Gotland Game Awards 2008

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, Crytek). The winners get fame/money/stuff/travels/thing-to-put-in-shelf.

The competing games: http://www.hgo.se/gga/

The cornerstone of GGA is to focus the attention on the work of the students. Ie, instead of the students listening and learning they get a highly competent jury who focuses on the students work, creating a space for discussion that pointedly is about learning from the specific (the produced game) rather than from abstract principles.

More...


The first day of GGA the students presented their games for the audience, in 10 – 20 minutes time slots.

A presenter

An audience


Link to more pictures of presentations.
The second day of GGA was playtime. The games were exhibited in the new congress center.

A game being played



Link to more pictures from the game show

In the evening: Awards Ceremony.



In the night: Celebration!

But I was too busy celebrating for taking pictures. Needless to say I had a blast during the whole event. Having been at USCS in California for most part of the previous year it was such a joy to visit and meet all the ones I missed, and to get this warm glowing feeling of pride seeing the work of the students (not that I can claim any of that pride whatsoever, but I can’t deny having that glowing feeling).

Link the 261 the photographs I took during GGALinks to other blogs about GGA:

Ernest Adams: post on The Designer’s Notebook

Gorm Lai: post on I love it, I feel like Sisyphus

Jasmine Ortbandt: post on Jasmine O’s Webworld

Tobias Lundmark: photos at Through the Looking Glass


The Winners

Catagory:

The Red Cross Antidiscrimination Bureau Sponsored prize:

The Award for for Human Rights and Antidiscrimination

2 winners: Monks of Sangrrael & Insats Afrika

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Catagory:

The Almedalen Library Award

winners: Fairytale

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Catagory:

JADE Project Award

winners: Fairytale

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Catagory:

Best Presentation

winners: In Other Words

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Catagory:

Best Serious Game

winners: Gamerider

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Catagory:

Best CG Animation - Theme Park

winners: In Harmony with Nature

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Catagory:

Best CG Animation - Commercial

winners: Wacom in Motion

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Catagory:

Best Cinematic - Open and Invitational

winners: Perfekt

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Catagory:

Alumni of the Year Award

winner: Anders Ekermo

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Catagory:

Best Arcade Game - Theme Park

winners: Deep Ocean

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Catagory:

Best Game - Big Game Project

winners: Planetaria

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Catagory:

Best Game - Open and Invitational

winners: Dark Room

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Catagory:

Best at show all catagories

winners: Vertigo

GGA08 preparations

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

Santa Cruz, Tokyo, Texas and Sweden

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.
• Summary of the Digra Conference in Tokyo in the end of September. I have written some about it here, but there was so much to write, so this is where fell behind in blogging.
• The Project Horseshoe in Texas in the beginning of November. That’s a think tank dedicated to solving difficult game design problems. It was one of those experiences it is hard to find words for – good or great sounds lame in comparison to the actual feelings.
• That I’m now back in Sweden to visit family and friends. In two weeks I’m heading back to the sunny California again.

Winter in Stockholm

I spent most of the winter in a sofa corner dressed different Hello Kitty pyjamas. Well, I guess that's a truth with modification, but it feels like that in hindsight. I decided to take a break from developing for a while to allow myself some reflection. Instead of implementing I have been reading and playing. So I have been reviewing articles for journals and conferences focussing on game studies. I got dragged out of my sofa corner on a regular basis though since a few brave souls in Swedish media have realized that virtual worlds are interesting. I also received the Hans Werthén scholarship from the Royal Swedish Academy of the Engineering Sciences, an occasion where I definitely needed to wear something else than a Hello Kitty pyjama.

My sofa-corner

My excursions to Swedish media:

2007-04-29
TV400, Gameplayer TV, part 4 of 7, 23.45
Vi tittar närmare på online-spelande. Reportage om Age of Conan och hands-on i studion av Lord of the Rings.
http://gameplayer.se/videoplayer.php?publication_id=6524

***

2007-04-24
Tidningen Vi, Majnumret
"Sinnesingeniören" (The mind engineer)
http://www.vi-tidningen.se/templates/ArticlePage.aspx?id=9140

***

2007-03-14
Dagens Industri, p 19
"Forskaren som ger dataspelen nytt liv" (The researcher who give computer games new life)

***

2007-03-14
Svenska Dagbladet, Näringsliv, p 14 - 15
"De har världen som arbetsfält" (The world is their working field)

***

2007-03-13
Kungl. Ingengiörsvetenskapsakademien
Hans Werthén-fonden (Hans Werthén Scholarship, Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences)
Tilldelning av stipendie om 125 000 kr för gästforskarperiod på University of Santa Cruz, Kalifornien.
http://www.iva.se/templates/Page.aspx?id=164

***

2007-03-05
Sveriges Television, Kunskapskanalen, Mera Kultur, 20.00
Datorspel i fantasi och verklighet (Computer games in fantasy and reality)
De parallella världarna på internet växer både i storlek och popularitet. Här utspelar sig oftast sagans till synes okonstlade kamp mellan gott och ont. Så länge fantasi finns kommer behovet av en myt, episk berättelse eller fabel aldrig att stillas. Stora rollspel som till exempel World of Warcraft engagerar miljontals människor över hela klotet. Programvärden Fredrik Sahlin samtalar med kulturjournalisten och spelrecensenten Jonas Thente samt spelforskaren Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari som berättar om attraktionen, kommersen och framtiden för datorspelen.
http://mobil.svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=48111&a=770467


Well, Vivi claims that he actually conjured Fredrik Sahlin. "How else could the host of a tv show about video games as culture be so charming, handsome and intelligent?" he asked me.



Again Vivi claims to have conjured a person, this time video-games reviewer.

***

2007-02-23
Dagens Nyheter, DN Kultur, Spelreportage
Fantastiska Final Fantasy (Fantastic Final Fantasy)
Två framträdande spelpersonligheter, chefredaktören för speltidningen Level Tobias Bjarneby och doktoranden i spelutveckling Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari förklarar för oss varför Final Fantasy-serien är så stor.
http://www.dn.se/spel/fantastiska-final-fantasy-1.451524

***

2007-01-19

TV4 Nyhetsmorgon:
Virtuella världar är en verklighet i dag (Virtual worlds are a reality today)

Mirjam Eladhari, doktorand i spelutveckling, och Susanne Möller, spelskribent DN, är gäster i soffan.

http://www.tv4.se/player/categories.aspx?treeid=100311&pid=95793&more=1

Vivi was charmed by Susanne Möller who he met in the coffee room at TV4 in Stockholm. He kept talking about her for days! How cool she was and how nice and how much she knows about WoW and how much he loves the reviews she writes for DN... Finally I had to tuck him back into the handbag again ;)

Visiting Scholar at Tokyo Tech

I spent the autumn of 2006 in Tokyo, as a visiting scholar at professor Nakajima’s lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology. It was made possible by the Sweden Japan Foundation, who awarded me a scholarship that covered the extra cost for the visiting period.
It was a fantastic to get the chance to switch environments like this – to be able to stay long enough to get the feel of how it is to have an every day life in Japan. I have summarized what it was like working in the lab and living in Tokyo in this document. I also give a few practical tips that I think can be of use for others who will get the chance to go away as a visiting scholar to Japan.

Overview of the summary:
At campus
In the lab
Being in Tokyo
Getting to know Japanese culture
How to behave
Memorable events
Tokyo Game Show
The lab’s off-site to the Kinugawa hot spring
A visit to Namco Bandai
Practical tips
Cash
Cell phone
How to get around
Applying for scholarships – practical tips.

A visit to Namco Bandai. I want to move into the gundam egg.

The game we tried when visiting Namco Bandai
Originally uploaded by mimmi.

Nakajima sensei's good friend Baba sensei, technical conductor at Namco Bandai organised a fun and interesting visit where we had the opportunity to try an über cool game that is under production We also had a QA session with the developers. All in all the development of this game (gundam) has gone on for five years with different iterations and releases, having a dev team of around thirty people. The picture here shows a screen where it is possible to monitor the movement of players doing matches against each other. While playing one sits in a big egg with an encompassing screen and one has hand contorls and pedals for the feet to act through in the game world. Also there was a headset with mic so one could talk to the team members. It was ok to photograph this screen but not the egg. I hope it is ok to describe it. I want that egg! It maybe impossible to have such a big thing at home, bit then I at least want to live close to an arcade that has an egg! It was great! egg egg egg!! I want to make games for the egg and want to live in an egg!
This is the first game that is implemented for it. The hall where it was was filled with different arcade mashines. That is to me a whole new area, since the arcades are not that big in europe. In order to test the games Namco Bandai has an arcade hall where they do the usertesting of the game. Design wise the process have changed over the last twenty years for Namco Bandai from first designing for the arcades and then make versions for home use (when home computers and consoles were rare) to today when the versions are designed simoultaneoulsy. The framerate in the egg was so fast that i didn't feel sick at all after playing. I compare that with a production that was made at a game company where i worked in 2001, that was done for 3d glasses. We had to take turns testing it since one wanted to vomit after approx five minutes. This was different! This was good! I'm not sure how much I can say so i stop here. But i want to move into an egg!

A few more pictures

Tuesday Seminars at Nakajima/Saito Lab, Titech

West flank of seminar,
originally uploaded by mimmi.

Every Tuesday in Nakajima-Saito Lab at Tokyo Tech we all gather for a seminar. The topics vary - it can be presentations that are to be held at a conference soon, a summary of a visited conference, announcements of events etc.

Arrived to Tokyo Tech

I am now making myself at home in Nakajima Lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology where I will spend this autumn working on my thesis. I’m staying at the International House which is conveniently located in the same campus as the lab; Ookayama Campus.



The trip here was a bit of an ordeal, but I’m suspecting that the travelling curse I seem to be affected by is loosing it’s grip! I didn’t land in the middle of a potential civil war, as I did in Beijing 1989, I didn’t end up on the wrong continent as I did 2004 in Costa Rica when I was supposed to go to California, and I wasn’t left in the wilderness without luggage and handbag as I was 2003 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. What happened this time was that I missed my flight at Heathrow due to the time to stand in line for security checks, and that I, on my way to Tokyo Tech gave the taxi driver 30 000 yen instead of 3 000. That is peanuts really compared to what usually happens when I travel alone. But I’d better not get my hopes up, it could be bad luck and hubris, and I should touch some wood immediately. (Swedish custom that annuls bad luck due to hasty comments expressing hope.)

As soon as I got to the lab I could relax. Everyone was extremely helpful and just in a few hours I had all accounts needed, a desk, access to both the lab and the International House where I stay, had my luggage dropped of and got guided around the area! We even had time to drink coffee and chat.



Since my arrival I have… well it feels like I have slept more than I have been awake, but in the waking hours I have been reading guidebooks. In the reading room of the International house I found a veritable treasure of literature on Japan – guidebooks, classical Japanese literature, language course book and more.
Being enveloped by a sign system that is new to me I have made a start of deciphering it by listening to pod casts with Japanese language lessons and browsing some books on katana and hiragana – signs.



I still haven’t used the subway, but I will at least do it on Friday to get to the Tokyo Game Show.
I am probably in line for a culture shock (se phases here), but it will probably be mitigated by the fact that the lab is pretty much like labs are all over the place. The questions I asked about the daily routines of the lab when I arrived made me feel at home – it is familiar. So I can make excursions to explore Tokyo with the comforting knowledge that I can go back to the lab. Here is information about the research in the lab.

MUDs, Reports and Marriage

This summer my main to-do’s have been to make my yearly report to Teesside and to start building a MUD. Before I go to Tokyo Tech (I’ll be visiting scholar in professor Nakajima's group this autumn) I aim to have the basic functional framework done for the MUD. I gave the MUD the working name “World of Minds” since the reason for building it is to get a test environment for the Mind Module. It is SO FUN to build it! I scrapped all my principles of what processes to use when building software and designing games since I’m on my own! – no one is dependent on me in this and I’m not dependent on anyone. Wheeeee – its just to hack away and play around as much as want to! I can throw in champagne, Hell-muppets and flying scythe monkeys and and and… Yesterday I realized I need some sort of order not to get lost myself, so I set up a wiki for World of Minds – manual, design document and other useful data. While I was at it – in documentation mode so to speak – I set up a home page for myself as well.

The most important thing that has happened this summer is that I have gotten married! We, my husband (!) Rauno and I, decided to ignore social conventions of how to match invitation cards with handbags and god knows what… we eloped to Bali instead! So now I am Mrs Palosaari-Eladhari. If any of my unmarried friends starts to plan a wedding, my strong recommendation would be to keep quiet and book a trip to the paradase - which is Bali. Gunilla who has the travel agency organising it fixed everything - even the clothes. We just relaxed and let other people pamper us. The morning of the wedding we went diving (Rauno got his diving certificate on the trip) and then had drinks in the pool before the hairdresser, make up artist and masseuse arrived!

Winter in Stockholm

I’m an office-nomad. I’m spending the winter in Stockholm, in the days I go to the Interactive Institute by Karlaplan where I have a desk and nice people around me to have coffee and occasionally go to lunch with. I travel to Visby a week a month till I go back there fulltime in April.



I have been to Visby twice during the winter. In January Craig held our PhD seminar, where he went back over the years to the publications that came out when we still were in the Zero Game studio. It is interesting to now, a few years later, see what caught on from that time and what didn’t. I did a google search on the main terms from the paper “The Game Play Gestalt, Narrative and Interactive Storytelling from 2002. The term“First Person Actor” didn’t catch on at all, while the “Game Play Gestalt” seem to have been useful for many people.

The second time in visby was last week when it was my turn to hold the seminar. I presented the work I did last autumn when I was at Gatech and a new idea for implementation that I’m still evaluating.



We also talked about our abstracts for the Role Playing seminar in Tampere. Mattias is writing a paper named “Brainwashing is Fun! A theoretical Approach to How Role-Playing Can Work for Advertising, Propaganda and Educational Purposes”, and Jenny and I are working on “Projective Characterisation Aided by Natural Language Applications in Computer Mediated Role Playing Games”.
I must have had hubris when I wrote the abstracts for that seminar. I also sent in one on the subject “How Reward Systems in Multiplayer RPGs Affect the Game Experience and the Progress of the Character”, where I, in the abstract, outline a quite large study including analysis of rule systems and interviews with players. I have no idea how on earth I thought I would have time to do that too in the midst everything else. Yesterday I wrote to Marcus and Petri with sorrow in my heart to tell them I won’t make it. I remember though that I felt very happy while writing that abstract so I hope can get time to do that study soon, but maybe for another venue.

I also held a seminar at the Interactive Institute the 26th of January. It was really nice, It was Oscar Juhlin’s suggestion. He leads the mobility studio, and as a group they have a nice tradition of seminars. We called it “The Player’s journey - The conditions for character and identity development in massively multi player role-playing games”. I got some useful feedback, so I hope I get the opportunity to do it again some time.

A few days before that the Swedish foundation for strategic research hosted an event about how to commercialize Swedish game research at the Wasa Museum. The subject for the evening was a bit strange since we are not that many who actually do game research, plus that there is not much consensus about what game research really is. Many of us started the dinner discussions from that stance … and the food was great and the company too. I’m impressed by the way the organizers did the social engineering that evening: It was divided into cocktail like conversation situations and two moderated dinner session where everyone switched company. If the aim was to broaden contact surfaces of an emerging network it was certainly successful.



But what am I actually doing… I guess I could divide this winter’s work into categories; implementing the Mind Module, writing papers and reports and doing teaching stuff for HGO.
The implementation of the Mind Module is still the work that to me is most fun and immersive. I have made a variety of it into a DLL to make a demonstrator for how sound and music can be used to express the mental state of a character. I’m working on this with Mikael Friedfalk and Rik Niewdorp. Mike does the game programming and the integration with the music. He is not only a teacher and PhD in computing science but also a musician and composer himself, and has deep knowledge in applications for adptive music. Rik is a composer who lives in Holland, and he has spent the winter coming up with music (midi) that can sound good through the whole matrix of possible variations in the mind states. If all goes well we will have our demo done in a few days. Touched by fate I ran into the guy who inspired me to this thing in the first place a couple of years ago, Johnny Wingstedt. He still hangs around at the Interactive Institute so it will be fun to show him the demo and see what he says.

Now when I have had the blessing to be able just program for a while I realized I should try to publish a little, so I have started to plan a few papers, aiming for ACE in Hollywood in June and maybe for DIME that will be in Bangkok on October.

Elina Koivisto is now writing up a report about the testing of the prototype we made in frame of the IPERG project, the Garden of Earthly Delights. I went through my old documents and did a few reports too for inclusion and found myself a bit melancholic. It’s such a shame we couldn’t continue working on it. The platform that Alain Becam and they guys at Daydream was stable enough to work with, and we had done enough tests to know what game play features to implement and had clues about how. It’s not everyday one is told to scrap a functioning massively multiplayer platform with a cell-to-cell coupling to a real world geography with implemented cellphone and PC clients. Oh well. No point crying over already spilled milk as we say in Sweden. (ok I can’t help it: damn!)

What more… my institution duties. This year I’m responsible for the course that will result in the exam works of the students who graduates from the game development program.

… and these papers that I’m planning made me realize I had to write a new skeleton for my thesis. I did that, which was the start of a new relationship: Do I love or hate LaTeX? Time will tell. Anyway, it was good to update it since it’s easier to see whether an idea for an abstract is really relevant for the thesis.



Almost the whole last year I made a huge effort to not get sucked into MMOGs since I can only be obsessed with a few things at once – I needed to clear headspace for programming. But then I couldn’t resist going back to WoW when I was invited to a European researchers guild: the Truants. Have a look at wowresearch.blogspot.com .
It’s good to be back. I missed playing much more than allowed myself to feel.

The Holy Grail of MMOG Design, my speech at Gatech

I held a speech in the TSRB building at Georgia Tech yesterday that Michael Mateas organised. I gave it the somewhat ;) pompous title "The Holy Grail of MMOG Design".



I was positively surprised at how many people showed up. Great because I put in more energy than usual when preparing the slides. Sam Lewis (who just moved to Atlanta to start his new job as lead designer for Cartoon Netwok’s new MMOG) was kind enough to help me out the day before, and when it was “done” I had this feeling of it being a mass of words that wouldn’t say anything to anyone. I know Sam knows what I mean, but that’s just because I have explained it at length. How do it quickly… We came up with a design: Designorama Online - an office type game where the players task is to make games – and tested if we could come up with a simple game that would illustrate the Mind Module and the story deamons. That was great fun, here is the sketch:



I was especially happy that Patrick Williams took the trouble of driving all the way from Athens. He is, toghether with Jonas Heide Smith editing the book “Gaming Cultures and Social Life” to which I made a small contribution. It was really nice meeting in person, and we went off to Starbucks with Hartmut.



Here are the slides from the talk


This is the description of the speech:

Title: The Holy Grail of MMOG Design: Supporting Players to Perform Meaningful Narratives
Speaker: Mirjam Eladhari
Date: Nov. 28, 2005
Time: 2:00pm
Room: TSRB 132


Abstract
One of trickiest problems in the design of massively multiplayer games is how to make the stories meaningful for all thousands of simultaneous players. Traditionally characterization is viewed as one of the cornerstones for a good narrative. But how do we relate to characterization in a media where there is a fictional setting and a back story controlled by design, but the majority of the parts are performed by actors playing themselves?


In this session we briefly touch upon
- The current game play paradigms of virtual game worlds,
- Characterization, self play and role play,
- The notion of heroism and the hero's journey,
- Basic conditions for the creation of narrative potential in massively multiplayer games.


What solutions can we build that use the creativity and sensitivity of the players to facilitate more emotional depth and more meaningful experiences of social game play?


The Mind Module is an attempt in this direction; an architecture for semiautonomous expressive avatars. The player would in the virtual game world not only take a virtual body into possession, but also a mind. This could give the player certain emotional biases towards other objects in the world, such as other players, and provide a basis for player generated stories that have an actual effect in game play terms.


An example implementation in production is the game prototype "The Garden of Earthly Delights" which is a pervasive massively multiplayer game that can be played both in the real world through cell phones as well as in a virtual world via a traditional 3D PC Client. The prototype is done in the work package "Massively Multiplayer Reaching Out", which is part of the EU funded IPERG project.



BIO
Mirjam Eladhari is lead game designer and researcher in the work package "Massively Multiplayer Reaching Out", which is part of the IPERG project. She is also working on her PhD thesis on the topic of "Player Character Mind Models for Deep Characterization and Emergent Story Construction in MMOGs". This research is conducted within the game research group at the Department of Technology, Art and New Media at Gotland University in Sweden, and within the School of Computing at the University of Teesside, UK. Mirjam has worked as a game programmer at Liquid Media in Sweden where she worked on a number of game titles including The Diamond Mystery of Rosemond Valley, a mystery game in real time 3D, for which she was the lead game programmer. She has also worked as technical lead and researcher at the Zero-Game Studio, a part of the Interactive Institute, primarily with the open research MMOG engine Purgatory.

Tombstone Hold em Atlanta 12th Nov 2005

Jane McGonigal brought Tombstone Hold em to Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta this weekend, a lucky coincidence too good to pass out on. Lisbeth and I formed a team and actually managed to win one of the rounds at the table. I love the genius simplicity in the idea of translating tombstones into cards. These are the rules:



It did not feel strange play in a graveyard. Jane explained in her talk at the Austin Game Conference that graveyards through history has been used as social spaces, and that is something to reclaim. Also we were welcomed by a man who works at the Historic Oakland Cemetery who gave us a bit of history and warned us not to fall over and break our legs. But also it is a historical graveyard. It would have been different if it was a place were people are mourning newly diseased.



Here you find all the photographs as well as links to other people's pictures and more information.

Georgia Tech, Atlanta

I have been to Alanta for a week now. Everything has gone well: absolutely nothing went wrong with the flights. (which is so unusual that’s a bit scary!). Michael picked me up at the airport, so I didn’t even have the chance to get lost.

I have all time in the world to concentrate. It is strange and very nice to not be demanded for anything, by anyone. Wow. Im still, after a week, bewildered by that every morning when i wake up. I'm reading, going through files, reading code... and every now and then i sit down on a bench under a tree. Georgia Tech is like a big park. Wonderful flowebeds.

A brief photo diary:




Waking up in Atlanta somewhat confused and jetlagged. This is the view in dawn.



Getting my stuff together.




The first days mainly went into administation, getting cards and keys to be able to enter buildings, filling in forms etc. I ran around on the campus to different administration buildings, and it became very much like a newbie quests: I got to know the geography somewhat.


Michael Mateas talking to Manu in the Experimental Game Lab.



Michael arranged so that I have two workingspaces: An office in the Skyles building, which is where the School of Literature, Communication and Culture is (LCC) and a desk in a shared workspace in the Technology Square Research Building.
This way I can chose if i want to sit among other people or be in the office at Skyles. Best of two worlds.


Here the game consoles are nicely set up. We should do something similar in our lab on gotland, when we finally get that space. Should put all our borad games in there too, and a table with grids on it such as in the dragons lair in stockholm. Another thing which I like with the environment here is that all projects, no matter if it is a student project or a research project has an A3 poster set up somewhere. It’s very nice to stroll around and read these. It would be a good idea to have that at our place too. We wouldn’t have had to be so stressed out about having a poster for the IPERG plenary two weeks ago if we had had a routine like this. But we surely must have an A3 printer somewhere at HGO?


Lisbeth Klastrup is here on research leave too! She took me out for lunch, fed me dinner and lended me a guide book before she hopped on a plane back to Denmark. Luckily she comes back soon. I miss her!


Georgia Tech's Campus area has many nice spots for sitting down on benches under trees. This is my favorite so far. Its by the building where i got an office, Skyles. I go here when i talk over Skype, the wireless network allows it.
Note the sqirrel in the left part of the picture. After i took the picture another one came and they ran around chasing each other.



Shopping… I can’t help laughing when I’m in the grociery store here :).



And this is what the apartment looks like!

More pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/reality/sets/1027813/