Ludology.org

Games in Prague

PEOPLE THAT PLAY DO NOT MAKE TROUBLE! - COMPUTER GAMES EXHIBITION AND CONFERENCE. This conference/art exhibition will take place in Prague, on May 9-12, as part of Entermultimedial2 event. Not really sure about the deadlines, since the website claims it is on Feb 15 but the email anouncement that I got says that it is Feb 28th (I assume it is the later).

Doom 3: the boardgame

While games switch genres all the time (after all, FIFA 2003 and the real game of soccer are quite different), it is always interesting to keep in mind that the same franchise can take different forms. Now's the turn of Doom 3, which has just been "remade" into a boardgame. The main reason for buying the game is that it does not require a fancy, expensive 3D card.

Barceloaned

I'll be in Barcelona this Friday and Saturday, bodyguarding Espen and Miguel at the Metanarrative(s) Symposium.

EA Days at USC

(via USC Media blog) "Announcing the EA@USC Lecture Series. This monthly event brings top designers, engineers, and executives from Electronic Arts offices around the world to the USC campus. The first event is Wednesday January 26 from 1-5 pm at USC's Bing Theater". Here's the temporary website with info.

GTASA review

Game Brains has a GTA San Andreas review as a "masterpiece of mainstream political art". To be sincere, I haven't played GTA San Andreas (still catching up with HL2). I only watched people playing for about half an hour and the impression that I got was that it was huge (MMOG huge... and desolated). But it is top on my list after I help my buddy Freeman to battle nasty polygons. And after reading Chris Lavigne's review, I may work extra hours on HL2 so I can move on to sunny San Andreas.

Innovative Game Design

One day symposium at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, Netherlands). 18 February, 2005. Speakers include Chris Crawford, Ian Bogost and Celia Pearce. The event's website is playful and surprisingly effective.

2 CFPs 2

2 CFPs. One is for a panel on games to be held at (dis)junctions: theory reloaded at the University of California Riverside’s 12th Annual Humanities Graduate Conference on April 8-9, 2005.
rThe other is for the fibreculture journal on Game Networks (I got the CFP by email but couldn't find it on the website). The guest editors are Chris Cesher and Julian Kuecklich (250 word abstracts due on March 1, 2005). Update: CFP is here.
rThanks Tom!

Tom and his Phd

Tom is writing his PhD and he is definitively going for a world record of blog post lenght. Not that long is bad, not at all. The last post is about gaming in Venezuela and has some very interesting data (like that there was a Mazinger Z political game about the Venezuelan anti-Chavez referendum!). I assume that all the articles posted are Tom's, but it'll be better to get more details. Anyway, meanwhile, happy reading.

Call for Submissions: PoV

Along with the Digra conference, there will be an exhibit of independent, experimental videogames. You can submit your work until February 15th. Here's the call.

The playful bomb

You may not like the military. They spend their spare time using cluster bombs to kill children, torturing people (or is it just cheerleading?). Maybe you are old enough to remember Agent 86's Nude Bomb. Now the BBC report that the US military considered building a gay bomb that would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other. Ok, it's not April Fools and I try not to trust the media. But even if the story is a fake, I find the idea fantastic. Just imagine all those soldiers having compulsive sex with each other. Looks to me like a derranged Maxis game. Too bad the bomb was never made, it'd be fantastic to drop it over certain religious right environments.