Mirjam's blog

Borut Pfeifer on accessibility of game AI by design

2011-12-04T23:53:00.001+01:00

Borut Pfeifer came to UC Santa Cruz last Wednesday (30th of November) and gave a talk about how to make sure that all the cool AI made for a game is made accessible to the players. The key factors that Borut identified for making the AI accessible to players are - the complexity of the input that players can make to the game - the feedback from the game to the player - the pacing of the

Clint Hocking on dynamics and meaning in games

2011-11-24T01:10:00.001+01:00

Clint Hocking, Creative Director at LucasArts, gave a talk at UCSC last week about meaning, dynamics and games. He took a stance in asking HOW games mean (following Chris Hecker) rather than WHAT they mean. "When we know how they mean, maybe then we can speculate on what a specific game might mean." Clint explained the Kuleshov effect to us, showing how the exact same image takes on

Lemarchand gave a talk at EIS about the beaty of systems and of risk-taking

2011-11-24T00:05:00.003+01:00

Richard Lemarchand, lead game designer at NaughtyDog, just gave a wonderfully inspiring talk at UCSC. (Talk-description here.) Richard spoke about the beauty of systems and about creative risk-taking, illustrating with evokative pictures and music from games. He referred to two talks that I'll want to check up on, Jonathan Blows talk from GDCE this year about truth and game design (available

An evening with Brenda and John

2011-10-19T05:07:00.001+02:00

Yesterday evening Brenda Garno Brathwaite and John Romero were speaking at the IGDA Silicon Valley chapter. I got a ride with Chris Lewis from the EIS lab over the hill to Mountainview to listen. These are my main take-aways:Brenda: “The rule-set is what separates games from all other art.” Although I have read Brenda’s great book and heard her speak several times i don’t tire of hearing her say

Digra 2011 Diary Day 1

2011-09-20T17:23:00.001+02:00

Eric Zimmerman was the first key-note.My jotted words: We are not just researchers, we are also educators.We are still justifying game research. Danger of becoming irrelevant. Gamification, instrumentalization. Entering the ludic century: The necessity of understanding complex systems (gaming literacy).Jon Manker and I were matched, so we presented in the same session. Jon has interviewed 27 game

IRSGD day 1

2011-09-13T08:05:00.001+02:00

Yesterday we had our first symposion of the International Research School of Game Design (IRSGD). In the morning we met in the mocap studio. Steven Bachelder, (he is our über-chair) had made sure that Richard Bartle, Mike Sellers, Ernest Adams, Pär Ågerfalk and Masayuki Nakajima and myself were all in place. Our first task is to work out how we see the subject of game design and game design

GDCE’11 highlights

2011-08-21T21:45:00.002+02:00

I saw tons of talks at this GDC, and scribbled piles of notes. But ignoring notes, to-do exclamations and note-to-selfs these talks stand out in my memory: - Dean Tate’s talk on Dance Central - Carl Callewaert’s hands on demonstrations of Unity - Richard Garriotts keynote on the three eras of gaming Break it Down! How Harmonix and Kinect Taught the World to Dance; The Design Process and

GAME-blob goes to GDCE'11

2011-08-20T13:35:00.000+02:00

We travelled from Gotland to GDCE and Gamescom in Cologne like a big (pretty cosy) blob. We joked about how we’d need vests that would blink or make sounds whenever any of us 19 people got too far away from a dynamically updated centre-point of our blob. Here is the blob negotiating a ticket-machine as we are arriving to Cologne. The Blob by our booth: Blob got lost in the parking lot (

Violet

2011-08-07T14:17:00.002+02:00

I just played/read/interacted with the interactive fiction piece "Violet" by Jeremy Freese. The protagonist is a PhD student who needs to write a thousand words for his thesis on his birthday otherwise his fiance will leave him. Oh, how I can relate to the procastrination for writing, to what desperate means can be necessary for concentration. How there can be no distractions, and how he threaten

Lost Garden: Game Design Logs

2011-07-06T12:12:00.000+02:00

Dan Cook has written a post on how to document game design work. No wiki, no GDD design-bible, no blogs, but instead using logs. A high level concept description holding the vision and short daily progress notes documenting design decisions. To each his/her own, but i really like the format Danc uses for the log-notes. Good stuff! Lost Garden: Game Design Logs

Player Character with Maslovian needs 1999

2011-05-19T07:12:00.001+02:00

Player Character with Maslovian needs 1999, a photo by mimmi on Flickr.At work we are moving to another building. I found this diagram in my office while putting stuff in moving-boxes. The diagram shows the architecture for the player character with maslovian(-ish) needs. I built this in 1999 when Patricia, Fia, me and a couple of others where doing a game called IO city. We built a simple java

Adam and Gillian at DANM exhebition

2011-05-10T22:19:00.001+02:00

Adam and Gillian at DANM exhebition, a photo by mimmi on Flickr.Gillian, Adam and I had great fun as we explored the different knobs of this art piece. Different knobs controlled graphics projected on fabric hanging from the roof, and sound.Via Flickr:Gillian, Adam and I had great fun as we explored the different knobs of this art piece. Different knobs controlled graphics projected on fabric

IFOG 2011

2011-04-18T21:34:00.000+02:00

Last Friday a group of people got together in Milpitas, Silicon Valley for the symposion Inventing the Future of Games (#IFOG2011), the official launch of UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media. Michael Mateas started off the day by describing the game design space, and mapping out how to work on creating better games within the frame of academia.The line-up of speakers was amazing,

Hello Kitty Suitcase goes to rest

2011-03-17T16:58:00.005+01:00

The time has come for my companion and friend, my Hello Kitty Suitcase to go to rest in a cellar in Stockholm. She holds linens. I got her in 2005 when I was at guest research period at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta. It wasn't possible to get items shipped from the Sanrio store in Japan to Europe, but they *would* ship to the US, so I took the opportunity. Here is how she looked when she came to me.

NeuroSky Mindwave find no wave (yet)

2011-03-16T17:25:00.002+01:00

NeuroSky Mindwave find no wave (yet) a photo by mimmi on Flickr.Oh well, there goes half an afternoon. I got this consumer variety of the NeuroSky EEG headset at the GDC expo. I thought I should try it out along with working with the Emotiv headset. Tought to look at pro's and cons which may give clues on what to use in what context. When trying to install i got a reminiscence of installing

GDC Day 1 Picture Diary AI Summit

2011-03-14T23:47:00.002+01:00

I spent my first day at GDC 2011 in the AI summit, but first I had breakfast with Susan Gold. OBS, in this post the text may very well be incomprehensible. I'll try to write something understandable in a post where I summarise GDC. Here I am still processing impressions. Creating Your Building Blocks: Modular Component AI SystemsAlex Champandard (AiGameDev.com), Brett Laming (Rockstar Leeds) and

A week in the EIS lab, picture diary

2011-03-01T20:44:00.002+01:00

I'm spending a few weeks at the EIS Lab at UCSC, getting started on a research project. I found cosy Victorian guesthouse where one can rent by the week.I got a run-down from James S on how to get ABL (A behavior language) up and running, with example code that hooks it up to another virtual world. Perfect for me and Christoph at Pixeltamer too look at if we hook up ABL to the Pataphysic

Mulling over IVA'10 on my way to the airport

2010-09-23T00:43:00.005+02:00

Imagine a conference where the sole purpose is to build virtual humans. In order to do so, everyone needs to understand what it is to be human. This creates a quite special kind of crowd. This crowd just had a 3 day conference in Pennsylvania, showing and discussing their latest IVAs, that is, Intelligent Virtual Agents. In almost all conversations at this conference there is a meta-activity

IVA2010 has started

2010-09-20T15:49:00.002+02:00

I'm in Philadelphia, here for the IVA conference (Intelligent Virtual Agents). I'm sitting in a ballroom with some hundred others, listening to Paul Debevec from ICT, USC, who is showing pictures of faces in 3D with high detail. If you want more detailed information, look here: Invited Speakers. My flight was blissfully uneventful, despite a small debacle at Heathrow where we first got boarded

Nordic Digra - Summary

2010-08-19T12:17:00.001+02:00

The first Nordic DIGRA conference was held at DSV in Kista, Stockholm, the 16th and 17th of August. There were 12 paper presentations in a single track, two keynotes and one workshop.The conference was really nice, and a good opportunity to connect and reconnect with researchers working in the Nordic countries. For years we have kept meeting at international conferences, far away from home, joked

Nordic Digra Day 2 - live notes

2010-08-18T17:20:00.003+02:00

Nordic Digra Conference, 17th August, 2010, DSV, Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. These are my live diary notes from the second day of the conference.Paper Session: Game DesignHagen, Designing for Player Experience: How Professional Game Developers Communicate Design Visions//not taking notes, already read the paper (a great paper).QABjörn - Don’t you reiterate the auteur myth of the single genius? Two

Nordic Digra Day 1 - live notes

2010-08-18T10:43:00.007+02:00

Nordic Digra Conference, 16th August, 2010, DSV, Kista, Stockholm, Sweden.These are my live diary notes from the first day of the conference.I started out by going to the Nordic Digra Chapter meeting, and then catching the second half of the workshop on Collecting and analyzing video data in game studies led by Jonas Linderoth, Ulrika Bennerstedt & Björn Sjöblom. We looked at videos and

E3 2010

2010-06-23T07:40:00.003+02:00

E3 this year happened just prior to the Foundation for Digital Games Conference (FDG) so me, Jakob Berglund, Mattias Görl and Don Geyer hit both venues. Me and Jakob had demos to show at FDG, and Don had a speech to make at the education summit in relation to E3.The best with these venues are as always the people you meet; I met with Brian Schwab and got to talk some AI, and was lucky to run into

Final Fantasy at the Stockholm Concert Hall

2010-06-13T12:15:00.004+02:00

Yesterday was dedicated to the Final Fantasy Series at the Stockholm Concert Hall (Konserthuset). I was part of a panel in the afternoon, and in the evening I had one of the most intensive musical experiences in my life. The panel was organised by Goodgame, and moderated by David Westerlund. My co-panelists were Annika Bergström Olofssdotter (Nordic Game / Founder of SuperMarit), Matilda

Accepting the Ring

2010-06-10T12:53:00.005+02:00

The day before yesterday we had the Gotland Game Awards 2010 Awards Ceremony here at Gotland University. The main point of the ceremony is to give prices to the students who have produced amazing games during the year, but I also got five minutes in the spot-light. Richard Bartle, who was one of the examiners when I defended my dissertation in February at Teesside congratulated me to the award of

Gotland Game Awards

2010-06-08T09:35:00.001+02:00

Richard BartleOriginally uploaded by mimmiGotland Game Awards is in progress. Yesterday the second-year students presented their work in the morning. The exhibition of all the students was crowded, and in the afternoon Susan Gold, Evan Van Zelfden and Richard Bartle gave interesting speeches. Today we continue with student presentations from the first, second and fourth-year students, ending with

Phd Thesis Online!

2010-04-27T16:46:00.001+02:00

A few weeks ago the amended version of my PhD thesis, titled 'Characterising Action Potential in Virtual Game Worlds Applied with the Mind Module' was approved by Teesside University. I changed two sentences, erased three words and corrected typos in the text I submitted in September 2009.Now the thesis will be printed as hard-copies according to instructions from Teessid University and as soft

live notes GDC AI summit, rant

2010-03-10T03:05:00.001+01:00

Quick notes from the rant sessionAI DEVELOPERS RANT!SPEAKER/S: Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm), John Funge (Netflix), Borut Pfeifer (Plush Apocalypse Productions), Steve Rabin (Nintendo of America), Kevin Dill (Lockheed Martin) and Adam Russell (University of Derby) More...//went outmby first speaker,missed talk, only saw ending with a pic of a sexdoll2nd speakerworking with designers: red pill -

live notes: GDC AI summit: AI AND INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING

2010-03-10T02:43:00.003+01:00

Some quick notes jotted down about the talk AI AND INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING: HOW WE CAN HELP EACH OTHERSPEAKER/S: Michael Mateas (University of California, Santa Cruz), Daniel Kline (Crystal Dynamics) and Emily Short (Independent) More...official DESCRIPTION: For some time, the industry has been exploring how to effectively manage the complexity of multiple story arcs, contextually appropriate

My GDC 10 Schedule

2010-03-07T19:43:00.000+01:00

My GDC 10 ScheduleMore...

Viva voce

2010-02-24T22:44:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I defended my PhD thesis “Characterising Action Potential in Virtual Game Worlds Applied with the Mind Module” at Teesside University. The examiners were professor Richard Bartle and doctor Alan Hind. One of my supervisors, professor Paul van Schaik, was present as an observer. The committee recommended award of degree with minor amends.

Digra 2009

2009-12-01T23:50:00.004+01:00

DIGRA 2009 was held at Brunel University, in the outskirts of London, the same university where A Clockwork Orange was shot. The conference took place the 1st to the 4th of September, that is, three months ago.The most prominent memories I have from the conference is:Richard Bartle's grumpy keynote, where he highlighted the lack of fundamentals of games expressed in formal syntaxes.Michael

Tales of the Arabian Nights

2009-10-16T11:27:00.001+02:00

i'm a donkey without destiny on my way to serendibOriginally uploaded by mimmiEvery now and then we at the game department at Gotland University gather to play games, an yesterday we played the boardgame The tales of the Arabian Nights by Eric Goldberg at Jakob's place.My character was Sheherazade, but I was turned into a donkey. During the game - i had a fad for looking too closely at mysterious

Alice and Kev in Sims 3

2009-06-18T13:24:00.004+02:00

Alice and Kev is a story about two homeless characters in Sims 3, played and written about by Robin Burkinshaw. Burkinshaw writes about what happens as he playes the game, each interpretation he makes in the text is based on an event.The new version of Sims, which I haven’t played yet, seem to be an even better environment for story construction. I made a small story in Sims 2 to try it out. It

Pataphysic Institute flyer

2009-05-16T15:03:00.002+02:00

Demo Session day 4 FDG2009

2009-05-10T16:52:00.002+02:00

In the demo session we got the chance to look closer at the applications presented at the conference.The demo session reminds me of the ACE conference, but here at FDG it was more weaved into the program: It was put late, so that one could go and look closer at those applications that had sparkled an interest during the paper presentations. All conferences in this field should do it like this! As

Damien Isla on AI aided content creation, FDG2009 day 4

2009-05-10T16:09:00.003+02:00

Damian Isla, Founder, Naimad Games, Next-Gen Content Creation for Next-Gen AIDamian Isla approached the area of content creation aided by AI for games by looking at two possible solutions: (1) Michael Mateas’ standpoint of the need for a new breed of engineering competent designers, and (2) Chris Hecker’s standpoint of the need for better authoring paradigms (“The Photoshop of AI”). Damian

FDG day 3, afternoon and pirate night

2009-05-10T16:06:00.001+02:00

We spent the afternoon ashore, and after returning to the ship it was time for the poster session and a panel about Academic/Industry Collaboration.Here are the posters that I found most interesting:Panel about Academic/Industry Collaboration.Steve Berman (Founder & CEO, Transformative Media Consortium and COO, IP Pacific/Canada), Mark Overmars (Utrecht University), Magy Seif El-Nasr (Simon

Game Studies Session FDG day 3

2009-05-10T15:45:00.002+02:00

Paper Session #5: Game StudiesSession chair: TL TaylorHardcore casual: Game culture return(s) to Ravenhearst, Mia ConsalvoMia Consalvo has been studying the player base of the casual games produced by Big Fish Games in order to see if players of casual games differ from players of other types of games – but found lots of similarities between these players and players of more ‘hardcore’ games.I

FDG 2009 Day 2, Yasmin Kafai on game design “for girls”

2009-05-09T17:53:00.001+02:00

Invited Talk: Yasmin Kafai, Ph.D., Professor of Learning Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School at EducationBeyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Girls and GamesYasmin Kafai gave an interesting speech on the history of designing games for girls, providing us with three named categories for these design endeavors:- Games for girls only- Games for social change- Games

FDG 2009 Day 2, Session: Intelligent Content Generation

2009-05-09T17:33:00.000+02:00

During this session I was distracted: I thought I had lost my camera, so I was running around searching for it, and filled in a form at the guest services in case someone had found it. Once I gave up I had missed Ken’s speech (Scenario generation for emergency rescue training games, Kenneth Hullett and Michael Mateas).The room was full, so I settled down on the floor listening to Gillian

Towards Acknowledging the Diversity of Game Research Methodologies FDG Day 2: Working Group Meeting

2009-05-09T16:48:00.004+02:00

Before lunch the second day of FDG Magy Seif El-Nasr held the Working Group Meeting: Towards Acknowledging the Diversity of Game Research Methodologies. These were our starting points:We gathered in groups and presented what research we were doing, and what methods we were using. In our group this took 20 minutes of the 30 we had. It was diverse of course, our methods. The discussion concluded in

FDG Day 2 - AI Session with David and Magy

2009-05-09T16:16:00.002+02:00

In the morning of the 2nd day of FDG I listened to the AI session, were David Olsen presented his take on computational humor in games. (Beep! Beep! Boom!: Towards a Planning Model of Coyote and Road Runner Cartoons) He recognizes the following problems:David is specifically looking at physical humor, and is studying Coyote and Road Runner Cartoons. Here, there is a set of rules to lean on:David

FDG Day 1 - Satchells keynote and 2 panels

2009-05-09T15:37:00.002+02:00

In the afternoon, when we were all safely aboard, Chris Satchell (Chief Technology Officer for the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), Microsoft) gave the opening key note: Evolution of the medium: Positioning for the future of gamingNext on the schedule was a panel about “Creating and Managing an Academic Games Program” with Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech), Gary Brubaker (The Guildhall at SMU),

FDG 2009

2009-05-08T18:14:00.003+02:00

I just got home from the conference Foundations of Digital Games (FDG). FDG has been running for a few years now, hosted by Microsoft, and was this year made larger than previous year, with 220 attendees.FDG is special in a number of ways. First, it is an academic game conference that explicitly focuses on the educational aspect of games, on how we teach them, and providing a forum for talking

ACE08 Highlights of day 2

2008-12-14T15:28:00.002+01:00

The highlights for me on the second day of ACE were in the technology track in the afternoon:Aaron Lewisohn presented his system BeatBender and showed how it could generate rhythms. The application for trying out different rule sets for the rhythm generation seemed very tempting to play with. In the QA I asked whether he thought it would be feasible to use it in another system. It would be

ACE08 - Entertainment in Dining

2008-12-10T10:43:00.001+01:00

Chief manager Shuntaro Yamazaki (NEC Central Research Laboratory) showed in his keynote “Information and Communication Technologies for Food and Entertainment “an application that can be used as a social icebreaker at large social gatherings, “Active Avatar”. People can, instead of shyly shuffling around in corners, get an idea of another person’s hobbies and other data, which will make it easier

ACE08 Human Entrained Embodied Interaction and Communication

2008-12-10T10:20:00.003+01:00

The first day of the Advances of Computer Entertainment 2008 Conference in Yokohama was dedicated to keynotes and to a dinner so we attendees got a chance to socialize a little. Professor Tomio Watanabe (Okayama Prefectural University) gave in his keynote Human-Entrained Embodied Interaction and Communication Technology an exposé of a number of interesting projects. Several of them took a stance

The Poetic Principle

2008-11-12T16:35:00.002+01:00

I have been thinking. During trans Atlantic flights there is time for that. I just came home from Project Horseshoe in Texas, and being there led me to emphasize some thoughts to the point of this text being written, right now. I remember when I was sitting by the harbor in Savannah in the autumn of 2005 and a big ship passed by. I felt an instant identification. That is me. I have done like that

FuturePlay 2008

2008-11-12T13:03:00.004+01:00

November 3 – 5, Toronto, Canada. FuturePlay is a yearly conference focusing on game design and technology, held in Canada. I had the chance to go this year to present work I have done with Mike Sellers: we have both worked on agent based architectures for characters in multiplayer games. Doing so we have looked at what we can learn about the human mind from the deconstruction of it done in

Books to keep close

2008-09-15T16:57:00.001+02:00

Books to keep closeOriginally uploaded by mimmiWhile packing up in Santa Cruz, before returning to Sweden, I had to decide which ones to ship and which ones I to take on the flight. These ones I decided i needed to keep close.

LaTeX packages for PhD theses

2008-08-06T06:10:00.004+02:00

I have been looking at LaTeX packages for PhD theses, most closely at the Dalhousie package, the Stanford package, and the UCLA package.Dalhousie and Stanford uses the "plain" bibliography style, which means that references in text are as short as possible as[1]. For such a long text as a PhD thesis it would force the reader to have to continuously search the Bibliography in the end. The UCLA

Blogging with MS OneNote

2008-08-02T03:58:00.006+02:00

Using OneNote for blogging is possible for those that have server space with WebDAV functionality... More... I use the software OneNote from Microsoft a lot when i work. It has features for documenting what one does in a really nice integrated way. It is useful to remember processes with many steps, where the first time one tries there are a lot of trial and error. Keeping track of the errors is.

Roll out... Roll back... Roll out (repeat)

2008-08-02T00:32:00.007+02:00

After 30 - 40 hours of rolling out, rolling back, rolling out, rolling back (repeat) different versions of Torque MMOkit (version 0.0.3 SP, 1.3 SP, 1.5.2 SP) and searching the forums for undocumented todo's and trying them one by one.... and for each change, recompile world, update server database, build new client, restart servers, try client locally, try client remotely.... I finally got an

Single Sentiment - Sorrow

2008-08-02T00:15:00.003+02:00

For the the guided paper prototype play i conducted some of the design for World of Minds, i used paintings by Bosch as inspiration when i made the single sentiment mobs. Here is an example:it was relaxing to draw these mobs, as a break from designing game mechanics and worrying about coding them.

Gotland Game Awards 2008

2008-06-17T21:03:00.005+02:00

Gotland Game Awards is a yearly event where the game students at Gotland University present and exhibit the games they have produced during the year. The games are evaluated by an invited jury where the majority with members from various game production companies (this year from Starbreeze, Streamline, PixelTamer, Avalanche, Deadline Games, 3 Lives Left, JadeStone, Funcom, TripWire, Avaloop,

GGA08 preparations

2008-06-05T15:56:00.002+02:00

Gotland Game Awards starts tomorrow! An intense week for the HGO game department: students and faculty in full crunch!

concept pic for playtest of wom

2008-03-20T01:01:00.001+01:00

concept pic for playtest of wom Originally uploaded by mimmi josh and the owls

IPIP NEO you say?

2008-03-05T02:21:00.001+01:00

IPIP NEO you say? Originally uploaded by mimmi Soon I will ask for test subjects in the lab. There is a number of stages in the implementation that i need to paper prototype. Wizard of Oz, here i come.

GDC 2008 Diary Day 5 (friday)

2008-02-27T02:36:00.003+01:00

On the last and fifth day of GDC my energy started to run out, but i managed to bounce up early enough to get toDesigning Conflict Resolution without CombatGordon Walton...and to:Hitting the Jackpot in the MMO Game SpaceAllen Partridge... but didn't really wake up untilDefeating Designer's Block, Tools to Boost Creative Output – Part 2: Putting the ideas into PracticeGraeme AnkersThis was an

GDC 2008 Diary Afternoon Day4 (Thursday)

2008-02-26T23:26:00.004+01:00

On my way to lunch I ran in to Olivier Lejade who agreed with me on the lameness of the Future of MMO panel, but who said that Chris Hecker's speech on Structure vs Style had been fantastic. I missed out on that - Michael Mateas had also recommended Hecker's speech. That will be the first one I check out when all the slides are put online next week.For lunch i was in for a historic moment.

GDC 2008 Diary Morning Day4 (Thursday)

2008-02-26T21:41:00.004+01:00

I started out with a breakfast meeting with Mike Sellers from Online Alchemy. This was one of my highlight of the conference. You probably know that feeling of meeting a universe of ideas that is chillingly familiar to ones own but yet different. I get that when speaking to Mike.I made it to the second half ofThe Next 20 Years of Gaming Ray KurzweilA few random notes:RK showed a number diagrams

GDC 2008 Diary Day 3 (wednesday)

2008-02-26T04:48:00.004+01:00

I ended up having an enjoyable social morning, starting with a breakfast at Lauries with Mike, Patricia, and papa Mike,Once I reached the convention centre i ran into George,and we continued an old conversation about hedgehog mating rituals, concluding that we all are but humping soufflés. One of my favorite conversations of the day.After some more random conversations I made it into the

GDC 2008 Diary Afternoon Day 2 (tuesday )

2008-02-26T03:48:00.003+01:00

I caught the last minutes ofLearning to Love Virtual Item SalesSpeaker(s): Andrew Schneider (Live Gamer), Steve Goldstein (Ping0)Time: 3:30pm - 4pmQAQ: Loans?A: Nooo!Socioeconomics in Online WorldsModerator: Michael Zenke (Slashdot Games)Panelist(s): Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (CCP Inc.), Craig Sherman (Gaia Online), JohnBates (MindArk)Time: 4:15pm - 5pmQAQ: Is RTM (Real Money Trade) a cover-up for bad

GDC 2008 Diary Morning Day 2 (tuesday )

2008-02-26T02:56:00.004+01:00

I wanted to go to listen to Jeffrey Steefel at Turbine since i am still impressed by the social system that was built into Acheron's Call. It was pure genius to use experience points as a carrot for encouraging "old" players to help out new players. The social system was pyramidical. Each player chose a patron. The patron on top became the guild leader. This meant that each patron had to earn the

GDC 2008 Diary Aftenoon Day 1 (monday)

2008-02-26T02:10:00.003+01:00

I made it toMultiverse: From the FieldSpeaker(s): Corey Bridges & Rafhael Cedeno (Multiverse)Time: 4:45pm - 5:30pmI have been following Multiverse's work since i first got to know about them through a press release, i think it may have been two years ago. I am fond of their philosophy and approach: the revenue model is based on sharing future income from a game when it starts to gain revenue,

GDC 2008: Our Panel: Cross-Institution Projects to Broaden Projects and Courses

2008-02-26T01:07:00.004+01:00

After lunch on monday I was part of the panel: Cross-Institution Projects to Broaden Projects and CoursesSpeaker: Stephen Jacobs (RIT)Panelists: Drew Davidson (Carnegie Mellon University), Ann DeMarle(Champlain), Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari, Mary Flanagan (Hunter College),Stephane Natkin (ENJMIN), Andrew Phelps (RIT)2-4pm · Room 122, North Hall Session Takeaway: A

GDC 2008 Diary Morning Day 1 (monday)

2008-02-26T00:42:00.006+01:00

We drove up from Santa Cruz early enough that I could catch the few last minutes of Raph Koster's speech. (Why Gamers should Care about Virtual Worlds)Totally out of context since i didn't hear what led up to it:"VW's are a lot of windows"" Don't only think of the hammer, but what you can build with it. "Luckily Raph Koster is a master documentalist, so i could update myself on his site:/gdc08-

Santa Cruz, Tokyo, Texas and Sweden

2007-11-24T07:13:00.000+01:00

I haven’t blogged for a while … These are the post I would like to have written: How great it was to move to Santa Cruz in California in the end of august. The EIS lab at the university (UCSC) is very nice place to bee at. Not only is Micheal Mateas there, there is also ten other people who do so interesting stuff I just could faint.