Ludology.org

CFP: GDC Europe

The GDC Europe website is finally available, as well as its call for presentations. The format, however, has changed. Now both presentations and panels are 60 minutes long. Deadline is July 15th.

Every Videogame

Want to play (almost) every (classic) videogame? Well, tons of games available at Everyvideogame.com, emulated in Java, right on your browser. A good research tool.

Paris

I won't make it to Vancouver next week, I'll be in Paris instead for a couple of days on a trip related to a new game I am currently working on. I'll need to work a bit on my French skills. After years of writing, reading and thinking in English, it usually takes me a few days until I regain confidence in the language. It's funny, because even though I can, say, watch films in English and such, I do feel that my brain works a little bit more that when listening to French. The fact is that I learnt French as a kid, while growing up, so it's a far more natural language to me, even though it's becoming a bit rusty for lack of use.

More videos! Now it's IGDA's Quality of Life

It's video season. After the Spore and Georgia Tech videos, now it's the turn to the IGDA Quality of Life panel videos. Why is QoL so important you may ask? Well, let's simply say that making games should be a fun activity and not something that you'll end up hating after months of crunch. The IGDA folks are very concerned -as we should all be- about this, so they put together this panel for you to watch. All videos are free but in order to watch the keynote, you need to be a registered member of the IGDA (via Jason's Reality Panic)

Non trivial interaction

Games about films, films about games. If you are in London on July 9-10, you may want to visit the British Film Institute and listen to speakers such as Iain Simmons, Peter Molyneux and James Newman taking about games on films and films on games (thanks to Matteo for this one). Talking about films, Anne Bancroft died today :(

Redefining the Power of the Gamer

The New York Times (free registration required) publishes a story about games and interactive drama, featuring Mateas&Stern "Facade", as well as quoting people like Will Wright, Doug Church and Chris Crawford. Congrats to Michael and Andrew for this well-deserved attention on their uber-cool project!

The answer is smaller

Miyamoto makes a good point: small is good. Me too, I have been playing portable console games for many months now rather than PC and consoles (with some exceptions, of course). At the beginning, I thought it was my bias as a webgame developer but later I noticed that it was not a matter of lacking time for committing to a long console game: I just don't care anymore. With the exception of GTA and The Sims, I feel like I have played all the recent games, including the ones that haven't been launched yet. Small games mean variety, means taking risks but also rediscovering old-school genres that were proven to be fun but were dismissed because they could not be blown into 16 hour experiences. Read Miyamoto's opinions at CNN Money, via Kotaku (of course).

Sim Videos at Georgia Tech

I finally got some free time to watch Will Wright's keynote at Georgia Tech, when he was given an award a few months ago. The topic of his presentation is Virtual Communities and, as usually, it's highly entertaining (no news on Spore here, though). Other speakers include Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Office from EA, as well as many other presentations from my friends at Georgia Tech.

Shelving like a tetris

Tetris bookcases and shelves. They look good, they seem functional and they would look great in our homes (ok, they are a bit too expensive, but if you know a carpenter maybe it's not rocket science to build lookalikes). Blog rules state that I should end this post with a punchline, but it's Friday night so I'll do it algorithmically: "Now, if they only made [insert game title here] [insert furniture name here] !!!(Thanks to Sofía for this one!)

CFP: Future Play 2005

C - F - P. Deadline is July 8. The conference is called Future Play 2005. And it takes place on October 13-15 at Michigan State University.
rMichigan, in addition to be the name of a US State, is also the name of a street in the Uruguayan neighbourhood of Malvín (vieja barriada sin fín). There was also a restaurant in Michigan Street called Bar Michigan (good place for pizzas). I bet you didn't know that! Well, if you come over here thirsty for juicy CFPs such as this one, the least I can do is fill up your head with Uruguayan trivia. If I didn't do it, who would? See? Now, someday in the future -actually some night- you'll dream of Bar Michigan. Actually, you will dream about it on July 7th, the night before the deadline. Procastinator!