Ludology.org

Social Impact Games

Mark Prensky gathers a collection of links on non-entertaining games that is solid gold. Finally, the kind of site I have been waiting for years now.

CIAgaming

The CIA wants to build a game to better understand terrorists.

Greetings from Tokyo

Here I am, once again in Tokyo after a deadly long flight. Tomorrow I will be at the Tokyo Game Show. Newsgaming.com will be launching this Monday.

CFP: Extended Deadline

Transform Reality's CFP deadline has been extended until November 21st. The CFP is for a book on videogames and art.

Call for entries

As part of its Counter Gaming exhibit (running January-April, 2004), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts calls for entries to be exhibit at their real-life and The Sims Online galleries (via grandtextauto.org.

Game On exhibit in Helsinki

The Helsinki City Art Museum is hosting Game On, an exhibit about videogame history and culture. It opens today until December 14th, 2003. They have a very nice little game on videogame history (the site is in Finnish but the game is in English).

See you in Tokyo

Talk about hardcore gamers. Next week, I’ll be taking a 37 hour flight (changing planes 5 times) in order to get to Japan to attend to the Tokyo Game Show, which will be happening on September 26-28. Here’s a list of the games that will be announced. My fascination with Japan is not only due to their games but also because I think it is the culture that has taken simulation to a degree that we Westerners can only dream about. The Japanese live in a highly constrained environment and that makes them seek solutions not only in representation, but particularly in simulation. Pets are too expensive? Let’s simulate them. Mountains are too far? Let’s simulate a ski slope. Barbecuing is complicated? Let’s make a simulator out of it. Humans have trouble socializing? Let’s install a virtual girlfriend. Of course, this can seem to be a bit simplistic, but the fact is that you can breathe simulation in Tokyo. A thorough understanding of Japanese culture is needed in order to better understand games and simulation. Thankfully, some researchers (i.e. William Huber) are working on that direction.

New Blog: Terra Nova.

"The Terra Nova weblog provides commentary on the rapidly emerging synthetic worlds of cyberspace." This group blog is written by Edward Castronova, Julian Dibbell, Dan Hunter and Greg Lastowka. The blog has been running just for a few weeks, but it already has a ton of very useful links and interesting reads.

CFP: ACE 2004

International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE 2004). 3-5th June 2004. National University of Singapore. Paper/poster/demo Submission Deadline: 15th February 2004r

Newsgaming.com

Play the news. Ludology.org launches Newsgaming.com
rThe first in a series of explorations on serious games. Videogame theory becomes practical. Games meet political cartoons.
rThe first game we are launching is called "September 12th" and deals with certain aspects of the war on terror.