Ludology.org

Ludologica Retro CFP extended

The Ludologica Retro Volume 1 CFP has been extended. Abstracts are now due on December 25th (a.k.a. Xmas). The book will be edited by Ian Bogost and Matteo Bittanti.

Brenda's rants

It's almost a blog. Brenda Laurel has been updating her rants every couple of months at her site. Worth checking out. I haven't yet read her new Design Research, but it's on my list.

Japanese Playgrounds + Cranium!

The NYTimes (free reg. req.) has a fantastic slideshow on avant-garde Japanese playgrounds. A must-see. And while you are at it, there is also an article on marketing to children that deals more with food than with toys and games, but if you are serious about this ludology thing, you need to broaden your perspectives, right? Last, but not least, CollisionDetection's Clive Thompson reviews Cranium toys (another must-read. This is a FANTASTIC piece). Thanks Clive for making my Xmas miserable: I now have too many toys on my list and Santa is probably going to think that a Nintendo DS is more than enough for me :( .
rTalking about playgrounds, there is a terrific one right next to my house in Copenhagen, designed for handicapped children. I should have taken pics during the summer, because now leafless means lifeless. But I promise to do it, as soon as the sun gets back (in about 100 months probably)
rTo sum up, you should spend at least an hour browsing through this Sunday's NYT Magazine. It mainly deals with all-things-children. If you read this on Monday, you now have a good excuse for doing nothing at the office.

DS and PSP, Japanese TV

Plenty of Japanese TV ads for the PSP and DS (the DS one includes gameplay from WarioWare DS a.k.a. WarioWare Touched! Btw, here's the game's Japanese page. And make sure that you don't miss this one including plenty of characters and screenshots). Update: The site only allows 2 downloads per IP, so be patient (it also hosts many other Japanese commercials). Man, only 8 more days until I get my DS... (via La Petite Claudine)

IGF 2005

The list of entries for the 2005 edition of the Independent Game Festival are anounced. Alien Hominid is one of them. This may trigger the same debate as last year: where should the IGF draw the line about independent gaming. I mean, I am a big fan of Newgrounds and I do not question AH independent roots. However, it is sort of strange to have in the same competition a project with a 1.3 million $ budget, while others were done on a shoestring.

CFP: The First Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive DigitalrnEntertainment

The CFP for AIIDE 2005 is up. It's a conference on AI and entertaiment and it's in Caaaaaaaaaaaalifornia. Abstracts are due on January 21 and Full Papers on January 25th, 2005. Of course, if you are not very intelligent but are still are a good AI programmer, then your computer can submit a paper for you ;)

EMAIL DOWN!

Disregard. It's FIXED! :)
rMy ludology.org email has been down for the last couple of days. I am currently working on fixing that. Meanwhile, please email me at my itu.dk email or my powerfulrobot.com email. Thanks!
rGonzalo

My first thoughts on JFK Reloaded

I have posted a quite long post about the JFK Reloaded game (where you have to shoot Kennedy) at Watercoolergames.

Playing with Machines in Cuba

I just published a new article at Miradas, the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños magazine. It's probably the best film school in Latin America and, as a young undergrad, I dreamt of studying there (Gabriel García Márquez used to teach scriptwriting down there). Too bad, my film aspirations didn't work out (I ended up learning scriptwriting with Syd Field instead, during a wild seminar in Rio de Janeiro). Anyway, I think I would have never had enjoyed filmmaking. Projects take too long. Television is better I think.
rI left my film days behind, but I learned a lot of production skills and those came certainly handy when we created our game studio with Sofía. But I never completely left TV, since I worked as a TV scriptwriter for a short while in Uruguay, and then worked in digital and game stuff for TV companies in the States. Many, many years ago I once argued that we needed to make games more like TV shows, and I guess that's sort of what webgames are about, at least in terms of production.
rThat was a long introduction for pointing out to an article written in Spanish (sorry to let the non-Spanish speaking crowd down there). Is entitled "Jugando con máquinas" (Playing with machines) and it mixes a little bit of theory, with independent and political gaming production.

Naked Melee

Every once in a while, a little Flash game will make you go nuts. Here's one of them. Ugly, yes. Simple, sure. A challenge, you bet!