Ludology.org

Wright: Sims as time travel

If you don't believe in Santa, well, here's something for you to reconsider it: 4 minutes of Will Wright's talk at Stanford a couple of weeks ago. As usual it's fast-paced and packed with interesting insights. A must-see.

Feliz Navidad (con dinosaurios!)

There is only one thing that is really wrong with the holidays and it is the total lack of references to dinosaurs on the Christmas mythology. Sure, we have babies, wise men, Santa Claus and such, but where are the freakin' dinos? Well, we worked with the Powerful Robot team on this Christmas Postcard to fix this very troubling issue. Oh, we also have a Spanish and French version of it (yes, we are THAT international! :)
rMerry Christmas for all of you! Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. I sincerely hope that Santa brings you Mario Kart DS (so I can kick your asses online. Well, maybe not. I sort of suck at 150cc. But I still enjoy it a lot!)

The secret life of toys

It's about to be Christmas again. I realized that last weekend, when I was in Paris watching the animated Christmas decorations at the department stores. Tres nice, indeed. Just in case you want to spice up your Christmas spirit with some economics, you can take a look at the nice gallery set up by the BBC. It follows the production of a racing toy car. Spoiler: yup, they are made in China.

Academics just wanna have fun

Who said academic life was boring. Ugh, me? Well, it is not anymore. Well, at least it is not if you are at MIT, where students turned a building into a Super Mario Bros. level. Worth taking a look at the pics (via Kotaku).

CFP: Mediaterra (Updated)

The info for the Mediaterra festival has been updated. It will now take place in Greece from September 27 to October 1st, 2006. Deadline for submissiones is March 24th (and not April 28th as I previously wrote). Here's the full CFP and here's a link to the festival's website.

CFP: Machinima reader

A call is open for a book on Machinima, edited by Henry Lowood and Michael Nistche. You can have access to the CFP here.

Game Research made in Spain

"Made in Spain" was the name of a short-lived Spanish game development company (I have very fond memories of their Sir Fred for the ZX Spectrum.) Anyway, this post has nothing to do with that company :) I just got hold of a few links of people doing game research in Spain and thought that some of you might be interested. The links are in Spanish. Grupo CCV y Alfonso Boullón.

Nintendogging and virtual dog humping

It's the oldest trick in the book. Single guy buys lovely puppy. Singly guy walks lovely puppy. Lovely puppy grabs attention from girls (single or married, it doesn't matter). Single guy gets laid thanks to his furry friend. Well, maybe it doesn't always work like that. In any case, L.A. Weekly reports about Nintendogging, a U.K.-based site where supposedly singles arrange to meet and play with their virtual puppies. We all know that the people from the islands are, well, a tad particular on their sexual behaviors (note: I am in France as I write this, so I have no choice but mocking the Brits or I'll experience the wrath of the French.) The article may have some typos on how to rightly spell Tamagotchi but delivers a very interesting point on its last paragraphs: the cuteness of Nintendogs may also be its main limitation. The game features no poop, no dogs in heat and not rabid puppies bitting the hands that feed them. The reference of the "hot biscuit mod" hoax confirms this: if you are selling virtual dolls for grown-ups, well, grown-ups may expect playability that is tuned to their grown-up expectations. Certainly not everybody lives in liberal Scandinavia (even though I must admit that the scandinavian liberalism is, well, highly exagerated). Still, the Danish radio and tv launched Hundeparken a few years ago (see illustration), a MMOG where children (as in "younger than 10 years old") can control their dog avatars. And guess what? Not only they poop but they also hump frenetically. I seriously doubt that the Danish and Swedish youth will have their moral future ruined because of this game. Dogs do poop and they do have sex. Don't get me wrong, I love Nintendogs and it's perfectly fine like it is. But we shouldn't dismiss realism in games just because we are a bit prude. If Danish kids can do it, why can't we all deal with it.

A star is born or Mr Ebert's trip to Sunset Boulevard

The Roger Ebert event is becoming quite old but since I have been on the road for a while I just have time now to write about it. Mr Ebert is a very popular film critic in the United States. He recently said that games are never going to be as compelling as films. Of course, Mr Ebert may know a lot about film but he probably knows very little about games. In any case, the case here is not making fun of a respectable old guy for dismissing videogames (that's too easy and too silly). Neither we should take this personal and turn this into a war between games and films. The interesting thing here is that Mr Ebert -or any major media critic for that- feels the urge to publicly voice his opinion about games. I mean, he probably had that opinion for a while but he never published it. Videogames have been around for decades but "old" media folks simply ignored them. Mr Ebert has a big share of power in the US and the entertainment industry. As a very famous critic of the most popular and socially recognized entertainment medium, he draws his power from the power of movies. Mr Ebert probably felt, for the first time in his life, that this power is not going to last forever and, in that sense, videogames are becoming a threat to him on a personal level. Of course, films are going to be around for a long long time - probably much longer that Mr Ebert himself. Cultural trends come and go - the age of radio led to the age of television but both media coexisted, coexist and will coexist quite well. The really important thing here is not what Ebert may have said but the fact that his opinion unveiled: videogames are becoming really important on a cultural level and that importance is so big that it cannot longer be ignored. Was it Gandhi that said -and I am quoting from memory, sorry, there's no Google on my SAS flight- "they first ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they insult you, then they fight you and then you win"? In any case, it was something like that. This Sunday morning I fired up Firefox and went through the New York Times web site. There was an article about videogames on the Technology section. This is not surprising now. However, I still smile a bit every time I find articles about games on mainstream media. It's sort of an inside joke. The fact is that I have been posting on this blog for about four years now. As you know, most of my posts are links to articles. Well, there was a time -and I am talking about a matter of 10 to 15 months here, not years- where articles about games only blessed the pages of mainstream media every couple of weeks. Now, I would be surprised if there is a day when I cannot find one. My job as a blogger has switched in the last year from link hunting into link filtering: the number of articles does not stop to increase.rShould we be happy about Ebert's anger and videogames becoming trendy. Well, as gamers of course we should: it is nice that more people share our passion. Of course, if the trend becomes permament then it will become invisible-nothing is permanent but what I mean is that videogames could become part of human culture in the same way that music and literature are. Whatever happens it will be exciting and we should be happy to be alive and experience it first-hand. Nothing is written in stone, except for one thing. In 50, 100 or 200 years a respected videogame critic will publicly disregard the newest cultural form. At that point, she will have to learn to share her toys with the newcomers. And life will go on.