Ludology.org

More jobs: Open position in Copenhagen

"The position involves research into theory of computer games, cultural and social aspects of computer games, and design of computer games." That, of course, is one of the best job descriptions ever :)
rThis is an Assistant Professor position at the IT University, where the Center for Computer Games Research is located. Application deadline is January 5, 2004.

CFP: Form, Culture and Video Game Criticism

(via Barry Atkins) A conference to be held Saturday, March 6, 2004 by the English Department of Princeton University. Abstracts or complete papers are due before January 14, 2004. More more information, read the complete CFP.

Open position @ Tampere

Slowly, we start to see more and more open positions for game researchers (something unthinkable just a few years ago). Now's the turn for University of Tampere Hypermedia Laboratory and its Game Research Lab to announce an opening. If you want to join Frans Mäyrä and team, you better hurry up: deadline is December 9. Keep reading for further details.

Article: Ludologists love stories, too

I have uploaded a copy of my Level Up 2003 Conference paper (pdf format). To make a long story short: I was fed up of reading about the ludology versus narratology debate, so I wrote an article to help setting things straight. The paper makes a few points, basically:
a) Ludology NEVER excluded narratology from game studies. That's been like this right from the beginning, clearly written on the first paper ever on ludology (I should know, I wrote it)
rb) Ludologists are not radical story-haters, that's a total nonsense
rc) a debate on the issue never took place as such

rUnlike most discussion on the subject, my recent paper extensively quotes difference sources in order to show that there's been a huge misunderstanding on this issue. As more and more people are joining our field of study, I wanted to document my take on this so-called debate in order to minimize the amount of time wasted on discussing this matter without the right information.
rLife is short, there is a lot of research to be done in games and I simply cannot lose more time repeating myself over this ludo/narrat debate. I hope the paper helps to set the record straigth once for all.
rPlease read it and let me know what do you think.

CFP: Experimental games

The Experimental Gameplay Workshop is calling for participations. It will take place at next year's GDC. Deadline is January 24th.

Georgia Tech PhD Program

I paid a short visit to Georgia Tech this week, where I got my Master Degree a few years ago. I was delighted to see their new game lab: tons of equipment for gaming as well as a vast environment for discussion, debate and all the forms of talk that arise from gaming. Janet Murray just announced their new PhD program, which is one of the very few available on the field of digital media. They have a very strong team of professors and students are able to benefit from Georgia Tech's C.S. Department (where there is also tons of great people, including Amy Bruckman). If you are hunting for a PhD program this is a place you definitively need to consider.

Level Up pictures

Jason just posted a bunch of nice pics from the Level Up conference. Here's a conference report from Andrew Stern from grandtextauto.org. Btw, I am posting from Michael Mateas office (I am on a short visit to Atlanta so I decided to stop by and visit my friends at Tech). He just showed me their really impressive computer game research lab and we discussed about several really exciting projects that IDT students have been working on.

Frasca @ the Ivory Tower

That is a tall tower! Here's my new article for the Ivory Tower column at IGDA. It deals with ideological games, burning videogames and some of the issues behind the production of September 12th.

Wall Street Journal on games & Newsgaming

The Wall Street Journal ran on Monday a story on videogames, better game criticism, the DiGRA Level Up conference. They also featured my latest game, “September 12th”.

Level Up Conference report

Level Up is now over and I am currently flying to Atlanta for a few days, before flying back to Montevideo. I have decided to write down some of my impressions, even though this should be taken as a very fragmented conference report.
rrFirst of all, the Utrecht conference was a great experience. Over 500 people from all over the world attended and, as it is usual in these cases, a vast majority were Europeans, including a large amount of Dutch. The organization, while not flawless, was a gigantic effort and it was very clear that the team behind it did everything humanly possible to make this first DiGRA conference a total success.