Maretind (working title)

Nina Svane-Mikkelsen is a Ph.D. fellow (umh…I still get confused by university titles, so…) at my department (Information Science and Media Studies) and is working on a project entitled: Affinity and Battlefield. New media and museum communication – Communication design under imperative of database. Artistic intervention as a narrative grip.
They’re working on a computer game which is for the time being called, Maretind.

“A short description of the overall goal.
The goal is to develop a digital game that integrate knowledge regarding the MAR-ECO research project and key issues and findings of this maritime research in order to reach, engage and inspire children on the subject through game play.

The research project represent a vast collection of data to the inspiration of the game plot. As one of the maritime researchers put it: ”Our data collection have ranged from oceanographic and acoustics, to various studies on organisms that range in size from microscopic plankton to large whales. Dephts ranged from the surface to 3000 meters and extended from the cold-water environment south of Iceland to the tropic environment north of the Azores.” (mar-eco cruise journal 1. july, http://www.mar-eco.no/)

Good games combine a number of complex elements such as situations, where decisions must be made, challenging goals and a satifying feedback. Without these basic elements a game will easily become boring. The result must be that the way the gamers interact with the game, the game process, is parallel with what the game is about. (almost-quotes from “Learning to play to learn” by Nick Fortugno and Eric Zimmerman, Learning Lab Newsletter)”

I’m so pleased that this is going on at my department! And oh what fun it would be to be a part of it!!! Anyways….they’re still at the starting line and I just wanted to wish them good luck! I just love the combo of museum, art, information communication and learning through gameplay!!

10 Manliest Games of all time

Awwww!!!! Someone’s written up a list of the “10 manliest video games of all time” – how adorable and sweet isn’t that?!!!

“First of all, video games are often best enjoyed simultaneously with other
manly activities such as chewing and drinking. Video games are also widely
shunned by the female population, thus making them a sort of rebellion against
our female oppressors”

Awww….you poor oppressed dude!
Seriously though…the list really is rather cool after getting over my girlish giggles! There’s some really lovely blasts from the past and some I was suprised to find on such a list. Ikaruga?

I’m amused!! Truely!

re: Your Brains

I just adore this!!!! This is exactly what Web 2.0 (or…? the correct terminology eludes me)is about, if you ask me!! Jonathan Coulton is a New York musician who releases a song a week on his blog, under a Creative Commons license – and this guy, Mike Spiff has created a WoW Machinima from one of these songs – and ofcourse it’s available on YouTube!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!! I LOVE IT!!!

Too funny!

Oh…I do understand that the Hot Coffee issue can be hard to grasp for some, I’ve heard my share of weird explanations, but this just made me laugh!! And I just can’t do anything else but cut’n’paste from Kotaku!

KUTV-2 News anchor Bill Gephardt:

“The government reprimands makers of a popular video game. Bill Gephardt says there’s a loophole in this kid’s game that allows players to see porn. Oops! The Federal Trade Commission says that the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a tricky back door area and with the click of the code word ‘hot coffee’ players can view nudity and play sex games.”

Oh come on! It’s funny!!!

PS. I’m sorry about the blogs confusing layout…something weird is going on with my blog. Links have disappeared and my del.icio.us and papers section have colided! I’m sure it has something to do with my vanity and the desire to change my profile picture a few days back! I’ll try and fix it! But now…the sun is just tooooooooo tempting!

McDonalds Interactive

I’m not completely certain of what to make of this. But there’s been a UK Serious Games event (link not working as I’m writing this – EXTREMELY annoying) and among the participants have been Nokia, BP and McDonalds Interactive – that turns out to be a hoax, which to be honest infuriorated me to begin with. I’m a believer of serious games and I didn’t like anyone taking the piss out of the event. But after further review, I have to say that I’m overwhelmingly impressed and I also can’t think of a better way to actually promote Serious Games.

Andrew Shimery-Wolf (ehm…), Director of McDonalds’s Interactive gave a presentation which he entitled “The Most Serious Game”. And I truely believe the clue lies in one of his opening remarks about what McDonalds was doing to improve:

“…we undertook to become a more visibly responsible company, and adopted a platform of Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR – just like Nokia and BP, who are also represented at this conference.
Much as Nokia have pledged not to exploit Far East workers, and BP are exploring alternative fuels, so we responded to various critics by looking “beyond beef” on our menus, trying new packaging, and even experimenting with environment-friendly refrigeration.” (links added by me)

So he ends up presenting a game which was a simulation of the fast-food marketplace.

“This is the game that resulted. Players adopt the avatar of a fast-food company, and make business decisions in highly accelerated time. The game calculates the effects of those decisions on the overall market, collates them with other players’ decisions and rewards the best players with profits.”

Continue reading

Public Diplomacy Through Games

The University of Southern California has come up with the novel idea of hosting a competition to create a game promoting public diplomacy. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the results for months now!

“The USC Center on Public Diplomacy is looking for people to showcase their talent with a bit of world class game-making. The challenge to the game mod community, and current and aspiring game designers is as follows: design a prototype or modify a game incorporating the fundamental characteristics of public diplomacy”

The finalists’ presenations are now available and the winner is to be announced today.

Looking at these, I was searching for something creative and fun. As much as I adore and admire simulations such as Peacemaker – I was hoping something less ‘obvious’ would make the finalist list as well. I’ve often thought that the trick to learning in computer games is to hide the ‘message’ behind humor and absurdity. For a game to be truely successful in teaching something like the promotion of diplomacy, I feel it has to lure those who just want to go and have a great gaming time as well. I know of very few who play to learn something and having played my fair share of dreary simulation games for the jobs from my past (I’ll have to tell you about those some day! ) they usually don’t work (at least I can’t remember what I was supposed to learn).

I truely love the idea behind Hydro Hijinks, it actually made me think about Myst and the game of consequence.

The others are brilliant as well! Ambitious but lovely! I would however, love to see more fun and absurdity!

Anyways it’s a great initiative and a big ‘yay!’ to Second Life for making them all possible!

Oblivion rated Mature

Ok – I’m all for video games getting an age rating and that kids need to be that age in order to buy the game! I’m all for that, really! But when stuff like this happens, I get outraged!

According to the Washington Post the ESRB has now changed the rating of Oblivion; The Elder Scrolls to Mature which means: “suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language”.

Isn’t that a bit extreme?

And it also seems like they’re blaming Bethesda for the nude patches created by the gamers themselves! That’s just ridiculous! I actually do understand that hidden sex games is a problem, but when gamers themselves are creating stuff – it’s just wrong to blame the game developers! Shame on them for inspiring creativity!

Where would technology be today without the wonderful creativity of horny geeks?

Update: Guilded Lillies knows far better than I what this is all about! They give a great account about what this is all about! I still think the ESRB is overreacting, but I also agree that Bethesda should know better after the Hot Coffee incident and I’m not comfortable with them using words like ‘hackers’.
It seems like the discussion has focused on the modding and not the ‘blood and gore’ dilemma. I would love to find out what ‘blood and gore’ was presented to the ESRB and what they’ve now recently found that’s offensive. And if the problem truely is the nude modding, should the X-Box version of the game not stay on Teen as there are no modding capabilities there?

Come Out & Play

Oh, this link is going straight to Bergen Kommune!!

New York City (ofcourse) is having its first annual Come Out & Play Festival September 22-24! Oh what fun!!!!

Ofcourse we already have ‘Game Days’ during the summer! But they can be soooo much more than the great stuff they’ve already got going! Infact!! They should just hire me!!! He he!!

There’s just so much play can bring to a city! And I’ve just deleted a whole lotta hippi’ish peace, love and happiness words – but you get my drift, right?! Lots of drunken violence going on? Bring the people out to play!! Things that will bring strangers together – make them laugh together! And OMG I can’t go on about this without falling into a trance of pl&h talk!!!

And why not make stupidly placed ugly buildings the center of dazzlement for one night of Tetris or anything else truely spectacular!!!! Oh you know that this just has to be done!!!

Math and Games

So…I never hear about the really cool things going on at this university until it’s too late! I’m sitting here drinking my morning coffee and I drop by mortenjohs’ blog, Globular Game Log Online. From what I can gather the guy’s Bergenese and currently living in Lyon, France which makes this even more frustrating!

He informs me that there’s a seminar today at 14.15 at Høyteknologisenteret with the title “On combinatorial precursors of Sudoku”; This talk, a sequel to that by Randi Moe in January will attempt to place Sudoku in the historical setting of combinatorial research, sparked as it so often has been by recreational puzzles and games that turn out to have more serious applications.

Now…fair enough! It does sound a bit too advanced for my little mind but I was intrigued when the description of the seminar led me to “All kinds of mathematical games are a good thing” which apparently there’s some dispute about.

But alas! I can’t go! I found out too late and my schedule today can’t be shifted last minute! I’m not too upset, as I’m sure the lingo would be completely greek to me! But I thought maybe I’d pass the information along if someone reading this would be interested!