Sims Beatles "Get Back" machinima from Mario Gerosa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3XxekJiq6M

Sims Beatles "Eleanor Rigby" machinima from Mario Gerosa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zgooIM5Qls

Second Life - Group notice: Continuano le lezioni su UniTo

Group Notice From: Enrico83 Rossini

http://www.secondlife.com

Lunedi' 15 dicembre 2008, dalle ore 10.00 alle 12.00, lezione in diretta streaming.

Sara' possibile assistere alla lezione "TECNOLOGIE DELL'ISTRUZIONE E DELL'APPRENDIMENTO" con la prof.ssa BARBARA BRUSCHI, docente di Scienze della Formazione presso l'Universita' di Torino.

La lezione, sara' trasmessa in DIRETTA STREAMING dalle 10.00 alle 12.00 presso l'Aula magna virtuale di Scienze della Formazione

OGNI LUNEDI' FINO ALLA FINO ALLA FINE DEL SEMESTRE.

From Facebook: VolaVola/Fly Me (Machinima)

VolaVola/Fly Me – the Movie

a new feature film from Berardo Carboni 

Facebook Group dedicated to the project:

[ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23259983755 ]

"VolaVola/Fly Me" is a new feature machinima by the Italian director Berardo Carboni (Shooting Silvio - now distributed by 20th Century Fox ). 

The project is currently in production in the virtual world of Second Life. 

VolaVola is a project for the making of 2 movies from the same script, a first draft in progress is shot entirely inside Second Life with the innovative technique of machinima and will be an animation movie; the other will be made mostly in the real world with traditional technologies and players in flesh and bones. The animated version will not only be the extraordinary storyboard of the movie but will have its own dignity, the two projects will be indeed strictly connected.

.

Volavola is about the relationship between man, happiness and time, it’s about emotions getting weak and the need not to get lost in habits, the need to keep searching, it’s also about the natural decline of love and the need to protect it, to keep it alive.

VolaVola investigates how it gets more and more difficult to determine what is real and what is fake. In the two movies indeed we will find at the same time real avatars and real people will act just acting themselves and fantasy characters.

Volavola’s main them is the values of digital society as an important human heritage analysing it from a sociological (although vaguely surreal) point of you, and not from a futuristic one, and considering them as one of the few things to protect in order to make the world a better place to live. 

Volavola takes place in the real world, in Rome, where, as everywhere now, more and more often it happens to bump into places and people from another universe.

The second movie, shot thorugh machinima and where avatars act, is intended for niche but popular on a global scale, it will be broadcasted in Second Life cinemas, in streaming on the Internet, as attachment of new technologies and new trends magazines and TV channels with compatible contents. 

The movie shot with actors in flesh and bones and traditional technology is intended for a wider audience and is designed to follow a classic distribution route.

See:

www.volavo.la

www.myspace/mysecondfilm

SYNOPSIS

Volavola is a choral story which tries to describe the different aspects of contemporary life by comparing lifestyles, feelings and world views of three different generations. 

As the story goes on, the main characters’ events, apparently unrelated at first, link so much with each other to eventually belong to the same family. The three main stories are about Ugo and Francesca, Annalisa and Carlo and Matteo and Sofia. 

Ugo and Francesca grew up into a world which seems so far away now, where media used to have no central role in consciences growth and the definition of needs; they live present life but they are deeply confused, filled with a deep sense of nostalgia; they keep looking for a new balance and a new harmony. But they might be lost forever. 

Annalisa and Carlo grew into the showbiz and they need to be part of it, to be good-looking and famous forever as in soap operas. Annalisa is a well-known journalist; she is not so young any longer and cannot accept the idea of time going by, leaving evident marks on her body. Carlo is younger than her, but he is not famous yet. Carlo and Annalisa need each other but misunderstandings, their selfishness and their craving for success drag their story in a growing spiral of madness. 

Matteo and Sofia are growing now, in the Internet era, they feel distant from the models of the past; they express their identity through new instruments; their future is hopeful and uncertain at the same time: it is difficult for them to sort their dreams without models and reference points. Their story remains suspended in a dreamlike atmosphere, culminating in a no longer linear time and space, as it always happens in dreams, myths and in pure happiness moments.

IEEE Spectrum Tech Alert - 20 November 2008

facebook Patrick Coppock 12:57pm Dec 10th IEEE Spectrum Tech Alert - 20 November 2008   Patrick has shared a link with you. To view it or to reply to the message, follow this link: http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/ieeesta/issues/2008-11-20.html Are your friends bothering you? You can opt out of emails from friends on Facebook.

IHT.com Article: Visualisation. New tools to help with information overload

New tools to help with information overload

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/08/arts/design8.php

By Alice Rawsthorn International Herald Tribune

Monday, December 8, 2008

Image Slide Show: http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2008/12/05/arts/design8.1.php

What would tell you more about a city? A geographic map that identifies the buildings, roads, rivers and so on? Or one that gauges how people feel about the city by recording their emotional responses as they move around it?

No contest. The second map would say much, much more about what it's like to be there, which is why the British designer, Christian Nold, has devised a series of Emotion Maps of San Francisco, Paris and other cities. For the San Francisco version, he combined the finger cuff sensors used in police polygraph tests with a global positioning system to monitor the instinctive responses of 98 people as they walked around the Mission District. His guinea pigs then explained why they'd felt happy, sad, angry or whatever in various places, and if their reaction was triggered by something they'd just seen, or memories of past experiences.

Nold's Emotion Maps are examples of the design process known as visualization, which uses advanced software to illustrate complicated data so that we (that's the 99.99 percent of us without doctorates in applied mathematics) can understand it. Visualization comes in the form of still images, moving ones and three-dimensional models that depict elusive, often abstract phenomena such as the movement of Internet traffic, scientific theories or a city's emotional landscape. If you spot an elaborate information graphic in a newspaper or magazine, that may well be an example of visualization too. At a time when we are bombarded with more and more information of increasing complexity, visualization, or "viz" as it's called for short, is fast becoming one of the most exciting areas of design.

Visualization was a key theme of Design and the Elastic Mind, the landmark exhibition on the relationship of design with science and technology held earlier this year at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is also featured in "Data Flow," a new book published by Gestalten, and the "Native Land, Stop Eject" show now on at Fondation Cartier in Paris. In that exhibition, the philosopher Paul Virilio and the filmmaker Raymond Depardon explore the tragedy of enforced emigration. They collaborated with a team of visualizers led by the U.S. architecture group, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, to create stunning visual analyses of its causes and impact on different communities

There's one simple reason why visualization is becoming so important, and that's our desire to understand what's happening in the world at a time when it's becoming harder and harder to do so. "Design always moves where it is needed most," said Paola Antonelli, curator of Design and the Elastic Mind, who is now working on a major visualization project. "The surge in computing power has generated a surge in information output, and heated up interest in visualization design."

Helping us to decipher information has always been an important role for design. Some of the greatest design projects of the 20th century did exactly that: from the diagrammatic London Underground map designed by Harry Beck in 1931 to enable passengers to find their way around an over-crowded transport system, to the cyclogram, a visual diary produced by Georgi Grechko of the 90-day flight of the Soviet Salyut 6 spacecraft in 1979.

The challenge of presenting information clearly has become more difficult as the volume of data has exploded, and new types have emerged. Traditional design formulas, like graphs and pie charts are fine for interpreting facts, but not for illustrating the complexities of contemporary life such as population shifts or the structure of an online social network. A new type of imagery was needed to depict their subtleties and fluidity. Cue visualization.

Producing visualization required the development of new tools capable of analyzing huge quantities of complex data, and interpreting it visually. In the forefront is Processing, a software system devised by the American designers, Ben Fry and Casey Reas, to enable computer programmers to create visual images, and designers to get to grips with programming. "Processing is a bridge between those fields," said Reas. "Designers feel comfortable with it because it enables them to work visually, yet it also feels familiar to programmers."

The original version of Processing has been used by tens of thousands of people to create everything from teaching aids for schools to animations for bands like R.E.M. and Radiohead. The number of people using it has doubled every year for the last three years, and seems set to increase again following the launch last month of a more sophisticated version, Processing 1.0.

Processing and other types of visualization software also encourage people from different disciplines to work together, at a time when collaboration is increasingly important in creative fields like design. "Visualization is not simply an evolution of graphic design, but a complete and complex design form that requires spatial, narrative, synthetic and graphic sensitivity and expertise," explained Antonelli. "That's why we see so many practitioners - architects, product designers, filmmakers, statisticians and graphic designers - flocking to it."

They've also flocked because of the explosion of demand for visualized imagery. The chief catalyst has been the Internet and the emergence of thousands of Web sites dedicated to crunching and decoding information. Seeing visualization online has made the rest of us more receptive to its use in newspapers and magazines. At the same time, our exposure to the Internet, video games and the arsenal of visual imagery that bombards us each day has made us more visually sophisticated, and keener to decipher complicated information visually, rather than in words or numbers.

Take a scientific question like the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees. Would you prefer to plough through an essay on the subject, or to glance at the visualization created by Fry in which the 75,000 letters of coding in the human genome form a photographic image of a chimp's head? Virtually all of our genetic information is identical, and Fry highlights the discrepancies by depicting nine of the letters as red dots. No contest again.

CfP: World of Warcraft and Philosophy

Title: World of Warcraft and Philosophy

Editors: Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger

[http://www.neo-philosophy.com/WoW%20CFP.html]

Abstracts are sought for a collection of philosophical essays related to World of Warcraft (WoW). While the focus of the book will be WoW, we would like to extend the possible themes covered to other MMORPG games in general such as Everquest, Ultima Online, Lineage, Runescape, etc.

This volume will be published by Open Court Publishing (the publisher of The Simpsons and Philosophy, The Matrix and Philosophy, and The Undead and Philosophy, etc.) as part of their successful Popular Culture and Philosophy series. Recently, Open Court published The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy, edited by one of the current editors. We are seeking abstracts, but anyone who has already written an unpublished paper on this topic may submit it in its entirety. Potential contributors may want to examine other volumes in the Open Court series.
Please feel free to forward this to anyone writing within a philosophic (or philosophically-inclined) discipline who might be interested in contributing.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):

Questing and Friendship
Guilds and Community
Meeting game play friends in real life
Identity Creation (via avatar)
Gender/Sexist Roles
Why do classes matter?
Regional Contrasts (Chinese vs. US experiences)
Politics: Alliance vs. Horde (“us” vs. “them”)
The learning of virtual skills and abilities
Economic/monetary system
Gold Farming and Other Revenue Pursuits
Ethical issues (e.g., should honor be measured in points?)
Emergent gameplay
Emerging Dialects
Resurrection
The power of game addiction
Levels of Freedom
Is there really a difference between the real world and Azeroth?
Security and privacy
WoW and Creativity: music, fan art, virtual community
Cultural Influences and Crossover (South Park, Watch the Guild)
Contributor Guidelines:

Abstract of paper (100–750 words)
Resume/CV for each author/coauthor of the paper
Submissions must be by e-mail with MS Word attachment
Submission Deadline: Currently open until January 5th, 2009 (our initial decisions will be made around this date, with papers received afterwards being considered on an as-needed basis).

Email Submissions to:
lcuddy12@gmail.com
johnnord@microsoft.com

CfP International Film Studies Conference, Udine, 23-26 March, 2009: "In The Very Beginning and At The Very End" - which is, for now, video games ...

Hi All,

It is indeed very late indeed to be sending you this CfP, since the deadline for paper proposals (max. one page, plus CV) is tomorrow (November 8th) but I only heard abut it myself this morning, thanks to Dario Compagno, Siena ...

Seems highly relevant for game philosophers/researchers and for others interested in interactive media in general...

I cite below from the conference website:

http://www.damsweb.it/udineconference/XVI%20Udine%20Conference.html

Please circulate (or delete..) as you see fit...

All best for now

Patrick

----- start citation -----

"Thanks to the support of scholars from different countries, we have recently created the Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theories. The purpose of this initiative is to promote the study of film theory in different cultural and geographical contexts.
 
In cooperation with the Seminar, the International Film Studies Conference (Udine, 23-26 March, 2009) will be about the theme: In The Very Beginning and At The Very End. The goal is to study how, on one hand, early cinema was defined and framed among the artistic and cultural phenomena of its times; on the other, we shall interrogate its contemporary transformations under the impulse of the digital revolution, namely cinema's links with personal computers and cellular telephones.
 
This parallel approach will enables us to focus on two completely different periods which are one hundred years apart. Thus, we hope to understand how the cinema responds to the needs of specific periods, by producing, at the very same time, out-of-synch responses to its own context.
 
This Call For Papers encourages proposals which deals with developments internal to the cinema; proposals which evaluate the impact of film theory as a discourse which goes along with, but sometimes shapes film-making; proposals which interrogate the status of the cinema as a medium by comparing it with discourses dealing with the category of art; and finally proposals are welcome as far the cinema's dialogue and tension with the most recent developments in new media from internet to video-games.
 
Leonardo Quaresima, Università di Udine
Director of Udine International Film Studies Conference
 
Jane Gaines, Columbia University/Duke University
Francesco Casetti, Università Cattolica, Milan
Coodinators of the Permanent Seminar on History of Film Theories

 
Proposals have to be sent by November 8, 2008, to:
 
francesco.casetti@unicatt.it
jmg2196@columbia.edu
udineconference@gmail.com
 
Length for paper proposal: 1 page max.

A short CV (1 page max.) should be sent together with the paper proposal.

----- end citation -----

The Sandbox: Gaming's New Golden Age

Gaming's New Golden Age

Link to original post:

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2008/10/gamings_new_golden_age.htm

---

Mark Ollila has a notable blog over at Edge about the rise of mobile gaming. According to a recent report, games for phones and handhelds are predicted to hit $4 billion by 2012 - despite the fact that just 5% of us have played such titles. Want context? That means mobile titles will reach roughly 25% the size of the existing U.S. game market.

As I've been chattering about in recent months, I see this is the dawn of a new golden age in gaming. Mobile devices and online services, like Xbox Live Arcade, are providing both a new platform and market for independent developers. It reminds me of the homebrew heyday for self-published PC games in the early 90s (which of course followed the homebrew heyday of Apple II and C64 games). Many of our most influential game developers - id, Epic, Bungie, Maxis - came from that start-up scene. Who's next?

Posted by David Kushner on October 22, 2008

CfP: DiGRA 2009 - Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

DiGRA 2009 - Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

[http://www.digra.org/news/archive/2008/10/02/cfp-digra-2009-breaking-new-ground-innovation-in-games-play-practice-and-theory]

Brunel University, West London, United Kingdom, Tuesday 1st September -- Friday 4th September 2009

The South of Britain Consortium are pleased to announce the first Call for Papers for the Digital Games Research Association 2009. DiGRA is an organisation that embraces all aspects of game studies, and the conference aims to provide a diverse platform for discussion, and a lively forum for debate. We therefore welcome papers from any discipline focused on any aspect of games, play, game culture and the games industry. The conference will be the fourth DiGRA conference, following Utrecht, Vancouver and Tokyo, and welcomes contributions from scholars working in any area of interest to the association. The official business of the Subject Association will also be conducted at the conference.

The Conference invites the following proposals for consideration:

Individual or Collaborative Papers

Panels

Workshops

Posters

Graduate Student Roundtable Papers

Initial selection will be through the peer review of abstracts of 500-700 words in all categories. Panel and Workshop proposals should include abstracts for the contributions of all participants.

Individual or collaborative papers – addressing topics relevant to the wide remit of DiGRA (including therefore industry, education, political, social, theoretical concerns appropriate to the association). Presentations should be limited to 15-20 mins.

Panel proposals – 3 – 4 papers which address a common theme, a common research method, a shared conceptual issue etc.

Workshops – proposals are invited for 2 – 3 hour workshops that address a range of themes relevant to the aims of the association. Workshops that are particularly targeted at a wide audience are most welcome.

Poster sessions – presentations of work in progress in the format are most welcome and will be showcased throughout the event.

The conference committee are also interested in including featured symposia/colloquia to address particular ‘late-breaking’ research projects or issue-based topics (an example might be a colloquia based around Wii research or a symposium based around Women in Games). Please contact a member of the conference organising committee with any expressions of interest.

Graduate student participation

In order to support graduate students and early career researchers the conference will focus on graduate student issues on its

opening day, 1st September 2009. We therefore ask for volunteers for mentoring sessions from established academics. For those graduate students whose research is at an early stage, and who wish to work with mentors, we invite work in progress proposals for presentations at mentor roundtables. Such roundtable participation, however, should in no way be seen as preventing graduate students putting in abstracts for other forms of participation.

Strands

Please also indicate your preference for consideration in one of the following broad strands:

Games Culture

Games and Commerce

Games Aesthetics

Games Technology

Games Education

Games Design

Games and Public Policy

Games and Theory

Key Dates

Deadline for all abstracts and workshop/panel/symposia proposals: Friday 17 April 5pm GMT

Deadline for full papers for inclusion in digital proceedings: Friday 26 June 2009 5pm GMT

Notification of abstract acceptance: June 1 2009

Conference Dates: 1-4th September 2009

Abstracts should be of 500-700 words and include an additional indicative bibliography. Full paper submissions may be of up to 6,000 words. Full details of the submissions procedure, including the method of electronic submission, will be published here and on other forums as soon as possible.

All contributions must be original, unpublished work. The conference language is English, and papers, abstracts and other proposals should be written in English.

Delegates are also advised that individuals will be limited to one paper presentation and one other form of presentation to allow space and time for the largest number of participants.

About the Conference Location

Brunel University is located conveniently near Heathrow Airport and is on the London Tube system. A range of affordable accommodation is available on campus, including 1500 en suite rooms all on one campus, 400 standard bedrooms, 8 holiday flats (5-7 persons per flat), 51 specially adapted rooms for people with disabilities, plus hotel standard rooms in the Lancaster Suite. The Brunel Conference Centre boasts 22 theatres, 29 classrooms and 5 seminar rooms all presented to the highest standard. The following are also available: Free car parking (on application); Full office support for photocopying, faxing, internet and word processing (on application); Comprehensive range of audio visual and media services; Mini market; Pharmacy; Banking facilities; Reference library; Sports Facilities; Fitness Suite; Medical centre; 24 hour security; Self service cafeteria; Licensed bars and cafes. There are also a range of restaurants, cinemas and shopping in Uxbridge town.

Local attractions

Historic Windsor & Eton -Windsor Castle, Legoland and shopping are just 20 minutes drive away London - Central London and West End are easily accessed by bus or Underground. Historic Oxford is a 40 minute bus ride away.

The Conference Organisers

The conference is being hosted by a consortium consisting of Brunel University, University of the West of England, and the University of Wales, Newport.

Tanya Krzywinska, Professor of Screen Media, Brunel University. Tanya.Krzywinska@brunel.ac.uk

Helen Kennedy, Chair of the Play Research Group, University of the West of England. helen.kennedy@uwe.ac.uk

Barry Atkins, University of Wales Reader in Computer Games Design, University of Wales, Newport. barry.atkins@newport.ac.uk

CfP Game Studies Conference (Magdeburg)

Dear Game Philosophy folks,

with best wishes for a pleasant and peaceful Sunday to one and all!

FYI here's a Call for Papers for a game studies conference to be held next year, from March 18-21, at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany

It came in today via the Nordic Game Research Network from Lennart Nacke at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden.

To save eventual probs. in mailing the pdf as an attachment - I don't know if our list actually accepts attachments (does it John R?) - here's a link to the Call text I put up for convenience sake at our Game_Philosophy@unimore site: [http://game.unimore.it/calls/CFP_english.pdf]

 

See also Lennart's covering message below and note the game science forum he mentions.

Apologies if this has already arrived in your mailbox via other pathways...

All best for now

Patrick

PS I'm publishing this mail as a post on Game_Philosophy@unimore

------

Dear Friends,

the attached CfP will be of interest for you all, I guess.

Hope you all found your way back well into autumn research period,  would still love to hear from some of you every once in a while on our forum if you find the time: http://gamescience.bth.se/forum

Best wishes

Lennart

--

Sandbox: Where do videogames go to die?

From The Sandbox (Posted by David Kushner on October 3, 2008 1:21 PM)

[http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2008/10/the_museum_of_dead_code.htm]

The Museum of Dead Code

Where do videogames go to die? If they're in the UK: the National Videogame Archive. Gamasutra reports on this new initiative from Nottingham Trent University and the UK National Media Museum, which one scholar describe as "an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage. It will not only be a vital academic resource to support growing disciplines in videogame studies but will also be something that the general public can fully engage with."

The UK has been at the forefront of ludology - the academic study of videogames, and it's nice to see this latest initiative to preseve game art and culture.

IHT.com Article: Using video games as bait to hook readers

Using video games as bait to hook readers

By Motoko Rich The New York Times

Monday, October 6, 2008

[http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/06/arts/06games.php]

When PJ Haarsma wrote his first book, a science fiction novel for preteenagers, he didn't think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in a video game.

The online game that Haarsma designed not only extends the fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At the same time, Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that players advance is by answering questions with information from the novel.

"You can't just make a book anymore," said Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, "brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around."

Haarsma is not the only one using video games to spark an interest in books. Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading.

Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print, libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring how to incorporate video games in the classroom. In New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting efforts to create a proposed public school that will use principles of game design like instant feedback and graphic imagery to promote learning.

Publishers, meanwhile, are rushing to get in on the action.

Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter series, recently released "The Maze of Bones," the first installment in a 10-book mystery series that is tied to a Web-based game.

In advance of the publication of "Brisingr," the third book in the best-selling "Inheritance" fantasy series by Christopher Paolini, Random House Children's Books commissioned an online game. About 51,000 people have signed up since June to play and chat on message boards on the site.

But doubtful teachers and literacy experts question how effective it is to use an overwhelmingly visual medium to connect youngsters to the written word. They suggest that while a handful of players might be motivated to pick up a book, many more will skip the text and go straight to the game. Others suggest that video games detract from the experience of being wholly immersed in a book.

Some researchers, though, say that even when children don't read much text, they are picking up skills that can help them thrive in a visually oriented digital world. And some educational experts suggest that video games still stimulate reading in blogs and strategy guides for players.

To be sure, some of the experiments pairing electronic games with books will be little more than marketing gimmicks. But publishers and authors suggest that some projects may push creative boundaries, helping to extend storytelling beyond the traditional covers of a book.

The premise of Scholastic's series "The 39 Clues," for example, is that online players search for some of the clues themselves, encountering background stories about new characters as well as text and pictures about everything from the Titanic to the Iditarod sled-dog race, material that supplements the novels and inevitably entails some reading.

A New Narrative

A recent poll by the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 97 percent of children 12 to 17 play games on computers, consoles and handheld devices. But while video games may seem to have little in common with books, some see a clear connection.

"I think gamers and readers are looking for the same thing," said Rick Riordan, author of the popular "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" novels, who has written the first book in Scholastic's "39 Clues" series. "They are looking to be dropped into an intriguing story and to become a character in the story."

Still, avid readers who have compared the narrative arcs of video games with books sometimes find the games wanting. When Jacob Bagley first arrived as a freshman at Brown University, he was rapidly sucked into "World of Warcraft," an online game set in a medieval landscape where players collaborate to slay monsters and complete quests.

Bagley, now a senior, was so addicted that he sometimes abandoned friends in the dining hall to return to the game. But the story was never the attraction. Both the narrative and the characters, he said, were too simplistic, and he gave up "World of Warcraft" in his sophomore year.

Video games, said Bagley, 21, "certainly don't have the same degree of emotional and intellectual complexity of a book."

Some people argue that video games are an emerging medium likely to undergo an evolution. "I wouldn't be surprised if, in 10 or 20 years, video games are creating fictional universes which are every bit as complex as the world of fiction of Dickens or Dostoevsky," said Jay Parini, a writer who teaches English at Middlebury College.

Writers have also started to adopt the pace and perspective of video games. Quinn Clark, a video game player in Vista, a San Diego suburb, was drawn to Haarsma's novel, "The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1," because of its similarities to some of his favorite games.

The novel is narrated by J. T., a 13-year-old boy who has the ability to burrow into a computer with his mind and fights aliens. His viewpoint mimics the behind-the-eyeballs feel of a video game.

"I felt like I was in 'Call of Duty 4,' " said Quinn, a beanpole thin 12-year-old, referring to a popular combat game.

Libraries Check In

Gaming advocates suggest that even if video games don't motivate more traditional reading, they have the potential to teach players how to absorb visual information and think strategically.

Inspired in part by such theories, librarians now stage tournaments for teenagers with games like Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Dance Dance Revolution. In the first half of this year, the New York Public Library hosted more than 500 events, drawing nearly 8,300 teenagers.

In Columbus, Ohio, nearly 5,500 youngsters have participated in more than 300 tournaments at the public library this year.

"I think we have to ask ourselves, 'What exactly is reading?' " said Jack Martin, assistant director for young adult programs at the New York Public Library. "Reading is no longer just in the traditional sense of reading words in English or another language on a paper."

In some cases, librarians may guide young gamers towards other resources - including, occasionally, books. But critics argue that most children who play games at the library simply do just that. And games like Dance Dance Revolution, in which players follow dance steps on a screen, seem to have little to do with literacy of any kind.

At a gaming tournament at a branch of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, public library earlier this year, more than 30 boys gathered in a darkened room, feverishly sparring in matches of Super Smash Brothers Melee for more than six hours. Most of them said they did not read much, and rarely checked out books.

Derek Hibbs, 18, a regular tournament player, said reading felt too solitary. "You can't say: 'I charge you to a reading duel. Go!' "

Researchers, who are just beginning to explore the cognitive effects of video games, have found that in laboratory settings, action gamers are better than nonplayers at focusing on tasks and ignoring irrelevant distractions.

Some gaming evangelists suggest reading feels too passive to youngsters who want the sense of power conferred by a control pad.

"Games are teaching critical thinking skills and a sense of yourself as an agent having to make choices and live with those choices," said James Paul Gee, the author of the book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy." "You can't screw up a Dostoevsky book, but you can screw up a game."

Skeptics point out that psychological research consistently shows that skills often don't transfer from one setting to another.

Nevertheless, some educators argue that students may learn more by playing an active role in the simulated world of a game than they might by simply reading a book.

Such ideas led Lyn Lord, a social studies teacher at Kimball Union Academy, a boarding school in Meriden, New Hampshire, to introduce students to Civilization, a role-playing game in which players build and lead cultures like the Aztecs or the ancient Romans through thousands of years of historical development.

Holly McLaughlin, a senior at Kimball who played Civilization as a sophomore in Lord's class, said that at first she failed at the game, choosing to develop culture and religion at the expense of roads and the military. Playing, she said, helped her gain a deeper appreciation for why leaders made certain decisions.

"Rather than just reading about it," Holly said, "you would understand everything about it, because you had built a network of roads yourself."

There is still little research on whether students ultimately absorb information better by playing games. "I actually think reading is pretty great and can compete with video games easily," said Mark Seidenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who specializes in reading research. "So rather than say, 'Oh, books are irrelevant in the modern era because there are all these other media available,' I would ask shouldn't we be doing a better job of teaching kids how to read?"

Some gaming advocates suggest that video games may help with that.

The reading that gamers do in instructional manuals, strategy guides or message boards, though often cryptic and more technical than narrative, might serve as a "gateway drug for literacy," said Constance Steinkuehler, an assistant professor in the school of education also at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

For the past year, Steinkuehler has been testing this hypothesis with a group of teenage boys who play World of Warcraft.

Noah Tropp, 14, who participated in Steinkuehler's program for several months this year, regularly reads sites like gamewinners.com and supercheat.com. While looking for hints online, he read about "Death Note," a novel based on a Japanese video game. Over the summer, he read it.

Noah also wrote about the games and other pastimes on a group Internet forum. "I was so surprised because he does not like writing," said William Tropp, Noah's father. "I said, 'Why aren't you like this in school?' "

In one posting, Noah recommended "xxxHOLIC," a graphic novel based on Japanese manga cartoons.

"You should check it out if you get the chance," Noah concluded, "and it is a good book!"

MedieKultur Call for Papers: Online worlds as media and communication format

Call for Papers received from Bjarke Liboriusson, via Ole Ertloev Hansen of the Nordic Game Research Network (NGRN)

The Call is for an online media and communication studies journal based in Denmark: 

MedieKultur

Bjarke is a member of the editorial team for the journal.

For more information see the publication website:

[http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/]

MedieKultur is peer reviewed, and articles can be submitted directly via the website.

Patrick

-------

Call for papers: Online worlds as media and communication format

[http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/announcement/view/25]

Special issue. Guest editor: Kjetil Sandvik, University of Copenhagen

Submission deadline: February 1, 2009
Publication date: Fall 2009

Used for gaming and/or social networking, the avatar-navigated, 3D, Online World has emerged as a reasonably stable, digital medium. Accordingly, a number of academic perspectives have emerged, e.g., the ludological, sociological, economic, and narratological perspectives. The complex nature of the medium seem to invite a multi-disciplinary approach, or at least a multi-disciplinary openness on part of the media studies community. With this special issue on Online Worlds, we would like to take stock of the medium; the challenges it possess as an object of studies, and the possibilities it contains for furthering media and communications studies.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
• Online Worlds as a methodological challenge to media studies and/or communications studies.
• Online Worlds as a challenge to our concepts of communication, e.g. the avatar-based communication as online face-to-face communication
• Cross-media tendencies in Online Worlds: connecting worlds, facilitating new media-networks, integrating new media systems etc.
• The multi-player, multi-vocal, collaborative and play-centric media platform of Online Worlds as a challenge to strategic communication.

GAME: Reggio Emilia International Short Film Festival

Festival website:

[http://www.reggiofilmfestival.com/]

Festival del Gioco, Modena, Modena

La xxvi Convention Nazionale del Gioco diventa Play, il Festival del Gioco.

[http://www.play-modena.it/]

Il 27 e 28 settembre i grandi spazi della fiera di Modena saranno invasi da migliaia di appassionati di giochi di ruolo, di carte, da tavolo, tridimensionali, "live" e videogames.

Risiko, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic, Wizards of Mickey, Yu-gi-oh, Warhammer, Cosplay, Vampiri, Lan Party, WII e Console, Softair, una pista Polistil gigante...

Area autoproduzione: per provare tantissimi giochi, a contatto diretto con autori, illustratori, produttori: per conoscersi tra chi fa giochi e chi li gioca.

E una ludoteca, con centinaia di titoli e un servizio gratuito di spiegazione delle regole, che ti faranno entrare subito nel vivo del gioco!

Per saperne di più

Apertura

Ven 26: riservato agli operatori 

Sab 27: 09:00 - 24:00 dom 28: 09:00 - 19:00

Ingressi

Giornaliero: 8 euro ridotto/under 14: 6 euro under 10: gratis

Per informazioni: info@play-modena.it

Modenafiere - tel. +39 059 848380 fax. +39 059 848790 - 

Viale Virgilio, 58/b 41100 modena p.i. 02320040369

--------

Thanks to Andrea Ligabue, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia for this information

SGI Intronetworks : Serious Virtual Worlds Conference '08, Coventry, UK September 11,12.

Hi! We'd like to welcome you back to the Serious Games Institute Community. We've just relaunched with new features and are beginning to engage participants in the second annual Serious Virtual Worlds Conference '08 which will be held in Coventry, UK September 11,12.

 

Conference speakers and participants (virtual & in-person)  have been invited to join in discussion in the run up to, during and after the conference which will be broadcast live on the web and into Second Life.

We're experimenting with enabling Second Life users to see an Intronetworks Pin over their avatar heads which will reveal how close of match on Serious Games interests they share. Perhaps you'd like to join us!

 

Please take a few moments to log back into http://sgi.intronetworks.com and adjust your profile as the matching terms have changed a bit. We'll then be able to see your pin/icon again and you can quickly see with whom you share interests.

You may want to join the new Conference group and ask a few questions of the presenters or add your own 'hot topics'.

 

We'll post the URL for the broadcasts on the 11th and 12th in the new SVW '08 group discussion on Wednesday when we have the details.

 

We hope to see you online soon!

 

The Serious Games Institute

 

IHT Online: The Evolution of Spore

The evolution of Spore

By Carl Zimmer 

The New York Times

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

[http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/02/business/evolution.php]

By day, Thomas Near studies the evolution of fish, wading through streams in Kentucky and Mississippi in search of new species. By night, Near, an assistant professor at Yale University, is a heavy-duty gamer, steering tanks or playing football on his computer. On a recent afternoon, his two lives came together.

On his laptop swims a strange fishlike creature, with a jaw that snaps sideways and skin the color of green sea glass. As Near taps the keyboard, it wiggles and twists its way through a busy virtual ocean. It tries to eat other creatures and turns its spine toward predators that would make it a meal. 

The chairman of Near's department, Richard Prum, watches him play and worries about his reckless lunges.

"You're just attacking them?" he asks as Near tries to eat a fat purple worm that looks too dangerous to bother. 

"If you kill them, you unlock their parts," Near explains. But then the purple worm sticks its syringelike mouth into Near's beast and begins to drain its innards. "Uh oh, I'm about to die," he says. The screen fades to black.

The next time around, Near's luck changes. He gains enough points to move to the next level of the game. His creature grows a brain.

"Oh, man, it's like I graduated college," he says. Near can now alter his creature. He stretches the body to give it a neck. He adds a pair of kangaroolike legs.

His creature - or, rather, a swarm of his creatures - charges out of the ocean and onto land. Near pushes back the laptop as his creatures find a place to make their nest and lay eggs. "So that's pretty cool," he says with a grin not often seen on a professor.

Near and Prum have spent a few evenings testing out Spore, one of the most eagerly anticipated video games in the history of the industry. After years of rumors, the game goes on sale in some European countries on Thursday and in North America on Friday.

Spore's designer, Will Wright, is best known for creating a game called the Sims in 2000. That game, which lets players run the lives of a virtual family, has sold 100 million copies. It is the best-selling video game franchise of all time - an impressive achievement in an $18 billion-a-year industry that is now bigger than Hollywood.

Spore, produced by Electronic Arts, promises much more than the day-to-day adventures of simulated people. It starts with single-cell microbes and follows them through their evolution into intelligent multicellular creatures that can build civilizations, colonize the galaxy and populate new planets. 

Unlike the typical shoot-them-till-they-are-all-dead video game, Spore was strongly influenced by science, and in particular by evolutionary biology. Wright will appear in a documentary next Tuesday on the National Geographic Channel, sharing his new game with leading evolutionary biologists and talking with them about the evolution of complex life.

Evolutionary biologists like Near and Prum, who have had a chance to try out the game, like it a great deal. "I think it's a great game," said Near. But they also have some serious reservations. The step-by-step process by which Spore's creatures change does not have much to do with real evolution. "The mechanism is severely messed up," Prum said.

Nevertheless, Prum admires the way Spore touches on some of the big questions that evolutionary biologists ask. What is the origin of complexity? How contingent is evolution on flukes and quirks? "If it compels people to ask these questions, that would be great," he said. 

Evolution may seem impossible to capture in a computer. It is a complicated process by which millions of individuals change over millions of years, as thousands of genes mutate and are spread by natural selection and other forces. Yet scientists have managed to distill some of the most important features of evolution into the language of mathematics.

In the early 1900s, mathematicians figured out how to represent a population of organisms in simple equations. They used those equations to show how natural selection can spread some genes from one generation to the next. Their work transformed the study of evolution into a modern, rigorous science.Today, mathematicians use far more sophisticated equations to analyze evolution. And some of their most important insights have come from treating evolution like a giant game. Organisms can evolve different strategies to survive, in the same way game players can choose different strategies to win the most points in a game.

Using a branch of mathematics called game theory, scientists can figure out whether natural selection will favor a strategy over all others, or whether it brings them into a stable balance. Game-theory models have shed light on the evolution of everything from human cooperation to the deadly relationship of parasites and their hosts.

Today's computers make it vastly easier for scientists to build these models. They have also allowed researchers to study evolution by building digital organisms.

Scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, for example, have developed software called Avida that allows tiny computer programs to behave like real organisms. They make copies of themselves and mutate, randomly changing lines of programming code.

As the programs process more information in more powerful ways, the mutations are favored by a digital version of natural selection. The Avida team has published a string of papers in leading scientific journals on their experiments, testing ideas about complexity, mass extinctions and even the evolutionary benefits of sex. 

Computers have also made it possible for scientists to build simple simulations to help people understand the principles of evolution. This year, for instance, Ralph Haygood, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, built a Facebook application called Evarium that lets users watch flowerlike creatures drift around a box, attracting each other with their colors. They mate and shuffle traits in their offspring, which then go through the same cycle. Players can control how quickly traits mutate and how strongly the organisms are attracted to some traits and not others. Or they can just watch the creatures change each time they open their Facebook page.

Wright, the designer, came to the challenge of an evolution game with a long track record of simplifying complex systems without losing the feel of reality. He first gained fame in 1989 with SimCity, a game that allowed players to build and oversee a city. He simplified the workings of cities so that the slow personal computer of the late 1980s could simulate them. But he included enough feedback loops between elements of cities - like tax rates, incomes and traffic jams - to give SimCity the unpredictable complexity of real cities.

Will followed up on the success of SimCity with a string of open-ended games, from SimAnt (a simulated ant colony) to SimMars (a simulated Red Planet players could make habitable). Around the time he released the Sims, Wright began to contemplate an all-encompassing game. At first, he called it SimEverything. The game, which he eventually renamed Spore, would give players an experience of life and the universe across billions of years, from microscopic creatures to interstellar civilizations. 

"There were deep motivations in the early phase from the work of a lot of evolutionary biologists, like Richard Dawkins and Edward Wilson," Wright said by telephone.

Wright wanted Spore to communicate some of the grand patterns of evolution. But he did not want players to spend a million years waiting for something interesting to happen. He also did not want the game to look like an abstract cloud of drifting spots. So he began doing research to decide what aspects of evolution Spore would distill.

"I spent a fair amount of time going around to talk to scientists here and there," Wright said. "You have to explore a huge amount to figure what 20 percent will be cool and fun for a game."

One thing Wright and his colleagues decided Spore should reflect was evolution's ability to produce life's staggering diversity. "We wanted to convey the sense that evolution can bring up a surprising diversity of weird, interesting, strange things," he said.

The game begins with a meteorite crashing into a planet, sowing its oceans with life and organic matter. Players control a simple creature that gobbles up bits of debris. They can choose to eat other creatures, eat vegetation or both. As the creature eats and grows, it gains "DNA points," which the player can use to add extra parts like tails for swimming or spikes for defense. Once the creature has gotten big and complex enough, it is ready for the transition to land.

On land, the creatures can grow legs, wings and other new parts. And it is at this point that some of Spore's features really shine. 

Wright's team has written software that can rapidly transform creatures in an infinite number of ways, as players add parts and alter their size, shape, and position.

This summer, as part of the buildup before the release of Spore, Electronic Arts offered software for building new creatures on its Web site. So far, people have built more than three million creatures. Electronic Arts uses that growing zoo to populate each player's planets with life. 

Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, was enchanted when Wright came to show off Spore to him earlier this year. Shubin's own research has helped reveal how real evolution recycles and modifies pre-existing biology to produce different body plans. In 2006 Shubin and his colleagues reported the discovery of a 370-million-year-old fossil called Tiktaalik that illuminates our ancestors' transition from sea to land. It offers new clues to how our hands and feet evolved from swimming fins. Shubin found that Spore gives players a feel for how evolution uses the same basic toolkit to produce different body plans. "Playing the game, you can't help but feel amazed how, from a few simple rules and instructions, you can get a complex functioning world with bodies, behaviors and whole ecosystems," he said.Spore also mimicked evolution in another way that pleased Shubin. "Will asked me, 'Why did creatures evolve to walk on land?"' he recalled. 

"I mentioned that the freshwater ecosystems of the Late Devonian were pretty predator-intensive. He smirked." Wright built a Tiktaalik with Shubin's help. "We let him swim around in a Spore Devonian world. And every time our little silicon Tiktaalik went in the deep water, a huge creature ate him in one bite. Tiktaalik crawled on land and thrived," Shubin said.

Spore embodies another major theme of modern evolutionary biology: that evolution is not a simple kill-or-be-killed affair. If a Spore player ends up with a carnivorous creature, it will certainly do its fair share of killing. But it will not make it very far unless it makes alliances. In Spore, creatures bond by dancing, wiggling and singing. Taking the time to bond allows players to move in packs and herds, which do a better job of fighting off predators and attacking prey."You always wonder why life tends to become more complex over time," Wright said. "If you look at this balance between cooperation and competition, at almost every level it explains it neatly. You have agents competing at some level. The agents might be cells. At some point the cells can group together and work collectively and outcompete the other ones that are not cooperating. Then competition jumps to the next level. At every level you have to have the right balance between cooperating and competing. 

That balance is driving the organizational complexity."

Even as scientists praise Spore, they also voice concerns about how the game does not match evolution. In the real world, new traits evolve as mutations arise and spread gradually through entire populations. Winning Spore's DNA points does not work even as a remote metaphor.

"I do hope that it doesn't confuse people as to what evolution is all about," said Charles Ofria, a computer scientist at Michigan State University who helped create the Avida software.

Spore may also mislead players with the way it is set up as a one-dimensional march of progress from single-cell life to intelligence. Evolution is more like a tree than a line, with species branching in millions of directions. Sometimes species become more complex and sometimes they become less so. And sometimes they do not change at all. "There's no progressive arrow that dominates nature," Prum said. 

These caveats notwithstanding, Near hopes that Spore prompts people to think about the evolutionary process. "This may be totally off about how evolution works, but I'd much rather be dealing with a student who says, 'O.K., I have no problem with evolution; I think about it the same way I think about gravity.' If it does that, it'll be great."Wright said he had been receiving similar reactions from other scientists. "I find that scientists are incredibly open and excited that we can portray this stuff in games, even if it's not perfectly accurate. It's manure to seed future scientists.""The differences between Spore and nature do not bother me," Shubin said. "I see Spore for what it is: a game. And it is a game in the best sense of the word. It is not identical to nature, but it is a world that evolves, that changes, and where the players are part of those processes."

Videos from The Philosophy of Computer Games '08 (Potsdam) online

Following this link [http://onscreendisplay.net/gamephilosophy/lectures] you can view video recordings of many of the presentations and discussions of the 2008 edition of the international Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, hosted this time by the Department of Arts and Media, European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

See also the Digital Games Research Network homepage for information in German.

The next conference in the series will be held in the period 14-16 August 2009, hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Report from Aalborg

I just got back from a Nordic PhD seminar in Aalborg, Denmark (from 17-19.06) on Theory and Methodology in Computer Game Research where I had been invited (rather at the last minute) to give a keynote talk [Power Point slides] and, together with other speakers, act as discussant for a number of in progress PhD project proposals presented there. 

The event was (efficiently) organised by the Nordic Game Research Network [http://www.ngrn.dk/] with financial support from the Nordic Research Council (NORDFORSK) [http://www.nordforsk.org/index.cfm]

Ole Ertloev Hansen (who presented a paper at the Reggio Emilia Game Philosophy Conference last year) of the InMedia VR Media Lab at the University of Aalborg [http://www.vrmedialab.dk/pr/index_e.html] professionally coordinated the event, together with Betty Li Meldgaard (see below) who also presented and discussed her PhD research project with us.

One of the other keynote speakers was Frans Mäyrä from the University of Tampere in Finland, where he directs their Hypermedia Laboratory: [http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/] 

Frans is founding (now ex-)president of the international Digital Games Research Association DIGRA [http://www.digra.org/]

Other keynote speakers were ethnographer Lars Holmgaard Christiansen, Ole Ertloev Hansen, game developer Nicolai Hylding, and business innovation expert Claus Rosenstand.

I found the seminar -- which also included visits to the VR Lab and to Bretteville, a new innovation zone near the docks in Aalborg [http://www.bretteville.dk/] - site mainly in Danish for now -- great fun, very interesting, and I made a lot of new friends and certainly many useful contacts for the future.

There are a few photos from the event on the web here:

[http://gallery.mac.com/pcoppock#100094]

Documentation regarding the research projects presented at the seminar should appear on the web too at some stage, as far as I understand. There was discussion during the evaluation phase of the seminar of plans to organise a wiki and a mail forum for the Nordic PhD Game Research Network, and first moves in that direction are being taken right now, on the initiative of Lennart Nacke from the Game and Media Arts Laboratory at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Three of the young researchers at the seminar, Olli Leino (Finland), Betty Li Meldgaard and Bjarke Liboriussen (Denmark) also took part as presenters in the 2008 edition of the Philosophy of Computer Games conference series in Potsdam in May this year, and Olli also did a presentation at the Reggio Emilia conference in January of last year.

Olli

http://www.itu.dk/~leino/

Betty

http://personprofil.aau.dk/Profil/113150?languageId=1

Bjarke

http://www.humaniora.sdu.dk/nywebX/inc/show.php?full=1602