Ludology.org

Game PhD Course

Espen Aarseth, the world leading videogame theorist, is giving a PhD Course on Game Analysis Metholody at the ITU University. Estimate course dates are Dec 3-6, 2003.

Flux @ Amsterdam

The Amsterdam IGDA chapter is holding a post-Level Up conference called Flux - Game Industry in Transition on November 7. Registration required.

Serious Games Summit @ GDC

This will be probably one of the most exciting events at next year's GDC. It's organized by Ben Sawyer, from SeriousGames.org

Hilarious!

Please read this! EGM mag forced a bunch of 10 year olds to play with old arcade classics... and recorded their comments. We can all learn a lot from their reactions! (thanks Ian)

CFP: Soccer Civilization

There are few people in this world working non-stop to push this academic field further while keeping in mind that game theory and criticism must answer to the actual needs of players, developers and researchers. Matteo Bittanti is one of them. Now he is CFP for a new set of books that are part of his Ludologica project. The new books will deal with Sid Meier's Civilization and Soccer games, respectively.

Newsgaming.com needs you!

September 12th is becoming very popular.

We thought we had plenty of bandwidth but, guess what, we were wrong.

rrUpdate: We sort of worked the problem out... for now. Thank you so much!

rGonzalo and the Newsgaming team

Education Arcade

The good gaming folks from MIT just launched Education Arcade.
r"The Education Arcade represents a consortium of international game designers, publishers, scholars, educators, and policy makers who are exploring the new frontiers of educational media that have been opened by computer and video games."
They are planning a conference for next May at LA's Convention Center.

Finally, a The Sims' rip-off!!

On my usual rants against the lack of innovation in this industry, I usually argue that it is pretty amazing nobody yet tried to clone The Sims (a.k.a. the bestselling game ever). For every successful game, there have been tons of clones (think Doom and Myst, for example). However, publishing houses have been pretty shy about dealing with human people, even if that could be extremely profitable (and don't blame The Sims Online's flop. Companies should have been cloning The Sims way before that). Anyway, the Germans are finally coming. While my German reading skills are pretty lame, maybe you can do a better job than me at getting an idea of what Singles is about (via mbf tod@y)

Tokyo Game Show report

I have been so busy lately that I haven't posted much about the Tokyo Game Show. Thankfully, Justin Hall just did a terrific report about it at Gamasutra (registration required). And, yes, I am the one fighting against the Metal Gear Solid soldier.

What women want

(via gamegirladvance) Gender Inclusive Game Design, Sheri Graner Ray's new book, is out. It is probably one of the most relevant topics marketwise, but I think it is also essential for the maturity of the medium. I do believe women gamers are on average more demanding about quality than men (yes, I know, this may be , controversial, but, hey, it is my personal experience). The more the industry pays attention to women, the more interesting this field will get.