This Saturday come join the Tiltfactor team at the 2008 Conflux Festival for the launch of our first urban game: Massively Multiplayer Soba. Participants will have the chance to explore some of the culinary/cultural mash-ups that make New York so unique. We’ll be meeting new people, seeing new neighborhoods, and eating a big delicious dinner. Come out and enjoy the fun during one of New York’s most interesting festivals.

The new iPhone 3G has been announced, and an opinion piece on Gamasutra ponders the possibilities of the iPhone as a viable platform for gaming. Read more

This year’s Games 4 Change Conference will have a special bonus day to introduce non-profits to social impact games. You can read all the details below, but the most exciting part is that our Dr. Flanagan will facilitating a Grow A Game workshop to get the day started.

From Games 4 Change:
Based on feedback we’ve received over the past few years, we’ve created a one-of-a-kind workshop for non-profits new to the field of social issue games at the start of the 2008 G4C Festival. This workshop is a soup-to-nuts tutorial on the fundamentals of social issue games. The workshop will feature leading experts on topics including game design, fundraising, evaluation, youth participation, distribution, and press strategies, and will be extended for the rest of the year through an online community dedicated to learning about social issue games. Read more

via: Grassroots Media Coalition

The Mainstream Media is a propaganda mind control operation owned by an elite cartel for the benefit of the global oligarchy. I wish that were hyperbole, but it isn’t. Luckily, alternative media, independent media, is going strong and growing every year. The annual Grassroots Media Conference is a chance for media activists to come together, compare notes, and stratagize. It’s always worth attending. This year, Tiltfactor Lab will be facilitating a game design workshop to help participants better understand how to analyze existing games and consciously embed values in their own games. Read more

Yes, just months after writing my post on torture porn video games, there’s news that a Saw video game is in development. Details are sketchy, but it will be interesting to see if the game lets you play against Jigsaw or as him. We’ll also see if it challenges the standard set by the Manhunt series. Let the race to the bottom begin.

Vanity Fair has an extensive article on the newest chapter of the Star Wars saga, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Lucas Arts is releasing this game as an official addition to the Star Wars cannon, filling in the years between Episode III and Episode IV, much as the game Enter the Matrix did for the Matrix series. The article is written for the uninitiated, and as such it gives a brief history of videogames and explains what technical limitations are currently hindering video game realism. The article claims that new technology, however, may soon dramatically improve videogame realism and perhaps topple the barriers to “greater public interest in the medium.”
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A new project from USC based on the work of artist Bill Viola and headed by Tracy Fullerton is The Night Journey. According to the official site, the project is “based on the universal story of an individual mystic’s journey toward enlightenment.”
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I have a few links from Mary tonight, the first about a forthcoming game inspired by the tales of H. P. Lovecraft.
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