviality to it,” Klebold muses. The next minute they’re quoting Shakespeare: “Good wombs hath borne bad sons.

I’m having a hard time pulling out quotes because it’s all so relevant and good – but I’ll paste this one in just in case you don’t read the whole thing – but you really should! It’s a beautiful beginning of art criticism in games!

“It uses the language of games as a way to think about the massacre. Ledonne, like all creators of “serious games”, uses gameplay as a rhetorical technique.”

Gameplay as rhetorical technique! I love it!!!

It’s tragic that Slamdance felt they had to pull it from the competition – but I’m loving the discussions that have spawned from it!

Kinaesthetic Mimicry in computer games

13 January 2007

Leave a comment

I can’t stress enough how unbelievably great Chris Bateman‘s blog is for anyone wishing to look into what games are!
He’s got a great post about Wii and Kinaesthetic Mimicry in video games! He’s so generous with sharing his knowledge, experience, thoughts and time! I know some readers of this blog are thinking about writing about games for their thesis – subscribe to the feeds of this blog – you’ll be so much richer for it!

Oh dear – I feel compelled to write a list now – seems unfair to just mention Only A Game – but my list is long – and that should be designated to another post, I think!

MMORPG professionals

13 January 2007

Leave a comment

Raph Koster writes about a new group that calls themselves “The Virtual Citizenship Association”. It’s a new group advocating virtual citizen ehm ‘rights’. In his blogpost he points out the relevant problems with their social contract – which I completely agree with – so I’m not going to bother repeating it all in my own words here – you should just read it – I can’t do his words justice here!
But entering the site – I was quite intrigued by how they define themselves:

“We’re a group of MMORPG professionals, people who enjoy playing in online universes in general and people who advocate the use of Free Software.”

I find that interesting. When I think of ‘MMORPG proffesionals’ I think of game operators and designers – not players, but it’s a relevant point! Why shouldn’t players be labeled as MMORPG professionals? I kinda like it – it tickled me!
As for what they’re advocating, I agree with Koster when he writes:

“I’d prefer any such social contract to focus more on how operators have to treat players, than on forcing particular business models on operators.”

Too right!

And in case you don’t have the time to read the comments, I have to paste glorious Mr. Bartle’s comment – where would this industry be without his precious sense of humor?

“Why is it that these “players’ rights” advocates always target the virtual world developers and never the people who run guilds?

Richard

PS: Wouldn’t it be amusing if a virtual world developer banned membership of such organisations under its EULA?”

And we’re off!

27 December 2006

2 Comments

I’m in Australia now, we’ve started the prologue of Zelda and we’re kinda confused! Hehe!

We flew during the night – which was obviously completely wrong for me, I have enough problems falling asleep on planes but this time we flew Singapore Airlines! They had GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nintendo and computer games! It was a thrill!!! And I felt like I was flying first class, the service was unbelievable!

Anyways, I’ve managed to get my travel blog started – I don’t know how much I’ll be updating – family holidays have busy schedules! We’ll see what happens with it!

Age of Conan

11 November 2006

Leave a comment

Nils and I are pretty much at uni now 24/7 trying to finish our stuff – and breaks are filled with dreamy fantasies of what life is like on the other side of this tiresome tunnel! So naturally we’re talking a lot about games. So we’ve been looking into Age of Conan. Man! It looks awesome! I’m still worried that my testosterone levels aren’t high enough for truly enjoying it, but I had a look at the Age of Conan wiki – and my heart started racing with excitement! 60% of that was probably just the enjoyment of the hope of being able to play again – but listen to this:

“We call the engine Real Combat, and it is based on six directions, or ways, of attacking an opponent with a sword. First, you can hack down against the head. Second, you can slash diagonally down from the right, while the third is slashing the same way from the left. Fourth, you can thrust against the torso. Fifth, you can slash diagonally up from the left, and sixth, you can slash diagonally up from the right. The point here is that these directions lend themselves naturally to being strung together in combinations. These combos unlock additional damage and faster combat, if done well.”

– Gaute Godager

What fun!!!! And it looks freakin’ awesome!!!

Additionally we were blessed by Marius Enge’s presence on Thursday. It was supposed to be an hours lecture but ended up being about 2 hours. What an absolutely delightful man. He was just so informative and answered annoyingly stupid questions (from yours truly) clearly and inspirationally. He informed us a bit about how Funcom works internally and I just sat there thinking “I WANNA WORK AT FUNCOM, I WANNA WORK AT FUNCOM, I WANNA WORK AT FUNCOM!! SOD THIS ACADEMIC BULL – I WANNA WORK AT FUNCOM!!! I BELONG AT FUNCOM!!!”.

He was there to talk about the AI in the game, which was amusing even to me, who understood 1/100th of the content.

I could go on and on – but I need to run! Have an absolutely great weekend, all!!!!