Ludology.org

Toy Washing Machine ca. 1960

I bought this toy washing machine at the flea market a few weeks ago. It's made from tin and a few plastic parts (including a rubber hose). Its clockwork mechanism is still fully functional and it looks like kids could pour water inside it (I haven't dared to do it yet).
My guess is that it was made during the 60s but that is a wild guess (I'm still a total noob when it comes to dating old toys). What makes me think about this date is the combination of hard plastic and tin (plastic was not so common in 50s toys, at least in the region, as far as I understand). There is no external brand or indication of origin.
As it was common with tin toys, kids could get easily get hurt if they were not careful enough (actually, from a Darwinian sense, non-kidproof toys seem like a good idea :) As you can see in this picture, rust has created some scary edges on the back of the toy. However, the overall construction of the washing machine seems to have been pretty safe at the time. It's also a very solid make (otherwise it wouldn't have survived half a century).
Here's a little video so you get an idea of how it works. Actually, it has the same functionality of current toy washing machines made of plastic.

Barbie Hacking + Toys as Photography

For ages, girls have made their own clothing for their dolls. Massified dolls (read Barbie, Bratz, etc) generally use a razors and blades marketing strategy: sell the doll for a decent price and then make money with the accesories. Think of these as videogame expansion packs: cheaper to produce, easy to market because they draw on the brand's success and very lucrative. I took this picture today at Montevideo's flea market: they were selling dozens of knitted little costumes for Barbies (actually, the dolls on display were knock-offs. Barbies are way too expensive for the local standards).

By the way, you'll notice that I've become VERY interested in toys lately. Actually, my dissertation extensively deals with them. Certainly, unplugged games are a great way to learn game design, I don't contest that. However, good toys are even more elegant because they need to summarize one topic or one idea into a very simple system. If games are films, then toys are photos: a snapshot of play design.

ISEA 2008 Conference

ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Arts ) 2008's call for papers is out! The conference will be held in Singapore between 25th – 30th July 2008. I'll be co-chairing the Ludic Interfaces symposium and we're working hard so it turns out to be a very fun experience for everybody. So, go ahead and submit your work. Deadline is August 31st. And even if you don't submit, make sure you check out the conference's website.

Back into the game!

Yeah! I'm back online. After many long months of silence, Ludology.org is back online with a new website. Many things have happened since my last post. I submitted my PhD dissertation (I'll be defending it end of August); Powerful Robot's new game for Cartoon Network reached over 13 million accounts; and I moved back to Uruguay to work on my game studio.
As you'll notice, I moved to a different blogging platform. I was unhappy with the previous one, particularly with the way it dealt with spam, so here we are. The main issue that I still need to resolve is to import back my previous post database into this system (any SQL volunteer out there?) but I figured that it was better to post back than to wait forever.
As of January 2007, I am not affiliated with any University so I'm technically not an academic anymore. My plan is to focus on Powerful Robot but I don't discard giving some lectures or courses here and then. I'm really happy to be back home, there's plenty to do in the studio and we have some really cool projects coming up.
So, enjoy the new blog. It's great to be back into the game after so many months of silence!