| F e a t u r e d |
|
|
|
|
| n o w _ p l a y i n g |
|
Call of Duty - PC (what a great game!)
Prince of Persia - PS2
Splinter Cell (Pandora Tomorrow) - Xbox
|
|
| User Functions |
|
|
Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
|
|
|
|
| Serious Games Summit 2004 |
|
|
Friday, August 06 2004
|
 After the enormous success of the Summit at GDC early this year, there will be a new, bigger and even more serious ;) Serious Games Summit at Washington, DC, on October 18-19. Sadly, I won't be able to make it, but Ian Bogost will be carrying around his Wi-Fi controlled Gonzalo puppet, which will enlighten you all on the secrets of seriousness. Hey, this is supposed to be serious stuff, right, so stop making a fool of yourself Mr. Frasca! Well, and now for something completely serious, move on to Ian and yours truly's blog, the one and only Water Cooler Games, for a 25 bucks discount for the conference. (message to Ian: dude, we are now offering coupons... What is next for us? Porn links? Pop-ups? Online Casinos? Anyway you guys, save those 25 bucks, take the bus in DC and peacefully demonstrate against the Thief in Chief, a.k.a "W". We gamers know that "W" is the letter of "W"arioware, the most evil among the evil ;)
|
1 comments  
Most Recent Post: 08/06 04:09AM by ibogost
|
| New Ivory Tower Article |
|
|
Friday, August 06 2004
|
|
Danish ITU colleague and Age of Kings maverick Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen is Mr. August at the Ivory Tower. He's resigning from his position of editor of the column (too much work to do), but before leaving he offers us a balance of what happened during the last 18 months within the dungeons of the Ivory Tower.
|
|
|
| ITU wants you |
|
|
Friday, August 06 2004
|
|
Open PhD position at DIAC (Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication). What else can I say? I'd be great to have you around. Keep in mind: deadline is August 26th, noon sharp, so hurry. up.
|
|
|
| Videojocs |
|
|
Wednesday, August 04 2004
|
|
If you speak Catalan, then you know that "videojocs" means videogames. I just received notice of an academic course on the Military-Entertaiment Complex (in Catalan), dictated by Josep Sort i Jané. It will take place from August 16-20 at Prade del Conflent (that's on the French side of Catalunya). You can learn more about it here.
|
1 comments
Most Recent Post: 08/04 12:14PM by graccus37
|
| Other Players deadline extended |
|
|
Monday, August 02 2004
|
|
Yes, your most private wishes have been granted. The Other Players conference extended their deadline until August 16th, so you can keep polishing that paper that may bring you academic glory, fame and plenty of "otherness". Seriously, I am certain that it will be a great conference, so start up those word processors.
|
|
|
| Newsgaming, a USA Today Hot Site |
|
|
Saturday, July 31 2004
|
 USA Today selected Newsgaming.com for the Hot Sites list. Their review is, I think, the most enthusiastic so far that has been published on a major media outlet.
Combining news, opinion and gameplay may sound odd or flippant, but the offerings so far on this fascinating site are neither. The developers participating here feel that games are a learning tool and a way of commenting on the world as well as a form of entertainment. They’re just getting started, but clearly there’s some fresh thinking here as well as an up-to-date appreciation for the activities that truly shape many folks’ understanding of the world.
Of course, I wish I could launch more games more often. Sept12 will be a year old in a few months, and Madrid was launched in March. I think that I have discovered the obvious, that projects do have a life far more longer than your attention to them. While I am really happy with Newsgaming, it gets a bit repetitive to talk to journalists over and over about the same game. On the other hand, I am glad that the project keeps getting attention (I haven't checked the stats in quite a while, but the visitors keep adding up, rounding several hundreds of thousands). My move to Denmark has made me incredibly busy, but now that I am more settled (read: no more need for long trips to Ikea), things may calm down a bit. I am working on a new game, by the way. But it is still on pre-production, so nothing will be launched for at least several months.
|
|
|
| The URBZ coming to Nintendo DS |
|
|
Tuesday, July 27 2004
|
 Whatever you think about Nintendo's future and whatever you think about their upcoming dual-screen portable, it is good to have designers excited about its features. Excited developers = people taking risks and that is always a good thing, even if that also guarantees some failures. Personally, I am curious to see what people will come up with (or what they will expect us to play with). Gamespot runs a story that includes a video interview with one of the developers of the upcoming The Urbs for the DS and he's talking about mini-games, which sounds like a good idea to exploit the DS' new features. Minigames, minigames, it's fantastic how wonderful games like WarioWare can change our little gaming world.
|
|
|
| Time running out for Other Players |
|
|
Tuesday, July 27 2004
|
 You better hurry up to complete your full paper submission for the Other Players conference. The deadline is August 1st. Update: Deadline extended for 2 weeks.
|
|
|
| Ron Gilbert's blog |
|
|
Tuesday, July 27 2004
|
 Ron Gilbert got blog. For those of you who have been playing Tetris for the last 10 years, Ron is the guy responsible for the first two Monkey Islands (the last one, I bought it for 10 bucks at Target, played it once on my PS2 and is now probably gathering dust or some sort of CD fungus). If you want to know about Gilbert's games, you can read this interview.
Ron posted an article from 1989 called "Why Adventure Games Suck". Luckly, that was not the complete title (it continued "And What We Can Do About It). You can read it here.
|
|
|
| Al Gore on game theory |
|
|
Tuesday, July 27 2004
|
Famed ludologist Al Gore gave a few insights on his work on game theory at the Democratic National Convention: "You win some, you lose some. And then there's that little-known third category".
It is interesting how the American public and media (and even the Democrats) have generally avoided the use of the term "fraud". Admitting the existence of fraud and cheating is a burden, even for the cheated, because it forces everybody to recognize that there is quite a gap between their ideals and the way things work. Admitting the existence of cheating is admitting that there is no fair game and that Americans have been living under the illusion of democracy. That is quite a problematic situation for the self-proclaimed champions of democracy. It certainly feels more comfortable to disdain fraud as an aberration, the unspeakable, rather that accepting that your beliefs were built upon lies. I mean, it is not easy to realize that things are not like you thought they were. Coming of age experiences are traumatic, granted. I can only hope democracy lovers can outgrow the tragedy of fraud with more wisdom.
Cheating is not an exception. Cheating is part of the game. Loving the game means accepting that cheating is always a possibility and you have to know how to deal with it. The worst that can happen to democracy is to believe that it is an unbreakable system. Players only learn through defeat. You cannot learn how to overcome cheating if you do not accept the possibility of its existence. If you really love the game, you have to embrace cheating and accept it as part of its nature. Only then you can combat it by playing by the rules. Otherwise, who's the real cheater?
|
|
|
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next |
|
| a b o u t _ l u d o l o g y |
|
Ludology.org is an online resource for videogame researchers. It has been published by Gonzalo Frasca (more about me) since May, 2001.
|
|
| Vote |
|
Ludology.org will soon start its 4th year. How long have you been a reader?
287 votes | 0 comments
|
|
| m y _ a r t i c l e s |
|
|
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, 2004.
Videogames of
the Oppressed:
videogames as a means of critical thinking and debate (2001).
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.
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.
|
|
| t a l k s _ & _ t r i p s |
|
This is where I will be in the next months:
GDC Europe, London - late August, 2004
Tokyo Game Show - late September, 2004
|
|
|
