Category: Links

Apparently, pigs are about as clever as chimps when it comes to playing games. Another infobit of interest for an upcoming project.

The more exposure given to this kind of game design (the kind that is praxis based) in the media, the better. It is the way, as far as I am concerned.

A discussion of a book by Foer on the consumption of meat. Since I might get involved with a project dealing with pigs, this is of some interest of me.

“game developers should have some kind of pro bono allocation for games for good” have yet to watch Jane’s TED performance but this piece sounds like the usual pitch, slightly evolved. Which is nothing to complain about, because it is such a worthy cause. Curious about Evoke, too.

“Any business or industry can learn something from Foursquare’s effort to make the discovery of the permutations of a commercial ecosystem the point of an experience, rather than the obstacles that stand in its way.” Ian Bogost deconstructs Foursquare and offers some interesting insights in the process.

A stylistically interesting animated short. I like the twist half way through but the ending left me a bit unsatisfied.

James Wallis on what makes a game a game, in the hopes of offering a critical tool. Ticks all the boxes, great writing along the way.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag it seems. Fellow Dutch Game Garden Xform are working on an AR game for a line of Adidas shoes. I’ve played early demos and am particularly impressed with the graphic polish of the whole thing.

This gives a whole new meaning to the term rephotography. Both expertly executed and sensitive to the social codes of Flickr. I want to play with this live.

“Hoe meer persoonsgegevens je opslaat, hoe groter het risico ze misbruikt worden of op straat terechtkomen. Dat gaat gebeuren.” Dat, en het simpele feit dat er bitter weinig bewijs is voor toegenomen veiligheid door surveillance is genoeg reden om weerstand te blijven bieden. Via Alper.

Anything Mr. Butterfield is involved with is worth keeping an eye on, although I am kind of disappointed about the fact that most of Glitch’s innovation is on the visual aesthetic side, and not so much on the game mechanics, which sound kind of formulaic.

Since I’ll be making a brief trip to Hamburg soon, this is of some interest to me: apparently, Hamburg artists are trying to break the well-known cycle of gentrification they are typically part of. Will they be able to do so and in the process have others adopt their value model, in stead of the default economic one?

Juha posts on a proposal for an open service layer in the Trouw building. I am so stealing the Constant Nieuwenhuys reference for future talks. Also, this sounds like a platform I would really like to build a Hubbub game for.

“Sorry, folks. No steam-powered rockets to Mars in this episode.” Some interesting thoughts from Stowe about the need to ditch old computing paradigms to get to a better UX and how that might mean not being as open as some would like.

“I think of “D”esign as an exploration of the conceivable futures.” A solid discussion of the role sketching plays in the design process.

(Dutch) Het meest frappante aan dit bericht over een verzameling inititiatieven gericht op het meer verbinden van de culturele sector met de wereld om haar heen is dat het woord “design” of “ontwerpen” niet één keer voor komt, terwijl ik denk dat dit discipline veel van de sleutels in handen heeft voor het oplossen van de vraagstukken waarmee geworsteld wordt. Nu lijkt het er meer op dat het wiel opnieuw uitgevonden gaat worden.

My friends in the Dutch open government data movement, take note, here’s a wonderful example of what people can make once data is open. The Newspaper Club made a prototype paper that could be offered to people moving into a new neighborhood, containing all kinds of useful info pulled from databases using something as simple as a postal code.

A lovely side project by Tom; visualizations of a year’s worth of Eurogamer reviews. Both informative and pretty looking.

My friends at 31Volts wrote a book about service design a while back. The free PDF (in Dutch) is now available.

A book about “creating game experiences in everyday interfaces”. Something to keep an eye on.

Some nice work by Tinker.it! involving hoppers that are inflated based on Twitter messages.