Ludology.org

Join the Enjmin

The National French School for Videogames (ENJMIN) is enrolling new students. The school is located in Angouleme, Southwest France (about 2:30 h train ride to Paris). I have been in residence there for a few months and I seriously recommend this place. They have a very hands-on approach without it being too technical and the results speak by themselves: many student projects are simply impressive. So, if you speak French and want to make games, this is the place to apply. Deadline is May 2nd.
rBtw, the ENJMIN is also hosting a series of conferences in mid-April, both live and videoconferences. The list of speakers is impressive, check it out.

gamelab on indie games

It is hard to find a better small studio than gamelab. There are very few in the whole world that combine technical quality with originality in their games. The fact is that things are changing at gamelab. If you go to their website, they tell you to stay tuned until summer. Zimmerman talks to Gamasutra about these changes as well as his company's new strategy to create, produce and sell games. He makes many interesting points and, more importantly, they are implementing them. It's a tricky market out there and nobody is going to change things for you. gamelab's Diner Dash was great, but Subway Scrumble was even better (elegant design, elegant graphics). However, it would seem that the former became a hit and the latter a flop. That is enough to make a designer feel bad but as Zimmerman puts it, the best thing about doing small games is that you can spread your risk and investment into several projects. The world is better because Subway Scramble exists, even if it was a flop. Any new business models that allow us to create more games, better games and still being able to pay the bills, is going to be very welcomed.

Wright on Wired

Will Wright is the invited editor of this month's Wired Magazine. You can read his editorial Dream Machines online (the rest of the articles will become available during the next weeks).

Escaping from Escapism

The Escapist's Mark Wallace publishes "The Play is the Thing", an article about the ludo/narra debate. Mark Barrett goes a bit too far by calling people on the debate "single players" and Andrew Stern reacts -with reason- by not liking to be called a wanker. Dismissing academics and research as masturbation is so 20th century. To be fair, Barrett does have a point that Espen, Jesper and myself do sound like politicians trying to evade the issue. I can only speak for myself: I spent too much time on this debate to realize that it never took place with the minimal requierements and probably never will. So, yes, I do sound like I am trying to move on because that's how I feel. That being said, I agree with Andrew that these issues are not going to go away and need to be further explored. However, rather than engaging in flaming wars, I would rather take the Mateas&Stern approach and do something about it (something as an actual game.) Btw, for the record, the list of people I want to be like when I grow up was edited (no hard feelings, journalists can't publish all). The original list included Brenda Laurel and Mateas&Stern, too.

I am a HUD hugger

Last month I posted about why I thought that Gamasutra's recent call for removing HUDs (as seen on King Kong) was a bad idea. Clive Thompson on Wired gives more reasons about why we need HUDs.

Shadow of Ico

Wired's Chris Kohler interviews Fumito Ueda about his colossal games.

With a little help from my strategy guide

The New York Times article includes the best description of a strategy guide (or walkthrough) that I ever heard: "It's like writing a travel guide to a place that doesn't exist". I must admit I only once bought a strategy guide and I can't recall now for what game it was. If I get stuck in a game, I go for an online walkthrough: faster and cheaper. I do understand, however, that people would buy these books even though the price is usually a bit high if you think what you already paid for the game (that being said, they are probably not the cheaper books to print, in full color and with glossy pages).
rThe article includes some references to the old discussion: is using a walkthrough cheating? I do not think it is. I like games to flow. I like challenges but if a puzzle is too hard, I blame the designer, not myself. Games need to flow. There is a maximum time that you can be stuck on a videogame before quitting in frustration. At that moment, you need all the help you need. Janet Murray once told a girl -maybe it was her daughter- who had to attend to a traditional school after having studied in a more alternative environment. The first time that a classmate showed signs of getting stuck on a test, she got up, sat next to him and started helping him. As far as I recall, the teacher yelled at her, because in traditional education every student is on his own and helping equals to cheating. I bet that teacher doesn't like strategy guides.

¡Viva el Mundo de Warcraft, cabrones!

WoW will be soon available En Español. The version, however, seems to be targeted to Spaniards (the Press Release speaks of "Spanish-speaking players in Europe"). That's sort of sad but understandable: the monthly fee is too high for Latin America, so it may sense that they cater to Spaniards. Btw, they also say that WoW reached 6 million players. I always try to be careful with figures, so I am not totally sure if that means that they sold 6 million copies or that they actually have 6 million guys and girls paying the monthly subscription (knowing how evil marketing people can be, my intuition is to go with the first scenario but I can be wrong).

GAME'ON-NA 2006

The 2nd annual North American Game-On Conference (GameOn'NA 2006) will take place on September 19-21 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, USA. Submission deadlines are JUNE 1- JUNE 15, 2006.