Ludology.org

Newsgaming, a USA Today Hot Site

USA Today selected Newsgaming.com for the Hot Sites list. Their review is, I think, the most enthusiastic so far that has been published on a major media outlet.

rrCombining news, opinion and gameplay may sound odd or flippant, but the offerings so far on this fascinating site are neither. The developers participating here feel that games are a learning tool and a way of commenting on the world as well as a form of entertainment. They’re just getting started, but clearly there’s some fresh thinking here as well as an up-to-date appreciation for the activities that truly shape many folks’ understanding of the world.

rOf course, I wish I could launch more games more often. Sept12 will be a year old in a few months, and Madrid was launched in March. I think that I have discovered the obvious, that projects do have a life far more longer than your attention to them. While I am really happy with Newsgaming, it gets a bit repetitive to talk to journalists over and over about the same game. On the other hand, I am glad that the project keeps getting attention (I haven't checked the stats in quite a while, but the visitors keep adding up, rounding several hundreds of thousands). My move to Denmark has made me incredibly busy, but now that I am more settled (read: no more need for long trips to Ikea), things may calm down a bit. I am working on a new game, by the way. But it is still on pre-production, so nothing will be launched for at least several months.r

The URBZ coming to Nintendo DS

Whatever you think about Nintendo's future and whatever you think about their upcoming dual-screen portable, it is good to have designers excited about its features. Excited developers = people taking risks and that is always a good thing, even if that also guarantees some failures. Personally, I am curious to see what people will come up with (or what they will expect us to play with). Gamespot runs a story that includes a video interview with one of the developers of the upcoming The Urbs for the DS and he's talking about mini-games, which sounds like a good idea to exploit the DS' new features. Minigames, minigames, it's fantastic how wonderful games like WarioWare can change our little gaming world.

Time running out for Other Players

You better hurry up to complete your full paper submission for the Other Players conference. The deadline is August 1st. Update: Deadline extended for 2 weeks.

Ron Gilbert's blog

Ron Gilbert got blog. For those of you who have been playing Tetris for the last 10 years, Ron is the guy responsible for the first two Monkey Islands (the last one, I bought it for 10 bucks at Target, played it once on my PS2 and is now probably gathering dust or some sort of CD fungus). If you want to know about Gilbert's games, you can read this interview.
rRon posted an article from 1989 called "Why Adventure Games Suck". Luckly, that was not the complete title (it continued "And What We Can Do About It). You can read it here.

Al Gore on game theory

Famed ludologist Al Gore gave a few insights on his work on game theory at the Democratic National Convention: "You win some, you lose some. And then there's that little-known third category".
It is interesting how the American public and media (and even the Democrats) have generally avoided the use of the term "fraud". Admitting the existence of fraud and cheating is a burden, even for the cheated, because it forces everybody to recognize that there is quite a gap between their ideals and the way things work. Admitting the existence of cheating is admitting that there is no fair game and that Americans have been living under the illusion of democracy. That is quite a problematic situation for the self-proclaimed champions of democracy. It certainly feels more comfortable to disdain fraud as an aberration, the unspeakable, rather that accepting that your beliefs were built upon lies. I mean, it is not easy to realize that things are not like you thought they were. Coming of age experiences are traumatic, granted. I can only hope democracy lovers can outgrow the tragedy of fraud with more wisdom.
rCheating is not an exception. Cheating is part of the game. Loving the game means accepting that cheating is always a possibility and you have to know how to deal with it. The worst that can happen to democracy is to believe that it is an unbreakable system. Players only learn through defeat. You cannot learn how to overcome cheating if you do not accept the possibility of its existence. If you really love the game, you have to embrace cheating and accept it as part of its nature. Only then you can combat it by playing by the rules. Otherwise, who's the real cheater?

No more anonymous comments :(

Just like everybody else, I am suffering from comments spam. So, the bad news is that anonymous comments are gone and there is a 10 minute delay between posts (kind of sucks, but at least it may prevent some hothead from flaming, too :) The good things is that while messing with the config file, I cancelled the censorship function, so at least we can all say fuck now.

Play chess, get deported (well, it's more complicated than that)

Bobby Fisher, former US hero for beating the commies at their own brainy game, is facing deportation to the US because of a match that he played in 1992 in Yugoslavia (there were sanctions against the country at the time). Of course, the deportation is not for playing the game itself, but I wanted to point it out as an example of the dangers of games. I have been playing Manhunt lately and I think that the best part so far is when beaten-up characters try to convince you of sparing their lives by arguing "It's only a game, right?". Games can be deadly serious. Just tell Boy-genius Bobby down in his little cell waiting for deportation.

Meet the Tamaboy

Thanks to Il Signore Bittanti, we learn of the Tamaboy, a tamagotchical virtual boy that can help us to better understand ourselves (or so Matteo has been told). Not really sure what to make of this, but it is definitively cute. Of course, Tamagotchis are meant to be carried, not just to be played on a computer, so it would be hard to test the longtime effect of play, but I am all for virtual people, especially if they eat lemons and bananas as this one does.

Soviet Arcade

(via Slashdot) It seems that the Eastern block liked arcades, too. Here's a BBC story on Poly Play, one of the very few surviving Eastern Europe arcade machines

PublicBeta Project: Difficult questions

The PublicBeta people are making a book in order to answer 5 little questions: What is a videogame? / What was a videogame? / What will a videogame be? / What is gameplay? / How do you know if a videogame is rubbish?
rThey are looking for more answers, so feel free to contact them if you have any one worth publishing.