The
Other Players Conference is happening right now here at ITU. About a hundred people from all over the world (literally) showed up at the IT University of Copenhagen for this three day conference organized by Miguel Sicart and Jonas Smith. The conference programme is as good as it gets, specially on its structure: single-track presentations with 20 minutes for Q&A. Jesper Juul and Eric Zimmerman created a very compelling "Moderately Multiplayer Other Players Game", which involves several guilds including Theorists, Griefers, Socializers and Designers, among others.
rThe conference started with a few words from Espen Aarseth, who welcomed everybody to the new ITU building and encouraged attendants to interact with the Center for Computer Games Research's 14 researchers in order to realize the diversity of opinions and takes on games that are located under one roof. In other words, he claimed, there is no such thing as a single school of thought in our Center, a fact with which I totally agree. Aarseth was followed by Ian Bogost from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who focused on
asynchronous multiplayer games, followed by Richard Bartle's presentation on how
newbies are shaping MMOGs design. Mirjam Eladhari & Craig Lindley
discussed Interactive Narrative and not even one question on the Q&A questioned their approach, a fact that clearly shows that the so-called ludology versus narrativism debate it's so unfashionable nowadays. That's about it so far, I'll try to report a bit more later.
rFor those who want a more in-depth look at these presentations, you can read the
full papers.
