Ludology.org

CFP: Cosign 2004

Cosign 2004 will be held at the University of Split, in Croatia, from Sept. 13-16, 2004.

CFP: DOOM, The First Person Reader

“Ludologica. Videogames d’Autore” is pleased to announce its call for papers for a book on first-person shooter games that will be published in Summer 2004.

Armchair Arcade

I should have posted this a while ago, but with all my moving, packing and working, it did not make it in time to ludology.org. Sorry about that, fellow reader! But here's the link to the first issue of Armchair Arcade. Enjoy!

CFP: ICEC 2004

The 3rd International Conference on Entertainment Computing is calling for papers. It will take place in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, on Sept 1-3, 2004. The deadline for full papers is March 20. I attended the first conference, which took place in Japan, and really had a blast. Tons of interesting things going on.

The ludonauts are coming!

They just landed and are among us. They are the LUDONAUTS. They come in peace, but they are ready to take over our gaming planet. Their weapons: collective blogging and sharp critical minds. I am sure they will abduct us and take us to a better gaming universe.

2nd day in Denmark

Just a small update for all of you who emailed me (I promise this won't become a travel blog :) Things were much better today. We did some paperwork for our stay and work permits and everything went just fine. Still have a sour taste from yesterday, but we are fine as long as we have some warm soup/coffee (it's really cold down here).

Danish coziness

It’s never easy to move. It’s even harder when you are moving to a different country. Yesterday, after about 20 hours of flights and connections, our flight finally landed on Copenhagen airport. I was tired, but specially thrilled of being in Denmark in order to be able to do videogame research at the Computer Game Research Center. My wife was also happy to get there: it was her first time in Denmark and that was supposed to be quite a present, since it happened to be her birthday. As soon as we get to the hotel and in spite of the exhaustion and jetlag, I was planning to take her to a restaurant and celebrate. Sadly we couldn’t do it due to a mistake that my wife committed exactly 34 years ago: she was born in Uruguay and because of that she carries a shinny blue Uruguayan passport (I have somehow better luck, or at least that’s what I thought, since I carry a European passport).

Videogames can't save Dean in Iowa

Well, videogames did all they could, but it seems they are far from being 100% persuasive ;) Let's put it this way: a third place is not that bad and Dean has plenty of time to catch up ;) I promise to keep working hard, anyway.

Playing politics at Slate

Clive Thompson writes on Slate about the Howard Dean game and the US Presidential race.

Les jeux vidéo

I'll be giving a talk in Toulouse, France, on February 2nd, as part of a conference organized by the Cinématheque de Toulouse. I am particularly excited about this, since it's the first time I'll be talking about videogames in France (that's where my mom's family is from. Remember, I'm half French myself). Even if I can speak French fluently (I went to a French kindergarten, school and high school, doing my Bac and all), I decided I was going to give the talk in English (it will be translated on-the-fly into French, though). The reason? All my research has been done in English and I think my brain is hardwired in that language when it comes to videogames. The same happens to me when I give talks in Spanish, which is, after all, my native language. I guess all my gaming brain connections are done in English so, well, English it would be. This may be due to a bit of lazyness on my part but, sincerely, I think that could only be true to my ideas if gave the talk in English. Actually, when I am just thinking about game research, I do it in English, too. Weird, isn't it?