In Weeknotes on
11 March 2010 tagged BUROPONY, Dutch Game Garden, Europe, HKU, Layar, Leidsche Rijn, Mega Monster Battle Arena, Tako, Utrecht with no comments
It’s been a while since I spent time at my own desk in the Dutch Game Garden. It was nice to do this again yesterday, having the city right outside my door and kindred spirits such as FourceLabs upstairs. I wasn’t inside the whole time though, in the morning I had another chat at EKKO about Tako. And in the afternoon I headed to Leidsche Rijn accompanied by Julius to attend a workshop concerning Utrecht’s bid to become European capital of culture.
I kicked off the week with two days of work at Layar (now on my way to Amsterdam in a diverted train for my third and last day of the week there). I’ve been collaborating closely with some of the engineers to shape some upcoming new… stuff. Things are developing at such a high pace that it’s a real challenge to keep up. It feels like being on top of a rodeo bull sometimes, but in a good way. This means I need to be pragmatic and fast with developing and documenting designs.
In between, I’ve posted a long overdue project description to the Hubbub site for Mega Monster Battle Arena. It’s this quirky project – a cross between a game and an opera – that I was involved with last year. It feels good to finally have it out there for me and others to point to.
Other in-between stuff includes a final review of several graduation project proposals. I need to provide feedback by the start of next week, and then I’ll switch to coaching a handful of students.
The week will be topped off with what is sure to be a fun friday at the BUROPONY studio. I’ll do some work on their site, and in return have them do some additional work on the Hubbub brand. Scratching each other’s backs, that’s how small creative enterprises flourish.
In Links on
9 March 2010 with 1 comment
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Adrian Hon takes a long hard look at the potential of persuasive games for saving the world. What sticks with ne the most is his concern that the focus on reward mechanisms prevents people from pursuing activities for the sheer joy of doing them, which I've always felt is the essence of play.
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Dan C waxes lyrically about an indie strategy game and in the process talks about indie fan culture: "The only people that we, as fans, can claim with 100% certainty are worthy of our appreciation are small teams of independent developers."
In Links on
6 March 2010 with no comments
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"WarioWare, finally, is fascinating because of its message to game scholars: we can reflect upon games by making them. Experimental games are a powerful tool for thinking about and communicating ideas about games." Really nice discussion of a very strange game.
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"“Toward a Ludic Architecture” is a must-read for analyzing and designing play and games from an architectural standpoint. Such a contribution is particularly applicable in an era when games extend into physical, designed space that is increasingly permeated by devices, sensors, and information networks, allowing for rules and fictions to superimpose our everyday environments." A book that might be worth checking out.
In Links on
4 March 2010 with no comments
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A brief interview with the founders of a collaborative drawing project that produces startling results. I'm curious about their ruleset…
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(Dutch) Mijn vrienden bij 31Volts hebben een tof filmpje gemaakt waarin ze een verzameling mensen aan het woord laten over de vraag "wat betekent spelen voor jou?" Mooi breed scala aan antwoorden, waaruit vaak veel te lezen is over de manier waarop iedere persoon in het leven staat. Ik moet gelijk denken aan Sutton-Smith's idee van rhetorics of play en zijn mooie quote: "the opposite of play isn't work, it's depression."
In Weeknotes on
4 March 2010 tagged Amsterdam, architecture, brainstorms, games, HKU, Layar, lotteries, Trouw, Visible Cities with no comments
Is it march already? Time flies.
I’m on my way to Amsterdam again. Around 10 hours earlier, I was in a train in the opposite direction, coming back from Visible Cities #02. This turned out to be an evening well spent. Some nice examples of AR projects were shown but in particular Ole Bouman of the NAi’s perspective on the changes architecture will go through under the pressure of new technologies was enlightening. He came across as both critical and knowledgeable, passionate about the field with a solid grounding in its history. Inspiring. Finally spending an evening in TrouwAmsterdam – eating a burger and drinking a beer in the space where printing presses used to run – was another plus.
I’m at Layar a lot this week again. Still can’t tell you too much about what’s going on there. But it continues to be both a challenging and fun engagement, so that’s good.
Apart from this, I spent a day brainstorming new game concepts for one of the Netherlands’s big lotteries, with which they’re hoping to reach a younger generation. It’s always a challenge to immerse oneself in a new context that fast, but it went well. Lots of nice ideas came up and the workshop was facilitated in a tight manner. Participating in these things always results in useful insights for when I run my own sessions.
I do feel slightly exhausted from all this, not in the least because what should have been a two hour review of proposals on monday morning with my students turned into a three-and-a-half hour marathon session. They’ve had to submit their graduation project proposals now, so I’ll soon sit down and do a final assessment of them. Then they’re good to go.
And so will I.
In Weeknotes on
26 February 2010 tagged HKU, Layar, RaumschiffEr.de, Tako, This happened – Utrecht with no comments
The previous week seamlessly flowed into this one when on saturday I sat down to finalize the deck of slides for Raum Schiff Erde. On sunday morning, I grabbed a train and five hours later I was in Stellwerk, the conference’s lovely venue. Kind, clever people, a nice relaxed and friendly atmosphere, interesting talks, all in all a good event. There is more about what I talked about on the Hubbub blog. It wrapped up with some music and then we were off to dinner. Turned in late and got up early the next morning for another train. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed this short in a hotel, didn’t even manage to squeeze in breakfast.
On the train ride, I managed to review all of the graduation project proposals of my students. These were first drafts, next week they’ll need to submit a final version after one more round of reviews. Some have lovely, curious topics. (A satirical newsgame, anyone?) I’ll share some of them with you sometime soon.
I had a few hours to take a breather when I got back to Utrecht and then it was off to the HKU Academy Theatre to prepare for This happened – Utrecht #5. This was the first edition of the new year, and also the first in a new venue, which made it kind of scary. But everything turned out great. (Read a few reports to get a sense of the evening, if you’re interested.) We had possibly the best series of talks so far (although, of course, they’ve all been great) and a great crowd. I’m already looking forward to #6.
As if two of these challenges weren’t enough, on wednesday it was D-day for project Tako (which is part of a bigger plan that is locally known simply as PLAY). I presented the results of my research to a room full of cultural event organizers, games developers and assorted luminaries of the Utrecht city scene. I managed to wrap up the sizable stack of sketches only hours before in a final adrenaline-fueled design sprint. The responses were encouraging, so it seems we can start exploring the next stage. But before this I’ll need to annotate the deck of slides, include all the feedback and then we might have something we can publish.
In between and after, it’s been more work at Layar. I’ve been digging into the specs for several prototypes – lots of sketching there, too – forcing myself to consider multiple paths. Some of the output has been handed over to engineers. I can’t wait to see the results of their development efforts.
Even though all of this is more fun than is legal, I can’t wait for a work free weekend, too.
In Links on
25 February 2010 with no comments
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I have mixed feelings about this talk. On the one hand, any effort to bring pervasive gaming to the mainstream is good news. On the other, I'm worried that people might think that game design is as simple as slapping a reward mechanism on anything. Schell talks about the need for skilled game designers to get involved, but he doesn't explain what their contribution could be.
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Another report on the last edition of This happened – Utrecht. Serviceable, but I would've liked some commentary beyond the factual report.
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Some great thoughts from Raph on the proliferation of rewards systems in 'real life'. I feel that what is often overlooked with all these things is the activity design itself. Also, I'm a strong advocate of social games being adaptible by their player communities.
In Links on
24 February 2010 with no comments
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"GranulatSynthese is an installation for the intuitive creation of ambient, meditative audio-visuals. It uses granulate distributed over a surface with projected visuals and generated sound." This and a few other nice research projects into embodied interactions were presented at Raum Schiff Erde by Steffi Beckhaus.
