I’ve been having a lot of fun with food lately. I’m finding creativity in the kitchen a great way to just completely unwind. My extra curricular activities have had
an increasing tendency to become serious work and even more time infront of the screen. I needed something where I could let my thoughts and creativity flow freely without having to sit infront of a screen as I think I was in danger of burning out. I’ve rediscovered my pallet after quitting smoking 2 years ago. I recognise the flavours, smoking doesn’t completely kill the tastebuds, but taste has a whole new potensy for me now. And of course, I’ve been writing a lot about the taste of coffee lately – which makes me yearn for taste adventures. The added benefit of cooking is that it’s a great excuse to invite people I adore and find interesting for a meal – I learned so many new interesting things last night when I served this dish to the WPG crowd. It’s a special feeling to have your living room filled with such potential and greatness.
World Peace Game Bergen part 2 – The Players
So sorry for the delay of this post. Real Life has claimed my full focus the last couple of weeks and I also had to reach some deadlines applying for funding
Kristian Bjørkelo - journalist
to do the game again in Oslo in February. So thanks for being patient. I hope that my memory of the events are still somewhat intact.
I can’t take complete credit for the conclusions that I’ll be writing here. On the last gaming day we had a great debrief session and a lot of the observations I will mention here are from that. Almost all of the players had something they wanted to share in the debrief, so I credit them all with these observations.
World Peace Game Bergen Part 1
I have so incredibly much to share from the week of playing The World Peace Game that I’m
thinking it may just have to come in installments. I think I will try to break it down to three parts.
Part 1: My overall impression of what The World Peace Game is
Part 2: The beautiful people that I got to play with and how their unique minds and hearts contributed to a mind blowing experience.
Part 3: My thoughts on how the game can exist without it’s founding father.
World Peace Game Bergen starts today
Super excited! Got to meet John Hunter yesterday and I was instantly smitten and very starstruck.
Setting up the board in Bergen
My partners in crime are generously letting me play which I’m super excited about it. I’ll be working during the day and playing afternoon/night – so any spare time I can get will be focused on rest. I won’t be blogging through the game as I suspect that my focus will be occupied. I’ll write a good debrief here after, though.
I will, however, be posting updates and pictures here:
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Peace-Game-Bergen/226364467399587?ref=ts
Twitter : https://twitter.com/#!/verdensspillet
World Peace Game and my first steps into game mechanics!
In October I was very privileged to attend a dinner organised by Bergen International Film Festival – BIFF (falls under the category “Love my job”). Here I met a very enthusiastic gaming man named Erik. BIFF is one of, if not THE, largest international documentary film festivals and one of the things I adore about them is that they go out to schools and show important documentaries and discuss them. Erik was one of the discussers and when he got a whif of my gaming interests he went in a trance like state talking about this great gaming documentary that they were talking about at these schools. I have to admit, I wasn’t convinced – it sounded way too classroomy for my taste. But I gave it a go – and admitidly I too was smitten! The documentary was called “World Peace and other 4th grade achievements”. Here’s a little teaser:
Storytelling cross platform
Last week I attended The Nordic Media Festival and was so lucky to catch Brian Seth Hurst from X Media Lab. Mr. Hurst came to talk to us about cross platform media.
I still get chills and I must admit – a little tear in my eye when I think about The Conspiracy for Good, which X Media Lab is responsible for:
Games and religion
So it’s Sunday and I decided to completely ignore all obligations and tasks I should be doing and just lean back and let myself be inspired. Sometimes life needs a little receiving instead of always doing. And what do you know? I was so inspired that I have to share it here!
I took the time to see the Game Design challenge at GDC 2011 – and boy was it worth it. It’s an hour long and totally worth your time. The design challenge this year was to create a game that was also a religion or could become a religion. The designers were Jason Rohrer, John Romero and Jenova Chen – who are all amazing and definitely great thinkers about the expression of games.
The Story part 3
I’m determined to get my thoughts from The Story documented somehow, although a week has passed, I shall continue on.
7) I was late coming back after lunch and missed the introduction of Paul Bennun & Nick Ryan. This is a session I would have loved to be more prepared for. I didn’t know who they were and wish I’d looked them up and played their games before attending, because their story was astounding!
Their story was sound. Together they have created a game based entirely on sound called Papa Sangre (downloading now).
The Story Part 2
I’m sitting at the airport with bad internet connection – (I mean seriously! Why do they make this so hard?!) – but I need to get this off my chest before I get to Bergen, for I know that everyday life will distract me.
So where was I?
4) After a brief coffee break came the remarkably enchanting Karl James to talk about the wonderfully simple yet difficult skill of listening. Sometimes, if you just shut up you’ll hear remarkable stories that you never thought you’d hear. And what beautiful stories he had to share. Like the extremely powerful story of a rape victim he had been talking to. An extremely powerful woman who had worked through the grusomeness of being raped when she was 14. A man had snuck in the back door of their house and raped both her and her mother. Gruesome, right? Absolutely horrendous. But my tears didn’t start flowing until he told us that when they were supposedly finished, he forgot to stop recording and they stumbled upon something heartbreaking. The woman told him that she didn’t regret the rape – she had learned to cope with it, survived and it was a large part of who she was. But then she said something completely unexpected “I do regret what it’s done to my brother” – my eyes are welling up just thinking about her minor break down then. She began to cry and talked about how her brother had become completely secluded and was much more troubled than anyone else in the family. It was heartbreaking and a story seldom told or shared, but because Mr. James was so good at listening, we were given this precious gift. I completely agree. I’ve been thinking lately that I’m very good at articulating other’s feelings when they’re sharing them with me. In fact I take pride in being able to describe what they’re going through better than they themselves can. It makes me feel like an excellent writer and gives my ego a boost. This is totally wrong of me! Of course I should give them room to find the words themselves! I’m looking forward to discovering all the magical stories I will encounter.
Please listen here – I know they will fill my ears in the next coming weeks.
The Story 2011 part 1
So I’m on my annual (2nd year this year) pilgrimage to London. Why? The Story! This has got to be the most inspirational day (I hesitate to call it a conference) of the year. The Story is the brainchild of Matt Locke. As he says, he just wanted to create the conference that he really wanted to go to.
I was there last year, but was unable to rearticulate the pure joy that the day brought me. So much inspiration! This year – all I want to do is write about it. I haven’t felt so inspired to write in FOREVER! But that’s the whole point of this pilgrimage – to be inspired, hear new good stories and celebrate storytelling. I must admit that I feel exceptionally geeky travelling from Norway for the event, but it’s just so worth it. And after, I have the whole weekend to work on my inspiration and write in lovely London.
Margaret Robertson was the perfect MC for the event. She excused herself for only being interested in games, but her storytelling geek surfaced quite well. So I’ll do the talks chronologically:
Remember What The Dormouse Said 