Category: Links

A brief report of the fourth This happened – Utrecht (in Dutch) on the Rhinofly blog, who were also this event’s sponsor.

A diary kept by Jordan Mechner while he was working on the original Prince of Persia. Fascinating stuff.

Tinker.it’s Nick Weldin has wrote a book on Arduino. Having had the pleasure of being in a workshop lead by Nick I can say he’s a great teacher so I’m sure this book is worth your while. It looks real nice, too.

Chris Heathcote’s opened his shop. He says: “I’m interested in how new technology changes people’s lives: mobiles, GPS, RFID, physical computing, and recently urban screens and interactive environments; and how this changes the way people interact with each other.” Check him out.

An interesting interview that discusses Robinson’s latest book (about Galileo) ends with the following quote, which reminds me of William Gibson’s recent stance on science fiction: “If the world is a science fiction novel then what do you read? What can the literature do for you?”

M’colleague Ianus Keller invited an old student of his (who happened to be the lead designer on Windows 7) for a Q&A session with design for interaction students at Delft University of Technology. This report (in Dutch) is a nice account of the kinds of questions students ask, and the way Stephan Hoefnagels thinks about user experience.

A lot of tilt shift photography goodness. Via Mathijs.

Another marketing driven flash mob. The polish on the Barcelona video makes me wonder how much of it’s “real”.

“The Hidden Park is an iPhone adventure game created especially for young families. The application uses all the features of the iPhone to lead children into a fantasy world of trolls, fairies and tree genies – right in their local park!” One of the most imaginative uses of AR I’ve seen in a long time. The idea of being able to make your local park into a magical place is appealing.

“Slave City is an up-to-date concentration camp made out of the latest technology and with the newest management insights. The highly profitable Slave City (7 billion euro net profit per year) is provided with all necessary facilities to make sure that the inhabitants (called “participants”) are as efficient as possible.” Ah, the joys of modeling. An interesting example of a model that has an agenda, as opposed to the sterile examples from the model railway community.

Notes and slides of the talk that (for me at least) was the undisputed high point of Playful 2009. James restores the meaning of the term “awesome” to the rightful realm of the huge, the complex and ultimately, the unattainable.

I’m not a huge fan of Tale of Tales’ work (I think the focus on artistic graphics, story and immersion are red herrings), but I commend them for providing a podium to Frank Lantz, whose ideas on the nature of games are in some ways completely opposite to theirs: “Immersive environments and real-time 3D are spectacular and revolutionary new ingredients, but I don’t see them taking over and replacing everything else. Because the everything else is also pretty spectacular: the beauty of non-linear dynamic systems, stylized social interaction, the alchemical transformation of violent impulse into articulate complexity, collaborative exploration of possibility spaces, madness and randomness dancing with logic and structure, these are the things that I love most about video games and they’re also at the heart of games in general.”

The poster James and the guys at BUROPONY have created as part of the Dutch open government data initiative is now available for download. Content and presentation are both spot on.

Kevin’s AR ghost hunting game has hit the App Store. Go check it out.

Very interesting piece of kit.

A Dutch company that develops tangible interactive toys for educational purposes. Their first product is TagTiles, a tablet that responds to play pieces.

I am taking a day off and watching all of these. Looks to be bloody brilliant stuf. I am jealous of the Umeans.

An excellent writeup by Iskander of the fourth edition of This Happened – Utrecht. Interesting how he keeps finding themes while we plan none.

Bleecker and Nova argue for an alternative to the synchronous, real-time city. I can definitely get behind the idea that there is more to city experience than the hygienic, computational model that is currently being imposed by technologists. Also, the examples they show from their own practice are inspiring works that demonstrate the value of thinking through making.

An interesting take by urbanists on urban games: “The big issue of urban games is the sudden appearance of unexpected actions within an urban context. The public space is reset and reinterpreted as a playground for adults. The disturbing role that those games have on ‘normal’ space use, seems to be the main purpose. In the context of the flexible city the games show the need of another perception of space. Organisers must be sick of formal city forms and legislative terms of use. The city has to become fun again, not as a playing field for civil servants making plans, but for people using it.” The whole blog seems worth following actually, if you’re interested in new forms of city planning.

A Dutch article on the state of the serious games industry. A pretty decent overview, with just a few minor inaccuracies: Surgeons who practice using Trauma Center on the Wii? Not likely. Also, it’s a shame the researcher of TU Delft who is quoted says games need to have appealing visual design, but neglects to mention the importance of proper game play design…

Paper is a wonderful ‘platform’ for social games at conferences. Here’s another example of a game idea involving sneakiness.