Ludology.org

Comments back!

Having a CNN.com developer and former webmaster to help me with the ways of the blog is certainly a must! Benjamin has cleaned the database from spam and installed a few filters. So, comments are back (however, anonymous postings are off, so you bastards need to show your real faces :) Let's see how the battle between spammers and ludology.org goes.

Jobs @ Michigan State

Nope, I am not talking about Steve Jobs. I am talking about 2 opening positions at the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. And guess what? The call mentions a few magic words, including "entertainment", "game design" and "presence in virtual environments" (which can easily mean EQ, UO or similar). Get those resumés ready! Oh, the link. I guess you need the link. Well, here it is.

Google Scholar

Thanks T.L. Taylor for this piece of info. Now academics can google publications through Google Scholar. The url: http://scholar.google.com. Happy searching!

Difficult Answers

Simple questions, difficult answers and the other way around. The answers that you were looking for now have book form. Multiple gamers, scholars, designers, and two trained bonobo monkeys have contributed to Public Beta's project, "Difficult Questions about Videogames". I also love the fact that they spell "videogames" rather than "video games" (an essential distinction, I may say). Enough nonsense, go ahead and BUY THE BOOK. Disclaimer: One of the bonobo monkeys filled in some of my answers. However, the little creature was not harmed at all. Well, sort of. Ok, you don't want to know, it's a story that's way too sad. BUY THE BOOK. It has ANSWERS in it. Everybody can use some answers nowadays, right?

The singing game

The NYTimes (free reg. req) publishes an article about music artists launching their songs in videogames. The trend has been evolving recently and seems that will be getting bigger and bigger. Does anybody out there still remembers 1984's Give my regards to Broad Street". It was a terrible game (one was supposed to look for Paul McCartney's tapes around the city, if I am not wrong). Of course, the music was awful (and not just because the ZX's tiny speaker and music capabilities). But I got a blast from the past while reading about EA and the music industry and for some reason I wanted to post about that old game.

CFP: Playing the Past

The good folks from Academic Gamers at the University of Florida are organizing a conference on computer games and electronic literature. The deadline is January 1st and the conference website is here. Keep in mind that Florida is a red state, so there are more chances that you'll run into Bushists than in, say, New York. But an University should be a safe haven, specially when the conference deals with nostalgia of better, past, times. Last, but not least, Mary Flanagan and Ian Bogost are the keynote speakers, so that may be tempting enough for foreigners to dare to visit the States.

New York University - Part Time Faculty

(via theredproject.com) SCHOOL OF CONTINUING AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES - The McGhee Division is seeking faculty with a Masterís degree andrprofessional experience plus three years teaching experience in the following areas: 3D Animation, Game Design, Sound Design, Web Design, Special Effects/Compositing.

Grumpy Gamer

There are many ways to do good videogame criticism. Some involve writing complex articles in academese quoting cryptic authors. Others involve Flash animation. For those of you who have been living under a rock, two pieces of news. First, Bush got re-elected (well, technically he got elected for the first time). Second, check out Grumpy Gamer, from the true and only Ron Gilbert.

International Conference on Games

Game, Play, Freetime. The conference will be held on May 13-17, 2005 in Montevideo, Uruguay. I am not involved in the organization, but I know some of the people behind it and it should be really fun and interesting. The main language is Spanish, so you Spanish-readers may want to learn more about it here.

To laugh and not to laugh

"Perhaps the biggest reason that games aren't funny is the difficulty of integrating comedy into game play" says Stephen Totilo in Slate. The problem of humor in games is an old one and may be connected to the older question of games and narratives. Can games be comedy? Maybe that's not the good way to phrase the question. It's an interesting question, maybe not so much in the sense that it could help us creating funny games, but rather because by thinking about it, we can have a better idea of what we expect from games and how they work.