Ludology.org

The 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium Series

The 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium series will be held March 25-27, 2002 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California (Thanks Andrew Stern).

Summer in Uruguay

Some stuff is really hard to simulate. I am in Uruguay for a week, so don't expect many posts. The sun and the food could not be better. More later :)

Burn books, not videogames

Videogame studies are becoming more popular and that’s a fact. Until now, a big part of the existent research has been related to the neverending debate on videogames and violence. I can certainly understand that humans love their children and would rather have them reading a good book instead of shooting hookers at GTA3. Nevertheless, I cannot understand why people focus their anger on videogames when there is so much evidence about the terrible consequences of “accepted” media. Take the book, for example, a supposedly respected form. How many millions died because of the Bible? That little international bestseller ravaged and enslaved the native population of South America, as well as thousands of Arabs during the crusades and many others in the European religious wars. I have all the documentation about the dangers of the book –not just the Bible, but also other titles such as Das Kapital or Mein Kampf.
How many people died because of videogames? 10? 100? 1.000? Come on, guys, burn books if you want, but let us play in peace.

New Will Wright Project and A.I. on Wired

There's an interesting article by Steven Johnson that gives a good overwiew on A.I. and games on the last Wired (paper edition, not available online yet). Somewhere else on the magazine there is a nice piece of information: Will Wright is working on a new Universe simulator. So be prepared to start building your own galaxy soon.

Of two minds: research and working

I haven't been posting much these days. The reason is simple: I have been coding like hell for a new game that I am developing for the Cartoon Network. I am a tight deadline: this weekend I am flying to Uruguay, my home country, to work with some people who are going to collaborate on this game. Needless to say, a week of summer sunshine certainly will improve my coding abilities. I also plan to stop by my alma mater to say hi and get in touch with fellow Uruguayan professors and researchers.
I have been on this dual industry/academy track for a while now. I certainly do enjoy research and theory, but I guess that if I were 100% involved in academics, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now. It’s not an easy thing to do to combine these two worlds. My research interest on videogames started about 7 years ago as a kind of hobby, I guess. Now I juggle between being a full time producer/game designer at Cartoon with writing/reviewing articles, taking care of ludology.org and attending to conferences every time I can. The fact that Stan, my boss, has always been supportive of my research has also helped a lot.
The point of this post is that sometimes I feel –or people suggest- that it is better to focus on one thing. I simply cannot. I could not just concentrate on just theory or practice. So far, I have been lucky, but I am not sure if I will be able to keep up with these two games. Time will tell.

PLAY: IL MONDO DEI VIDEOGIOCHI

If you are in Rome after April 4 and you are crazy enough to think about anything else but good Italian food, you must definitively check out this videogame exhibit held at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. "It will focus on the social and cultural impact of video games in the last 30 years and it's the first of its kind in Italy". (grazie Matteo Bittanti)

Wired on Game Courses

Read the article here.

Nominees Named for Game Developers Choice Awards

The list is out and most of the titles are truly excellent. I personally think that GTA3 is by far the best game of the year. Violence aside, the game is what simulation should be about: forget stupid Aristotelian storylines and give me the ability to get into somebody else's shoes. The guys at Rockstar understood this, just like Will Wright did, and the result is fun as hell. Just like Shenmue, GTA3 has a massive world but, unlike it, it doesn't bother you with a boring "interactive story". GTA3 trusts its players with giving them freedom to act: who cares if some moments may be more satisfying than others; this ain't no novel. Sure, GTA3 also has missions but they do not weave a long story but rather complement the daily life of a thug. I will light a couple of candles and pray very hard for more games like this.

CFP:Gunfights at the Online Corral: Multiplayer Gaming and Imaginative Communities

Proposal for a special session at the MLA Convention, December 27-30, 2002.

Please send 500 word abstracts by March 15 to:
Mark Mullen
Department of English
The George Washington University
Washington D.C. 20052
Abstracts may also be sent by e-mail to: ishmael@gwu.edu.

Where are The Sim's clones?

Ok, another post with a question on it. We are in a industry that clones everything. Since the early days of Castle Wolfenstein, we have seen thousands -and I mean thousands- of first person shooters that look alike. One possible reason is that programmers think it is cool to develop 3d engines, and that's cool with me. The other possible reason is that the marketing guys think that fps sell. However, The Sims has been on the top of the charts for a year and a half and, as far as I see on the racks of my software store, nobody has even thought about doing a clone, or at least some other kind of human simulation. Why? The easy answer would be because the marketing guys don't want to get involved in plagiarisms. But everybody knows that the marketing guys are not precisely choir boys, so I don't think that's the reason. Anybody has a clue about this? Let me know.