Ludology.org

Game Studies #5 is out!

On the last day of 2003, Game Studies published its issue #5. It includes papers from Edward Castronova, Shuen-shing Lee, Laurie Taylor, Jan Van Looy and yours trully. My paper, entitled Sim Sin City, analyzes a few aspects of GTA3. I haven't read the other articles, but I am sure they will make some good summer reading (at least for us in the southern hemisphere)

Two thousand and 3

The most important thing that happened to me in 2003 can be described with two words: Powerful Robot. I was finally able to launch my very own game studio, along with my longtime friend and colleague Sofia Battegazzore. It’s been a pleasure to work with such a gifted team of collaborators, all of them with no previous game development experience, but with enough passion to be learn fast and become really good at it. Sofía, Pepe, Nico, Fabián & Fede, along with other collaborators and freelancers, gave me a good reason to wake up early in the morning and driving late back home every day. I lost track, but I think we developed about a dozen Shockwave and Flash games and we had a good time crafting every single one of them [more...]

Hard times for Nintendo

The Washington Post on Nintendo's current situation in the console wars.

CFP: Game Design Research Symposium and Workshop

7-8.5.2004, IT-University, Copenhagen, Denmark.

rThe format of the event
rr1st day, introduction to the field by the organizers and presentations of selected research papers.
r2nd day is reserved for a hands-on workshop exploring game design methods and their effect on the industry and research. The workshop will be conducted by the organizers.
rParticipation to both sessions will be free of charge. A more detailed call for participation will be sent out separately in early 2004.

Videogames go to Washington!

We are happy to announce that we've just finished developing on the first ever official campaign video game - the Dean for Iowa Game, commissioned by Dean for America.r

rPolitical videogaming has now reached official status. This is an important moment in the world of political games and game rhetoric, since never before has a candidate, let alone a US Presidential candidate, officially embraced games as a viable communication medium.r

rWe'll look forward to telling you more about this soon, but for now, just play the game.r

r- Ian & Gonzalo

MSNBC: A year in gaming

Tom Loftus from MSNBC give a end-of-the-year look at what happened in 2003 in the world of videogames. I am specially proud that both Ludology.org and my game September 12th made it to MSNBC's highlights of the year. Certainly, on a personal level, it has been a great year: running my own game studio has been a lot of work, but also gave me loads of satisfaction. But the year is not over yet… there is one extra secret project that I have been working on and you’ll learn about it soon. That's all I can say for now...

Scan: Ludic Moments

Australian journal Scan has published Ludic Moments, a set of papers about videogames. It includes an interview with Espen Aarseth.

Creating emotions in games

Emotioneering is the name of the craft developed by David Freeman. You can learn more about it in this book.

Habla Español? Too bad if you don't.

Si habla, o al menos lee español, no deje de leer Elastico.net, un excelente blog de cultura digital y otras yerbas. Eventualmente hablan de juegos, aunque apuntan sobre todo a temas más variados. Repito: excelente.

Manhunt in Milano

I assume that all of you are avid readers of my pal Matteo Bittanti's blog, but just in case you are not, why not reading his post on Manhunt, videogame violence and real violence.