The blog posted below is an archive. Values at Play blogging continues at the Tiltfactor Blog, http://www.tiltfactor.org/?page_id=413.

Come one, come all to the variable_d lecture series on Digital Arts and Humanities this Winter and Spring at Dartmouth College, Hanover NH. Jesper Juul, Celia Pearce, Nick Montfort, Tracy Fullerton, Eric Zimmerman, Katherine Isbister, Luis von Ahn, and Doris Rusch will be visiting from January 2009 – June 2009. We are very pleased to bring these fine scholars, artists, and designers to campus.
Wednesday January 14, 4:30 pm ((Dartmouth Campus, Silsby 028))
Jesper Juul, from the MIT Gambit Lab, gives a public lecture at Dartmouth, “The Meaning of Video Games: On Today’s Debates in Video Game Studies”

Tuesday February 3, Tuesday 4:30 pm ((Dartmouth Campus, Silsby 028))
Celia Pearce, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech, game designer, and game researcher gives a public lecture on games research.

Wednesday February 11, 2008 4:30 pm ((Dartmouth Campus, Silsby 028)
Poet, Computer Scientist, and Blogger Nick Montfort, Assistant Professor at MIT, “A New Dimension for All-Text Interactive Fiction.”

Course Discussions: (in Tiltfactor, 304 North Fairbanks; interested students welcome with RSVP to tiltfactor@gmail.com)
Thursday January 15, 2-4 pm
Jesper Juul leads a discussion on Half-Real and his recent work

Tuesday February 3, 2008 2-4 pm
Celia Pearce, on game art doll play, and dress up.

Thursday February 12, 2008 2-4 pm
Nick Montfort on platforms, interactive fiction, classic games, and narrative

Tiltfactor is delighted to be able to share some design methods with the public. Developed as part of Values at Play, the Grow-A-Game cards are widely in use in both K-12 and University classrooms.

Using Grow-A-Game, groups of people brainstorm novel game ideas which prioritize human values. While no prior game design experience is necessary, both experienced designers and those new to the field will have fun making games.

via: chronicle.com

How Video Games Can Help in the Classroom, and in the World

By DAVID DEBOLT

Ms. Flanagan, a professor of film and media studies, was recently named the first holder of the digital-humanities chair at Dartmouth College. She is part of a research group, the Games for Learning Institute, that has joined Microsoft Research to study the most efficient ways to use video games in teaching math and science to middle-school students. She is also director and founder of Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth, which designs games to promote social change.

Q. You started out as a designer of mainstream computer games. What prompted you to begin working on your own?

A. When I was developing commercial software, one of the things that kept coming to mind was questions about the kinds of products we were making. I was thinking to myself, ‘How do we know this game is really educational? What are the ways you measure something like that? How do we know we are addressing diverse audiences?’ I developed this real sense of curiosity about the various ways that things I was making were being used. Sometimes you have a real push to get your product out the door, and you fail to have the time to ask important questions about what games are doing socially and culturally.

Read more

via: Thaindian News

Washington, October 12 (ANI): San Francisco-based firm Posit Science has developed a set of five video games, together called InSight, to improve the mental acuity of older drivers.
Read more

Announced today, the The Games for Learning Institute (G4LI) is a joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research, New York University and a consortium of universities, including Dartmouth College. Tiltfactor will be home to the 3 year research initiative at Dartmouth, where researchers will be evaluating computer games as potential learning tools. Dr. Mary Flanagan, Director of Tiltfactor, notes that “players are always learning in games. The time has come for serious integration of those magical aspects of the games we love and the way we conduct K-12 education.” The laboratory anticipates a limited number of student positions in relationship to this research, so please contact us for more information.

I am, I admit, a gloomy person, who spends a lot of time looking at the worst of the world. I am often saved, however, and made a little more hopeful, by the weirdness, creativity, and enthusiasm of kids. Today, in the midst of the financial storm clouds gathering around us, I was able to see some light at a meeting of the Connecticut Innovations Academy (CTIA).

Every year, the Center for 21st Century Skills organizes an Innovation Challenge to bring together Connecticut teens from urban and suburban neighborhoods to collaborate on high tech projects. Last year, the Challenge was to build a video game in MIT’s Scratch program, and build a whole mock company, website, white paper, and marketing campaign to support it. The winners put together a great educational game, but participants complained that they didn’t have enough game design education. This year, the Challenge is basically the same except all game designs will be about environmental issues, organizational kinks have been worked out, and they have dozens of Grow A Game to help spark young imaginations. I went to the program’s first meeting this year to talk to 130-odd students about designing games with values in mind.
Read more

Originally posted on: Grand Text Auto

by Dr. Mary Flanagan

Perhaps you have heard reports of the new study funded by Pew and MacArthur on video games. The survey, Teens, Video Games and Civics, was conducted with 1102 young people aged 12-17. Some are saying the results are “surprising” and even that they “shatter stereotypes” by finding that almost all US teens play games (console, mobile, online, etc) and at least half play games on a given day. Other findings include that most teens play games socially, either with others physically or online, and these games can “incorporate many aspects of civic and political life.” Interestingly, this study, with its particular look at civic engagement, found that “civic gaming experiences” (defined in the study) occurred equally among all kinds of game players without distinction among income, race, and ethnicity categories.

Both the survey and the Questionnaire are available online. I’ll be curious to hear what our community thinks!

I love Massively Multiplayer Soba because it is simple and it works. In an academic paper, I might say the game explores tolerance and diversity by facilitating inter-cultural exchanges around regional cuisine. But really, Soba just gets strangers talking about food. We live in a country flayed by partisan divides, with too much time spent thinking about trivial differences. Even in New York where people from all over live side by side, it’s rare for us to take the time to interact with each other. But games give people excuses to be extroverts. And food is a universal passion. With Soba, we give strangers an excuse to discuss commonalities, and the results are just good.
Read more

That’s right, since we started selling our Grow A Game cards, folks have been buying them like they were frosted home cooking. Educators, designers, seasoned pros and novices have all found how fun and useful the card deck can be. At all the conferences where we put on workshops, particiapants ask for decks, and to satisfy demand we’re now offering the cards right from on the VAP site. You can go here and get your own set.

We’re working hard to develop new iterations of the cards as part of our Values At Play research program. If you’d like to participate formally by using the cards in our study let us know. If not, we’d still love to know how you’re using the cards and what your thoughts about them are! Check back soon for news about the new playing decks we’re developing for teenagers, children, and more.

Tiltfactor Lab will be releasing its first digital game soon. Proft Seed is a ludic critique of GMO food, and was developed using the Values At Play methodology and tools like the Grow A Game Cards. Check the Tiltfactor site soon for an update!<

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.

I am by no means the first to report this, but there are some eerie similarities between Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon game from 2001 and the current conflict in South Ossetia. Ghost Recon is set in April 2008 when an ultra-nationalist Russian president seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union invades Georgia. US Green Berets are deployed to South Ossetia to battle armed rebels and Russian troops. In reality, the conflict broke out in August, not April, and Russia was defending itself after Georgia staged a sneak attack in South Ossetia against Russian peace keepers and civilians, but the way the US media has portrayed Russia as the aggressor, you’d think Tom Clancy was dead on.

Commentators pointing out the similarity between Ghost Recon and reality have noted that the key difference is that no US troops were involved in the fighting, but in fact that’s a detail Clancy got right. We don’t know of any Green Berets in the conflict, but Russian media has reported US instructors guiding Georgian forces. Civilians in South Ossetia claimed to see soldiers in black uniforms with American flags on their sleeves. Even if the accounts of black uniformed soldiers were innacurate, there were definitely NATO training excercises and US military instructors in Georgia this past July. I wonder if any of those soldiers ever played Ghost Recon. I wonder how the experience playing the game affected their experience guiding real soldiers in such a similar conflict.

At the Games Learning and Society conference this past July many people claimed that we’re witnessing the gestation of ludic century. This will be an era of games everywhere, from the classroom to the living room to the factory floor. Perhaps this is so. We are already seeing the rise of ludic warfare.
Read more

via: Times

By Bryan Appleyard

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval.

And then some of them tried to kill it.

Microsoft, makers of most of the computer software in the world, tried to kill it with words, and Intel, maker of most computer chips, tried to kill it with dirty tricks. Of course, they don’t admit to being attempted murderers. And when I introduce you to Intel’s lovely spokesperson, Agnes Kwan, you’ll realise how far their denials go. But the truth is the two mightiest high-tech companies in the world looked on Negroponte’s philanthropic scheme and decided it had to die.

Yet, 3½ years later, the laptop is clinging on to life. It costs around $190 rather than $100 and it is called the XO. It is no longer like a tent, but it can still be solar-powered. It is a technological triumph. But only 370,000 are in use and another 250,000 ordered. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the company formed to run the project, is still driven by the same old idealism, geekery and technical brilliance. But Negroponte and his young staff are older and wiser. They were stunned by the savagery of the competition they faced – competition plainly intended to destroy a philanthropic idea. “I had wildly underestimated,” says Negroponte, “the degree to which commercial entities will go to disrupt a humanitarian project.”

For three reasons the XO turned out to be a gross provocation to the big players in the computer industry. First, it was always going to be cheap, undercutting the competition by thousands. Computers only cost as much as they do because the makers of the software – primarily Microsoft – go to enormous lengths to make their products necessary and expensive, and because makers of the hardware are constantly adding new features that you probably don’t need.

In fact, electronics have plummeted in price and there’s no real reason why you can’t get a decent laptop for a maximum of $400.

Second, the XO uses an AMD chip. The monopoly chip-maker in the world is Intel. It has three-quarters of the market, with AMD second. AMD and Intel hate each other with a hatred as hard as that of Hamas and the Israelis. For Intel, the idea of hundreds of millions of AMD laptops out there was intolerable. Intel could lose their market leadership – but not if Agnes has anything to do with it.

Third, it does not use software by Apple or Microsoft. Instead, it is run by Sugar, a free operating system devised by geeks for the love of it. For Microsoft in particular this was also intolerable. Its Windows operating system is the industry standard. Apple’s system is much better, but Windows, through sheer Microsoft muscle, has been made to appear necessary. The new massive non-Windows user base threatened by the XO is the sort of thing that seriously cuts into Bill Gates’s me time.

“This was a project that could operate outside the regular business world,” says Ethan Beard, a former OLPC board member representing Google, one of its backers, “and that’s not an unreasonable expectation. But it is in some ways threatening to businesses and when you threaten businesses, especially very large ones, they are going to react in ways that hurt you.”
Read more

I’m sure readers here are pretty familiar with what America’s Army is so I’ll skip most of the article, but there are some salient details that were new to me.

via: Truthout

…

What the game’s “realism” is attempting to do is to mask the violent reality of combat, and military experience in general, for very specific purposes. At a minimum, the Army hopes “America’s Army” will act as “strategic communication” to expose “kids who are college bound and technologically savvy” to positive messaging about the Army. Phase one of the propaganda effort is to expose children to “Army values” and make service look as attractive as possible. The next phase is direct recruiting. According to Colonel Wardynski, who originally thought up selling the Army to children through video games, “a well executed game would put the Army within the immediate decision-making environment of young Americans. It would thereby increase the likelihood that these Americans would include Soldiering in their set of career alternatives.” To make the connection between the game and recruitment explicit, the “America’s Army” web site links directly to the Army’s recruitment page. And gamers can explore a virtual recruitment center through the “America’s Army Real Heroes” program. Local recruiters also use the game to draw in high school children for recruitment opportunities. Recruiters stage area tournaments with free pizza and sodas; winners receive Xbox game consoles, free copies of “America’s Army” and iPods. Game centers are also set up at state fairs and public festivals with replica Humvees and .50 caliber machine guns, where children as young as 13 can test out the life-sized equipment.

Read more

Does anyone remember that movie War Games? No wait, this is more like Last Starfighter. Yep, the merger of military training, video games, and actual combat is upon up. The military is learning to help gamers transition as easily as possible from virtual war to actual war. This is like Toys At least there’ll be no more gender bias designed into jet cockpits.

via: Busines Week

by Mark Scott

Sitting back in a leather chair, with both hands on the controls, I’m scanning three flat-screen monitors in front of me, on the lookout for my next target. Sounds like a sneak peek of the latest shoot-’em-up video game, right?

Think again. This is the next generation of ground controls for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sometimes also known as drones, used by the U.S. Air Force and its overseas counterparts. As remote-controlled planes take on larger military roles in both Iraq and Afghanistan, defense companies are borrowing techniques from the video-game industry to make it easier for pilots on the ground to fly these unmanned aircraft from afar.

Read more

This article is kind of confusing, and I haven’t found any others that offer a clearer explanation. I’m imagining that the Thai government is just being reactionary here and there is no clear justification for banning the game. They say the boy murdered the taxi driver because he wanted to see if it was as easy in real life as in the game. Then they say he needed money so he could play the game more. So first the danger is that the game is a bad influence on kids, then the danger is that it’s addictive and we could see gamers like crack addicts robbing bodegas to buy the latest first person shooter. Finally, in an AFP article, a police officer claims the game is being banned because of obscene content. Obscene content? The country with one of the biggest sex tourism economies in the world is fretting over naughty language, guns, and digital strip clubs? No, GTA is no worse than an Ong Bak movie. Games are just convenient scapegoats.

via: BBC

The 18-year-old high school student is accused of stabbing the cab driver to death by trying to copy a scene from the game. The biggest video game publisher in the south-east Asian country, New Era Interactive Media, has told retailers to stop selling GTA IV. It is due to be replaced by another video game title.
Read more

Big thanks go out to Michael Abbott who wrote a couple great articles about our Grow A Game Workshop at GLS! You can read his articles on his own blog The Brainy Gamer and also on Gamasutra.

Tiltfactor ran another successful Grow A Games workshop last week at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Twenty people participated in the workshop, running through different one- and two-card exercises. As usual, some really unique game designs were developed, and there was thoughtful discussion about games as expressive media. Read more

Metal Gear: love it or hate it, the game is one of videogamedom’s most iconic franchises. Maybe it’s too cinematic, maybe it’s too preachy, but give it credit for trying at least. Even if you never want to sneak around in the shaddows chocking out gentically engineered super soldiers, or watch mercenaries wax philosophical about the meaning of life and fate vs. destiny, at least give the series credit for trying. It’s trying to be something different.

The New York Times had an artlicle last Sunday about the debates over Metal Gear’s hidden meanings. Kotaku writer Stephen was interviewed for the article, and was then so interested in the game he wrote a follow up email to the NYT writer discussing Metal Gear Solid’s 4 unique venture into game tragedy. I think serious games broke from the triumphant hero paradigm a long time ago (Septemer 12 or Hush for example) but it’s interesting to see a mainstream game attempt it. Read more

At last! Games are catching up! As the videogame becomes an increasingly important form of expression, it also becomes an increasingly important form to exploit. According to Kotaku, a study by IGA, an agency devoted solely to advertising in videogames, in association with Nielsen (yes, that Nielsen), has determined that people are okay with a little corporate sponsorship in their games. Read more

This year’s Games 4 Change Conference was another great success, providing seasoned game designers and excited newcomers the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge. From June 2-6, participants met to discuss developments in serious gaming and critical play that will help gaming become an increasingly valuable vista of the cultural landscape. At the conference there was the sense that games in general and serious games in particular were at a tipping point; poised to become a ubiquitous part of modern living, widely valued, respected, and understood. Read more

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

The jury of the Better Game Contest (http://www.bettergamecontest.org) has made its decision, and the winners of the contest are Jamie Antonisse, Chris Baily, Devon Johnson, Joey Orton, and Brittany Pirello! Read more

The VAP team, led by Dr. Mary Flanagan, will be heading to Pittsburg tomorrow night to rock the Future of Interactive Technology for Peace conference. Our team will be facilitating a Grow A Game workshop and a discussion about how and activists and media makers can use games as an expressive medium, and why they’d want to. Workshop members will also get the chance to experience how empowering and fun the game design process can be by playing with Grow A Game cards. Participants will learn how they can use critical play to develop innovative solutions.

We have pictures from our workshop at the Grassroots Media Conference here.

The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace

April 2-3, 2008
Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
University Center

The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference (April 2&3, 2008) is a day and one-half day national conference providing a forum for discussing the impact and the potential that interactive technology holds for peace and peacemaking. Using the highly successful game “PeaceMaker” [http://impactgames.com] as a jumping-off point, the key aim of the conference is to explore new directions in the application of interactive technology for conflict resolution, diplomacy, and international affairs. Read more

“Of course don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, because then they gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you they are. Oh yeah they gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual it’s gonna scare ‘em.” Jack Nicholson Easy Rider

via: Game Politics

City officials in Troy, New York apparently used the municipal building code to shut down a controversial video game art exhibit. Read more

Professor Flanagan was at South By Southwest last week to speak on the Games For Change panel. The group of speakers was a solid collection of some of serious gaming’s most influencial thinkers and practicioners including: Suzanne Seggerman, Pres, Games for Change, Eric Zimmerman, Co-Founder, Gamelab, Heather Chaplin, author of Smartbomb, (Algonquin Books 2005), Benjamin Stokes, Program Officer, MacArthur Foundation, and Chris Swain, VP/Programming, Spiderdance. The panel was yet another chance to share our Values At Play work with a new audience. The talk went really well, and you can read some of the reactions on other people’s blogs.

SXSW

Serious Games Source

Bay Area Video Coalition

Buzz About the Redistricting Game 

The Values At Play team is proud to announce it’s second Better Game Contest!

The contest is open from now until July 1, 2008. Read more

This weekend’s Grassroots Media Conference was a big success, with over 900 registrants and a solid turnout for the VAP Grow A Game workshop. Dr. Mary Flanagan began the session with a brief presentation on why activists would want to express their messages through games, and what some of the challenges to doing so are. There is a common misconception among people outside the gaming field that technical hurdles are the biggest barriers to developing activist games. Mary stressed that creating a great design that is on message is far more difficult than finding a programmer. It’s because of this belief that Values At Play team’s work is focused on creating design tools, not technical tools. The Grow A Game cards are the most recent asset released by Values At Play, and we’ve found them to be a great help during brainstorming sessions. After Mary concluded her introduction, it was time to get down to business. Read more

Designing a great game requires a subtle grace. Even the loudest, most garish, monster slaughter of a first person shooter requires a deft hand and critical eye in the design phase. While I respect and enjoy big sandbox games, massive RPGs, and photorealistic car racing, there is no question that the greatest games of all time are the simplest. One of the oldest board games, Go, uses a grid and two sets of monochromatic stones. It is also a game of such sprawling complexity and boundless emergence that scientists have yet to build the computer to defeat the best human players. Checkers, poker, Tetris, these are games of few rules and endless entertainment. It is important that we as game designers think about these examples, and take a minute to contemplate the process of game design. 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.

The blog Bruce On Games has a recent post dealing with that perennially popular topic: violence and video games. Bruce makes the claim that “established old media have vastly more shocking content than video games. This is an irrefutable fact.” He then supports this by using an online service that lets users search for particular words in the Bible. He found that the King James version has “harlot” in it 48 times, “sodomite” 5 times, “fornicator” 5 times, “smite” 133 times, “kill” 208 times and “maim” 7 times. This proves, I suppose he’s saying, that the Bible is more violent than (or at least as violent as) any videogame. His conclusion is that all media should be age rated based on the same standards.
Read more

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.”
Read more

Though I know we’ve said it before, I don’t think it can be said enough: the Values at Play project is NOT about creating boring goodie-two-shoes games. We talk a lot about social values, and appealing to diverse communities, and promoting a more just, equitable society, but that doesn’t mean we’re condemming violent videogames or controversy. I’m actually quite fond of controversy and enjoy well done violent games.

Read more

Gamasutra has an interview with Craig Allen, CEO of Spark Unlimited, about the company’s new release. The game is called Turning Point, and it takes a “what-if” scenario. As it asks what might have happened had the Nazis invaded the U.S. in WWII, the game seems to ponder on the nature of war.
Read more

The SimCity series has always given players a wide array of choices for powering their city, but Societies is notable for being the first game that specifically brands the eco-friendly power solutions with BP logos and likenesses.

In an apparent effort to explore the currently pressing issues of pollution and global warming, publisher Electronic Arts and energy giant BP have collaborated to incorporate a global warming minigame in SimCity: Societies, which is available now for the PC. In addition to traditional coal and nuclear power plants, the latest SimCity game also offers greener solutions such as wind farms and solar stations. The environmentally-sound – and BP branded – power options naturally cost more money to build and maintain, but yield significantly less pollution in the virtual city.
Read more

I found this on Kotaku, and the concept seemed very interesting to me. Basically, it’s a vest and helmet that allow video game players to feel all the shocks and bumps within the game. Are game players really in the mood for a little more action in their first-person shooters?
Read more

To get everyone in the mood, here’s perhaps the best Christmas-themed thing ever. And remember to be safe!

The Nintendo Wii has been out for some months now, so you may have heard about the phenomenon of the Wii and the elderly. Yes, the elderly and the Wii. If you need a refresher, take a look at this article. Read more

Generally, first-person shooter games are considered “masculine.” The weapon of choice is an obvious stand-in for the phallus, and the game usually puts the hero in a “search, kill, conquer” situation. But the game Portal, which was released on PlayStation 3 this past week, seems to be made of something different. Read more

The Values at Play research project launched version 1.0 of its website, http://www.valuesatplay.org, which offers a wealth of game design ideas and scholarship about games and human values. Read more

A possible problem lurking in every “educational” video game is the game’s inherent unfunness. An entry on Slashdot examines this idea.
Read more

Now this is all levels of cool. There’s a project underway at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland that involves a giant game of Tetris. Read more

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.”
Read more

Today’s New York Times features an article about the merger of Activision and Vivendi games that was announced Sunday. But the article really seems to be more about the company’s CEO, Robert A. Kotick.
Read more

I am a nube. In Second Life, I spend a good deal of time standing in one place awkwardly moving my mouse and clicking, desperately spinning my scroll wheel trying to get my view back centered on myself. Somehow, I’m looking down from the clouds, and then in the next instant I’m zoomed in to the side of a bank examining the wood grain of digital shiplap from an inch away. When I’m inside buildings and I try to look around at the audience, somehow I end up outside, stuck staring at the party through tinted windows. Everything’s dim as I watch the other figures gyrate and flex with their programmatic perfect, looping dance moves (someone’s got the Chicken Noodle Soup dance activated in their inventory!) I am the watcher on the outside, frustrated and ashamed as my avatar stands as still as Chief Bromden. Read more

The Aberrant Gamer, a column on GameSetWatch, asks, “Are we [gamers] crueler than we were years ago? And have we, as a society, become unhealthy?”
Read more

The Winter 2007 issue of the Association for Computing Machinery’s student publication Crossroads has an article on the educational capabilities of the online game of Second Life. Read more

Here’s a video of Super Mario Brothers set against Cibo Matto’s “Sci-Fi Wasabi.”

Read more

Read more

I think the image pretty much speaks for itself. Read more

On Lansing Lowdown, there’s a review of “Made Man.” By the way, it’s a mob game. Read more

Perhaps you can help Joe out.
Read more

From the message board at Democratic Underground: Read more

I have a few links from Mary tonight, the first about a forthcoming game inspired by the tales of H. P. Lovecraft.
Read more

Angela sent the press release for this—it appears that Kongregate, the video game uploading site, is getting into the game business, so to speak. The company, it seems, is branching out from its online community status and is now funding game development projects.
Read more

According to a study at the University of Toronto, women rapidly improved their spatial abilities by playing videogames.
Read more

Tiltfactor Laboratory Open House

Friday November 16, 2007
3:00 – 5:00 pm
Hunter College
695 Park Ave.
Hunter North Room 482

On Friday, November 16 the Tiltfactor Lab at Hunter College (http://www.tiltfactor.org) will be holding an open house to showcase our latest work and celebrate with those in the city interested in social impact games!! All are welcome to come enjoy refreshments and music, meet the staff, and explore the range of Tiltfactor projects. Student art will also be on display, and board games and video games will be available to play and discuss.

Read more

Because I think that everyoone sometimes needs something light to get themselves started at the beginning of the work week, here are a few amusing things from around the Internet. Read more

Mary’s written a blog entry for Grand Text Auto about MIT’s new Center for Future Civic Media .

You can read it here.

Even non-serious games can teach serious lessons.

Clive Thompson has a nice little article about what Halo 3 has taught him about geopolitics and the logic of sucide bombing in asymmetrical warfare.

Read it here

In a late celebration of Halloween, Mac owners can now shiver in fear at the prospect of computer viruses, with the brand new Mac virus. And Steven Jobs didn’t even have to hold a press conference for it. Read more

I don’t mean to sound bleak here folks, but the world is full of poison and propaganda. Both are often cloaked in noble rhetoric or obscured by innocuous intentions. Manhunt 2 was released last week, and while I don’t think it’s the new face of evil, I do think it’s the digital equivalent of candy cigarettes. Read more

Apparently, real life and video games are merging. Read more

Although it doesn’t come out until March of next year, there’s a preview of the EA/ Will Wright (of the “Sims” games) game “Spore” on 1UP.com.

Read more

Lisa Laughy has a problem with game design education. But it’s not so much the education, so much as the game industry’s influence on the way game design is taught.
Read more

With the 2008 elections fast approaching, as with every election, the faults of our political system are ever the more apparent. The Redistricting Game, courtesy of the University of Southern California EA Game Innovation Lab, looks at the shifty yet common practice of gerrrymandering.
Read more

A couple weeks ago, the New York Times published an article detailing how some Christian churches are using Halo 3 as a prostelization tool. It was a good article, despite being at least two years behind the story, and failing to recognize the enormous conspiracy behind Halo youth groups. Read more

by Andy Lemke
Ah, videogame heroines and their unrealistic proportions and impractical outfits. Erin Hoffman writes of her desire, as well as other female game designers desire, for more realistic portrayals of female videogame characters. Read more

by Andy Lemke
Private security contractors are in the news, and now you can play the videogame. But game designer Chris Ferriera wants to do something different—creating a cooperative, two-person shooter game in Army of Two. Read more