Ludology.org

DAC game papers

Gee, how I wish every conference did this! You can download all the full papers from DAC03 in pdf format!
The recent DAC held in Australia is the 5th one and, sadly, the first one I didn't attend. The Digital Arts and Culture conference series need to been seen as a catalyst of a big part of ludological studies as we know them today.

Cursing policy and apologies

I always enjoyed the fear in certain cultures to certain magical words, mainly cursing. For example, to use say "the F word" instead of fuc k. I want to make clear that this site's policy is that people can use any kind of language they want, because words are useful mainly because they generally mean something. Sadly, the backend on which this blog was built censors many words. This is an automated process and, so far, I haven't been able to disable. You can go around it by using special characters or spaces ("fuc ki ng" or "f uck" works, for example). By any means I am explicitely encouraging cursing, I just wanted to set the record straight and inform you readers that I have been trapped by the PC system ;) Thankfully, it is open source and I hope to be able to fix it in the near future.

The research center that came from the North

IT University in Copenhagen has anounced the Center for Computer Game Research, to be directed by Espen Aarseth.
rrGames studies, ludology, videogame research or whatever you want to call it, has a long tradition in the Scandinavian countries. The most visible figure from the last years has been Espen Aarseth (Norway) who has been highly influential among other game researchers, such as Markku Eskelinen (Finland), Jesper Juul (Denmark), Aki Jarvinen (Finland), Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (Denmark), just to mention a few. Obviously, there are many important non-Scandinavian researchers out there, specially from Europe and the States. The reasons for Scandinavian countries being so strong on ludology, well, are open to speculation (we have joked with Eskelinen that it's a consequence of welfare country education, since that would include Uruguay -my home country- on the same bunch) [more...]

Master in Videogame Design (Italy)

The "Istituto Superiore della Comunicazione" (Milano, Italy) is holding Italy's first Master's Degree in Videogame Design (in Italian).

Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar 2003

A seminar that will take place in Leipzig, Germany. For more info, go to www.sagasnet.de.

GDC Europe Academic Day

For those on the other side of the Atlantic, there's now more details on GDC Europe's Academic Day. I am seriously considering to attend (GBA SP and Super Monkey Ball SP put the glamour back on transcontinental flying).

Pics from E3

Jason Della Rocca just posted his E3 summary, along with some pics. There is one with the Army people arriving to E3 on a chopper (sadly, I just was able to videotape part of it). There's another with the "secret meeting of the game bloggers", GameGirlAdvance, Ludology.org, SecondLife News and Zang.org.

A unique academic program

Bachelor of technical or professional studies in Simulation and Digital Entertainment at the University of Baltimore. It starts on 2004 and Stuart Moulthrop and Nancy Kaplan are part of the faculty. This is people I personally know, trust and respect as academics and I am sure they'll pull out a terrific program. It's definitively not easy to start a game-related program these days, but as somebody commented on this site's poll, the early birds will be rewarded. They'll have to bear with the problems of innovators but they'll have a unique chance at shaping a new academic discipline.

Real violence at E3

Talk about games and violence... Check out this pic from antipasta.org, taken at E3. Some nice real violence sponsored by your pals at the US government. This is from the same people who are worried about game violence. Come on kid, games may be dangerous but this is the real thing. On the one hand, the gov worries about Columbine. On the other, minors can play with real weapons. The word for this on my dictionary is fuc king "hypocrisy".

Ludology speaks Portuguese

Here's a link to an article where I was interviewed about Enter the Matrix on the Brazilian newspaper "Jornal do Brasil" (in Portuguese)