Category: Links

Knowing that one of the prototypes discussed in this article has gone on to become the hugely successful World of Goo makes this even more interesting reading than it already was. The teacher in me would love to have a group of students go mad with prototyping like this sometime, too.

My friends at Ronimo (of De Blob fame) have released their first game on WiiWare; a sidescrolling realtime strategy game titled Swords & Soldiers. It’s getting good press already. Hope it’ll continue to do well!

A lengthy piece at City of Sound about the sounds of cities, and specifically the need (or lack thereof) for electric cars to make noise.

A usefullist of things to keep in mind when designing an urban and/or pervasive games.

“If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done. […] Done is the engine of more.”

“No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say.” A tough lesson, but one worth attempting to live by.

“The Twiggy Game is a charming cultural object from a bygone era; it’s also a stark representation of what went wrong with boardgames, and a stark warning for what can go wrong with games as a whole — at least, if we fail to inculcate, in ourselves and in others who love games, an aesthetic that prizes something beyond the brand.” Greg Costikyan in fine form.

My friends at Mudlark are launching their company with a one-day event on post digital games.

I disagree with the idea that the only way forward for interaction design as a field is to focus on high-level, strategic work. It seems Cooper, and other American interaction design consultancies like them, are finding strategy work more lucrative than actual design, but feel a little guilty for abandoning the craft they originate from. There is a real need for interaction design on a tactical level (call it craft, praxis or whatever) and it is not something to be left to technologists, marketing folk or industrial designers.

Jack talks about sources of inspiration for his Here & There map. As always I am blown away by the depth and breadth of stuff S&W draw on for their projects.

The Economist covers ARGs. Good news for those hoping to make money in the field, I guess. I was happy to see them make the point that the most interesting current examples are not so much ARGs, but do fit into a “growing trend of using playful cross-media technologies to get people thinking”.

What is most interesting to me about this piece by Gladwell is not so much his advice on how to beat the big guys when you’re small. Rather it is the wonderful examples of implicit, socially constructed rules that govern play as much as the real, formal, explicit ones.

A brief discussion of a lecture philosopher Henk Oosterling recently gave at Premsela concerning the question of design as saviour of the world. The lecture in full (and in English) is available as well, I intend to read it soon. Judging from this article Oosterling makes the case for relational design (which I cannot help but read as interaction design). Something that acts locally, intermediates, blurs traditional boundaries between art, media and design and above all is concerned with the values held by the people for whom a designer creates (not with the values of the market, or of the artist himself). (In Dutch.)

Video of a physics-based platform puzzle game that involves the manipulation of light and shadow. Some definite potential here, I imagine one of the greatest design challenges is getting the the control scheme right. Via Hessel.

“Incidentally, doesn’t ‘Blog All Dog-Eared Pages’ seem like a rather exact precursor to what Steven Johnson is talking about here. Imagine how popular this would be if you didn’t have to transcribe stuff by hand.” Which is exactly what I was thinking when I read the NYT article Russell links to. I would kill for a book annotation blogging platform thing. Killer start-up concept anyone?

I am going to buy these and walk on them all day, everywhere, for the rest of my life.