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Today's Featured Article
| Powerful Robot buys EA, changes Maxis name |
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Thursday, April 01 2004
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 Powerful Robot Games, the only Uruguayan videogame developer, bought today Electronic Arts in a surprise takeover. Gonzalo Frasca, former ludologist and now CEO of the company, requested that the Maxis Studio- famous for creating such hits as Sim City and The Sims- was renamed to MaRxis (sources confirm that this may be due to the fact that former Russian Politburo members were responsible for the funding of the takeover). You may remember that Will Wright –whose new contract forces him to be know as Will Wleft- gave a recent talk at GDC about the Russian Space Program. This was probably due to the fact that Chaim Gingold, a KGB mole, brainwashed the game designer by singing old Russian folk songs on his balalaika while he was sleeping. MaRxis plans now to launch The Commies and Sim Soviet, a 5-year plan simulator.
Ok, enough for an April Fools story. The real story behind this pic started in San Francisco, after the Game Developers Conference. We are hanging out with Chaim Gingold, game researcher extraordinaire and Maxis employee (now MaRxis), when I suggested that Maxis should take a revolutionary turn and change its name to MaRxis. Zang.org’s William Huber suggested adding a hammer and sickle to the logo, and Sofia Battegazzore (Powerful Robot’s Art Director) put it together in a snap. Later on, Chaim printed out the new logo and Will Wright posed for the pic as a proof of his great sense of humor. So, lawyers and journalists out there, keep in mind that this is a joke, Powerful Robot did not buy Electronic Arts (but we are in talks to buy Microsoft instead ;)
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| Ludonauts April Fools |
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Thursday, April 01 2004
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 "...narratology is a sham. It’s for losers who can’t get laid.". That is just a quote from Gonzalo "The Political Games Guy" Frasca, who was "interviewed" yesterday at Ludonauts, over some coffee and a killer Japanese Teddy Bear. The "interview" was made by Ludonaut Walter Kim. Hilarious.
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| ALT+CTRL, a festival of independent and alternative games |
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Thursday, April 01 2004
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 UC Irvine’s Cal-(IT)2 Game Culture & Technology Lab and Beall Center of Art and Technology are organizing ALT+CTRL, a festival for independent and alternative games. Submission deadline is June 1st, 2004. You can submit your game here.
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| International Game Journalists Association |
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Wednesday, March 31 2004
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The IGJA "rovides resource, community and education to an international group of journalists covering video games". There is a lot to be done in game journalism and the existence of this association is certainly a great piece of news.
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| GDC, Academics and Gamasutra interview |
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Thursday, March 25 2004
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I will post more in detail about GDC in general, and specially about the Independent Games Festival. I just gave my roundtable on building bridges between academia and industry. It was called "Academics fragging Developers" and I think it worked great, even though some people did not get that the title was meant to be a joke. Tomorrow I'll run the same roundtable again, so I guess I have an extra life :) Btw, Gamasutra interviewed me yesterday about games getting serious and about more people getting serious about games.
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| GDC Pics |
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Wednesday, March 24 2004
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 Greetings from GDC'04. Lots of things going on, but I just thought that some images would be a better way to communicate what is happening at the San Jose Convention Center.
UPDATE: More pics available at GrandTextAuto (I am posting from Berkeley, back in Europe tomorrow)
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3 comments  
Most Recent Post: 03/28 08:42AM by Anonymous
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| Gaming at Yerba Buena |
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Sunday, March 21 2004
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 Just got back from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where there is the Bang the Machine exhibit. A TV crew from the Netherlands interviewed me for a feature on political videogames (September 12th is part of the exhibit, among other games). I'll post more on the exhibit later. It felt pretty weird to actually see strangers playing with Sept12, I guess is one of the things that webgame developers do not see very often. Anyway, the FutureFarmers people (who did for the Antiwargame) where having a LARP Pacman version on the Yerba Buena park. Here's William Huber and Me, inside our ludological costumes. So, here I am, second day in San Francisco, and I already managed to chase little kids in the park dressed as a videogame character...
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3 comments
Most Recent Post: 03/24 04:25PM by Anonymous
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| Gloomy! |
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Sunday, March 21 2004
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 It turned out that Giant Robot, while still being probably one of the coolest stores in the West Coast, is facing serious competition from Kid Robot, at least when it comes to my credit card (of course, none of them can match Powerful Robot Games, the coolest game studio on Earth. Do you see a robotic pattern here? I do). Anyway, it was a Kid Robot where I got my wonderful Gloomy teddy bear (which will join my other Gloomy stuff from my last trip to Japan). In case you don't know Gloomy, well, he's a very particular bear.
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1 comments
Most Recent Post: 03/31 04:12PM by jetgirl
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| Las calles de San Francisco |
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Saturday, March 20 2004
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French speaking Quebec days are a thing of the past, welcome to California and let's get read to speak Spanish. Man, I am under the powerful control of the Governator, this is so neat. I am totally jetlagged (again) but Zang.org and ludonaut extraordinaire William Huber is taking really good care of me (Mexican food dinner yesterday was really good).
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| a b o u t _ l u d o l o g y |
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Ludology.org is an online resource for academic videogame researchers. It has been published by Gonzalo Frasca (more about me) since May, 2001. Here you will find news, opinions, upcoming conferences and links to articles. Click here if you have any information you would like to share.
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| Vote |
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Does a great game such as GTA3 really needs sequels?
70 votes | 3 comments
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| m y _ a r t i c l e s |
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Sim Sin City: some thoughts about Grand Theft Auto 3, Game Studies, volume 3 issue 2.
Ludologists love stories, too:
notes from a debate that never took place, Proceedings, Level Up 2003 Conference (pdf format).
Ideological Videogames: Press left button to dissent, Ivory Tower, International Game Developers Association (Nov. 2003)
Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology in The Video Game Theory Reader, Edited by Mark J.P. Wolf & Bernard Perron. Routledge, 2003.
Videogames of the Oppressed: critical thinking, education, tolerance and other trivial issues. in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game Pat Harrington and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Eds.) MIT Press, 2003 (in Press).
Videogames of
the Oppressed:
videogames as a means of critical thinking and debate.
Master's Thesis at Georgia Tech. Supervisor: Dr. Janet Murray
Rethinking
Agency and Immersion: playing with videogame characters.
Presented at SIGGRAPH
2001.
Erratum: Should say "constructionism" instead
of "constructivism" (doh!)
Ludology meets Narratology:
Similitude and differences between (video)games and
narrative (1999). We need a ludology (theory of games)
in order to understand games in general, and videogames
in particular.
Simulation
101: Simulation versus Representation (2002)
Grandmothers are cooler
than trolls (Reviewing The Sims). Game Studies
# 1.
Ephemeral games: Is it barbaric
to design videogames after Auschwitz? Published
in the Cybertext Yearbook 2000.
Buy the book!
All content inside this blog, unless otherwise noted,
is © 1998-2004 by Gonzalo Frasca. Reprinting for commercial purposes by permission only. Reprinting for educational purposes with attribution only.
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| t a l k s _ & _ t r i p s |
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This is where I will be in the next months:
Québec, Canada - March 15-17, 2004. ICEM2004
GDC, San Jose, CA - March 2004
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