Ludology.org

Prehistoric toys

Every scary prehistoric beast should be made into a huggable toy, and I say it's the nautiloid's turn. I couldn't agree more. Whoever said that knitting was boring stuff, never saw these toys.

Jenkins does the blog thing

There's a new blogger in town: Henry Jenkins, from the MIT. He'll be soon launching a new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (coming this August). So far, he's been posting on fandom but videogames will probably arrive later, too. If you are looking for the smartest insights on Robot Chicken or Snakes on a Plane, you'd better bookmark this blog now.

Puzzles, unplugged

I must admit that the low price attracted my attention. I usually scan prices of videogames in stores, looking for a bargain. The PSP Sudoku game is, indeed, cheaper than other games. Still, my first reaction was to think: it should cost almost nothing. The development costs should be nothing compared to, say, Daxter. My second thought, almost immediatly was: probably everybody and their dog is buying this game. I don't know, I have no idea if Sudoku for the PSP has been a hit but considering by the amount of people that I see playing Sudoku EVERYWHERE it should be. All these people would not qualify themselves as gamers. Yet, many are hardcorely passionate about them.
rClive Thompson has a new article on New York magazine about Crosswords and Sudoku. My favorite quote:
r Sudoku is the complete antithesis of the crossword: You fill in a nine-by-nine grid with the numbers one through nine so that no digit repeats in any column or row—nor can there be any repeats in any of the nine three-by-three boxes that make up the whole grid. It may sound complicated, but you can play it even if you’re completely illiterate—hell, even if you’re innumerate, since Sudoku doesn’t even require math. It is the ultimate puzzle for a postliterate world.
rThe beauty of unplugged games. They bring us back to a time where things were easier, less complicated, right? Well, not really. Lego just laid off over a thousand employees because they are moving their manufacturing to Eastern Europe. The reason, according to the Houston Chronicle is "to remold itself in an era when kids prefer playing with electronic gadgets."
rPlugged in or unplugged, the most fascinating thing about games is that there are so many and they are so different, that is almost impossible to make generalizations. Of course, smarter people than me have said this before but, nonetheless, it is a remarkable truth.

The World Cup

Everybody breathes soccer nowadays. As time goes by, people keep their predictions, who's going to win, who's going to lose. For a game researcher, the World Cup is a very interesting moment to take a look at the diversity of reactions that supposedly the same game triggers among players and fans. There's a good article at the NYTimes today about how different nations deal with losing(free registration required.) It's worth reading -and I swear that I did not pick it up because it mentions Uruguay. Actually, the article concludes with a rather sad quote from a Uruguayan writer "When we Uruguayans suffer a humiliating defeat, we confirm that we are no more than a fiction in history, a mistake on the map, a bad joke of God or Devil." What he doesn't say is that a few days later we forget about it and beat the crap out of everybody at Winning Eleven. Or at least we try :)

MMO surveillance questionnaire

Chris Dodds from selectparks is conducting an investigation into surveillance within massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft and SecondLife. The questionnaire will take between 2 and 20 minutes to complete depending on how much information you're willing to supply. Click here for more information.

Japanese Monsters

Millenial Monsters: Japanese Monsters and the Global Imagination by Anne Allison. I browsed a few pages through Amazon's system (how frustrating! When will I be able to read full books online?) and I was hooked. The book is not out til mid July, but any with "Japanese" and "Monsters" on the title will certainly catch my attention. My only concern was to find many quotes from Deleuze and his sidekick Guattari, philosophers I do not believe in (yup, philosophy is a faith and by policy I don't believe in people that do not write for humans). Anyway, I am so buying this book!

History of videogame conventions

(via lapetiteclaudine.com) 1up.com has a nice article about the origins of such videogame conventions as the life bar, power-ups and character customization. It is always hard to pinpoint exactly the first game that did this or that, so I would not be surprised if some players contested a few examples. Still, it is an interesting and useful article, well worth reading on this hot Friday.

Women in Games Conference

Next month, on July 10th and 11th, at the University of Teeside. Early booking has been extended until June 20th, so there's still time. Speakers include the fabulous T.L. Taylor, among others.

"Pee" as in Play

I may need to start a new category called Pee Games...
rNature gave men a tendency for violence and stupidity. It also blessed us with a directional peeing appendix that has recently been exploited for playful goals. You may remember You Are in Control, the MIT peeing videogame. Now, it's the turn for Pee Soccer.

GAM3R 7H30RY by McKenzie Wark

Some posts are cursed. I have been trying to post a link to GAM3R 7H30RY for weeks now and, for various reasons, I never managed to. Maybe because today it's 666 and the world may end, I'll be able to finally post it. Btw, I am in Uruguay this week, so greetings from South America. More later. Got a cow to eat.