PAX

E3 was hugely disappointing... one tiny room for all the games, no banners, no buzz; I know that I used to complain about the old E3 but that was the one week of the year when videogames were the center of entertainment and pop culture. This year's E3 made you depressed to be in videogames.

PAX redeemed that all, bringing back the excitement without, miraculously, the sleaze and cheese factor that E3 sometimes dripped with. What I've always loved about PAX is that it is so authentic -- it's for the fans; there's no bullshit. And I love it for that.

It's growing so massively, too. The first year I attended, which was 2005 (PAX's second year), I think there were about 4-5,000 attendees. Last week's show had 50,000 pre-registered, with many more tickets sold at the door. I'm excited by the growth and it's great for the folks who run PAX, but I do miss the nerdy intimacy of three years ago.

Still, I think PAX has the potential to become a homegrown Leipzig -- a split consumer/trade event. What would be neat is if the trade folks had a couple of days before the show, like they do at TGS, so some of the suits can clear out before the fans arrive Friday afternoon. You don't need the corporates milling about on the weekend. (...I say, being one, technically, myself.)

No matter what happens, though, I'll always have a huge soft spot in my heart for PAX and the folks who run it and make it all work. It's a miracle! So, thanks, Jerry, Mike, Robert, Kristin, Jeff, and other folks I don't yet know. Thanks for a really good time.

Plus, any time I get to hang in Shorty's is all right by me. ;)

Harvey Smith is The Man

And I mean that in the best possible sense, that he is manly. At his talk on Tuesday he gave a brief most-mortem in which he basically apologized for Blacksite. I wasn't there, but I heard about it through friends.

I think this is incredibly brave of him. It's very unusual to have this level of frankness from a creative director about a game. But I appreciate the honesty and the attempt to provide some transparency to game development. Sometimes projects don't go as planned. ...Sometimes, they don't even get planned properly. Harvey was brought into Blacksite really late to, basically, rescue it. All summer and most of the fall this year he was personally staying up to 3 am to go in and fix code and track bugs. He cared about the game and poured his energy into it.

It's like my friend Ryan always says: the line between a bad film and a good on is a razor's edge. So much can go wrong to turn a good film bad. I wonder if the line is even thinner in games.

In any case, I think Harvey is so articulate and personable and talented that he'll weather this and go on to something even better. Because he's the man.

Conversations in Montreal

I didn't get to see a great many sessions yesterday because I had a string of interviews to do but the four that I got to catch revealed a couple of interesting common themes. First is the notion that we are now mature gamers and we want deeper, more meaningful play experiences. Clint brought this up in his panel, Jon Blow talked about this in his awesomely inspiring and challenging keynote, Ben Sawyer lamented the lack of playable, shareable games for small children, and Koizumi Yoshiaki spoke about the need for a game that would be simple and fun for the whole family in his talk on Super Mario Galaxy.

It's true. We're not kids anymore. The power fantasies and the simplistic good versus evil tales which pleased us back when we were kids awed by Star Wars are still good fun, but we want something more complex now, maybe more challenging, more Citizen Kane and Chinatown and Breathless than Transformers or Die Hard.

I also realized something else, listening to Jon Blow's excellent critique of why Bioshock is manipulative schlock - he could put into words what I had intuitively felt about the game but wasn't able to express because I lacked the analytical tools. It also reminded me of Clint's really smart critique of the game. Why does it take game designers to provide actual critique of games in this manner? Because we don't have a real game studies department, we don't have writers who are training in formal analysis of game systems - the people who are most qualified to think about games in this way are people who are building systems and confronting systemic challenges constantly. I don't think it's necessary to have education to be able to talk about games as smartly as people like Jon and Clint do; but it would help. And I'm afraid that true game criticism will not come from game enthusiast press, which are essentially the modern equivalent of fanzines.

Well, more to think about.

CCP Fan Fest in Reykjavik

Woot, I'm going to the EVE-Online Fan Fest next week! I love fan festivals - it's exciting to feel the energy of the crowd and to be around people who are so passionately into something - and, of course, I'm really thrilled to be able to check out Reykjavik, the most expensive city in Europe. Ha!

I'm only there for a few days but is there anything I should absolutely do while I'm there?

You Have Until November 1st

...to create a game for entry into Kokoromi's Gamma 256, the game/art festival the collective throws during the Montreal International Game Summit. I went last year and it was a blast. I wish I could program so I can make something for this year. But I can't!

I know some of you, however, can - so get to it!

UT Videogame Archive Project

A few months back I visited the Center for American History's inaugural launch reception for the UT Videogame Archive Project,

This is very exciting - we've been working with the University of Texas a little bit to help promote their fundraise for the UT Videogame Archive project. It's a party on Richard Garriott's fabled estate, Britannia Manor. Actually, not in the castle itself, but on the grounds, overlooking a lake, where there is also a reproduction of the Globe Theatre (as made famous by Shakespeare).

Platinum sponsors get to sit in the Royal Box at the theatre. Guests will bid on, among other things, a Zero G flight. Which I, of course, totally want to try. Although I've heard that most people throw up. A little puke is worth it, though, no?

Well, Duh.

We all knew this was going to happen, right?

Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, on a spectacular showing.

So, who's going to be in my band? We just need a kick-ass name.

Game Writing Workshop at Austin Attention writers of games planning to go to Austin GDC - Richard Dansky and Daniel Erickson are leading a 2-part, 2-hour intensive Game Writing Workshop at Austin GDC. Here's how it works - you submit your writing sample to agdcwritersworkshop(at)gmail(dot)com before August 15th and Richard and Daniel will tell you if you're in. It's first-come, first-serve. Then for two hours you will receive and provide feedback on fifteen pieces submitted by you and other participants. A writing workshop!

If I weren't working the show I would SO love to sit in on this.

Kokomori: Experimental Art Games Yay! Friends Heather, Phil, and Damien and their game art collective Kokoromi are profiled in This Magazine.

I went to the GAMMA 01 event last year in Montreal, it was fun - a party, with music (Freezepop played although they got stuck in customs and arrived super late!) and DJs made music on DS Lites, and the experimental games were there projected on walls so people could play. The crowd was a mix of game developers, artists, musicians, and Montreal party people.

What I love about Kokoromi is that they explore the notion that games can be used to make art - that they are a medium for self-expression; and by that I don't mean projects like the excellent iam8bit, in which games are evoked in the service of more traditional visual arts; I mean that the gameplay itself is treated as a potential artform - that interactivity is key to the experience.

Can't wait for this year's GAMMA!

GDC Blog

GDC, on which I work now, has a blog. I didn't know that until a few days ago. But now that I do know it, I'll be using that space to post sessions that catch my eye. There are some cool ones I bet you didn't know we had!

I'm also still working on adding new sessions, so I'll post "latest accepted sessions" information there as well.

Slamdance Gamemaking Competition

Slamdance, an independent film festival, is adding indie games to their roster - its winners include CThe Behemoth's Castle Crashers, the student game flOw which is published now for the PS3, and Jonathan Blow's time-play game Braid.

See the full press release below.

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Game Career Seminar

So what have I been working on in my new job as Conference Manager? I'll tell you - the Game Career Seminar, happening next weekend October 28th and 29th at the VGXPO.

If you were like me two months ago, you'll say, what is the VGXPO? It's a new consumer videogame event - this is the second one - in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. You know, where George Washington's men froze their feet off in the winter of 1777.

The event is aimed at high school and pre-major college students, and it's full of practical information and advice - not just about choosing a school and trying the get a job, but also about how to think long-term about a career in the game biz. It's rewarding as hell, but it ain't easy.

If you're a young whippersnapper (or know someone who is) and you want to know more about the game industry and where you might find a place for your talents, I encourage you to check it out.

But, bring an extra pair of boots. Just in case.

iam8bit at 111 Minna

Tonight Chronicle Books is having a book release for the book of iam8bit, which began life as an annual gallery show celebrating art inspired by videogames. You can see some of the art at the 1am8bit gallery page. Co-founder of the series Jon Gibson will be signing copies of the book and chatting it up at the 111 Minna club/gallery, which is right across the street from where I work, so we have no excuse not to go. How about you? Reception is from 6 to 9.

He's Still Will Wright

For all the adulation that comes his way, Will Wright is a modest, self-deprecating, humorous man with a really whimsical approach to giving a keynote speech. A couple of years ago at GDC, for example, he took to the stage as an opportunity to enthuse about one of his favorite topics, the Soviet space program. What does that have to do with videogames? Well, nothing.

Nothing, and everything. This is, after all, Will Wright we're talking about. and he has the kind of hungrily obsessive mind that seeks for consilience in everything - for the links that twine subjects together, for the force that underlies the entire universe.

And that's sort of what he talked about today, splitting time between his latest obsession, astrobiology, and the way the Maxis team prototyped Spore. By the end of the talk it seemed the two threads had converged, and I felt like I had taken an epic journey from microbes to the vast reaches of the universe - and learned a little story about the Russian space program, to boot.

If you've ever seen Will Wright talk, you know that it's nearly impossible to write about it. First, he races with dizzying speed from one point to the next, hardly glancing behind his shoulder to see if you're keeping up. And then the topics he covers - they are extremely complex subjects that people spend their entire lives trying to understand, and he references them and passes to the next in an instant. He dropped a quote that I think is very appropriate to his talk as well as to life: the Irish poet William Butler Yeats said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Wright seeks not to cram you with his knowledge, but I think he really just wants to inspire his listeners to seek it out for themselves, and to knit the disciplines together, as he has done, to reach a greater understanding of humanity, life, the universe, and everything in it.

Ambient Warfare

This morning we started the GDC with Phil Harrison's keynote speech called "Beyond the Box". It was the usual Sony affair, with charts of how much hardware and software they've sold interspersed with pretty excellent technical demos. But it left me wondering, all this technology, and we're still only interested in how well we can blow things up?

Really, aside from Ted Price's new Ratchet and Clank demo and a new "lots of ducks" demo which was transformed, this time, into a "lots of fish swimming" demo, the other exhibitions were all about massive destruction: of cars, of environments, of people. The only suggestion that something like behavioral simulations could also be enhanced was in a Warhawk demo, where the way the enemy shot at you was called "Ambient Warfare."

Personally, I'm just tired of shooting stuff.

Yesterday, I played Oblivion for about four hours straight. I won't pretend that it's a flawless game. But it's the kind of game that snakes its way around an obsessive heart. I got into collecting herbs, wildflowers, and mushrooms and pretty much spent an entire afternoon jauntily roaming around a broad green valley filling my pouch full of tiger lilies, St. Jahn's Wort (that's how they spell it in the game), and shiny fungus varietals. Then I sat on a sunny hillock and experimented with making potions. I discovered a new recipe for a potion I named "Good Stuff" because it restored health and fatigue. Later, I discovered that I could joke my way to becoming friends with a shopkeeper who would buy my potions for very good prices. Forget about the main quest, I want to train to be a master alchemist!

No doubt there are games of this depth and complexity coming to the PS3 as well. But it seems a shame to me that so many exhibitions of technology focus on killing people. Ambient Warfare? I want ambient world.

Why is game creation so often about destruction?
-jane

Roll the Dice

In about an hour I'm going to hop on a flight to the DICE Summit. DICE stands for Design! Innovate! Create! Entertain!

I'm excited to go - it's like GDC concentrated, and GDC is my favorite conference. It's very small - I think about 200 hundred people go. It's at a hotel just outside Las Vegas.

We'll be shooting segments for The 1UP Show there but it's my secret chance to make out with Will Wright.

Just kidding.

...sort of.

IGF Opens the Modder Floodgates

The Independent Games Festival has extended the deadline and lowered the entrance fees for the mod portion of the contest. The new deadline is now November 1, and the entrance fee is now just $25. If you're a modder for Half-Life 2, Doom 3, NeverWinter Nights, or Unreal Tournament 2004 you can take a shot at the $2500 prize for each game, but get cracking, because you're sure have even more competition!

The 11th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition

The submissions are in, and it's time for judging to begin in one of my favorite indie-gaming events of the year. Anybody who wants to can go to the site, download the game interpreters, and vote on their favorites.

Anyone with an interest in games that convey compelling stories should at least take the time to check some of these out.

Do it already.

Robin's Eye for Fashion

Robin's put up her Cosplay photos from Tokyo Game Show 2004! The kid near the end is just the cutest. Robin points out that there was more cross-play this past year (crossdressing cosplay) and I agree. You always had women dressing like male characters - Cloud Strife from FFVII is a perenial favorite, and I am always amazed what the girls can do to their hair - but this year I saw men dressed as schoolgirls and fighting vixens.

I love the TGS maybe more than E3, because of the fanplay aspect. You just have so many eager kids and so many men and women who've spent hours dedicated to makeup and costume to recreate their favorite characters. For some, I think it's a break into a modeling career; but for others, it's sheer exuberance and love for the game.

I often wish E3 would have one day open to the public; but I think unofficial cosplayers (as opposed to the men and women payed by companies to stand around in costume) are considered too otaku, too geeky for the ultra-cool slick event that E3 tries to be. Sometimes I think the videogame industry has a little contempt for its hardest-core fans. And that's a shame.

If you can ever make it to Tokyo Game Show, you should try. This year it's running from Friday Sept. 16 to Sunday Sept. 18; tickets aren't that expensive (about ten bucks) and it's a good time.

The Joys of Alpha

I'm going to have to apologize for my lack of posts recently. It's not for lack of interesting things going on in the world of gamer culture, to be sure, with sites across the net all a-twitter with Doom III raves. No, you see, I've been a might bit busy of late because the game I design for at Electronic Arts just passed "alpha" a few days ago.

For those of you who aren't familiar with what a large game development project is like, alpha is the stage describing a build of the game that is completely playable from beginning to end. Details still need ironing, and there's still a little time to argue for small feature adjustments, but the game is playable. Of course, the weeks leading up to this day are long and hard. I haven't worked less than 13 hours every day for about two weeks (including weekends). Before that, it was about a month of 6-day workweeks of around 10-12 hours per day. It could have been much worse, but this is a talented team. While alpha crunch is hard, every day I would come in and the game would suddenly be leaps beyond what it had been just 24 hours ago.

Indeed, the costs of this project have been heavy: no weekends, no sleep, and of course there's no "O-V-E-R-T-I-M-E" in "Game Development," which probably puts my actual hourly wages at something like $2.00 per hour, before taxes. Of course, as the Iraq war reminds us, the real cost of any action is the human cost: I started this project with a significant other, but will finish it without one.

And yet... and yet...

And yet I'm still enjoying this, and feel the journey has been, and will continue to be, worth it.

Camp EA From the Inside

For the last few years during midsummer, Electronic Arts has hosted its own little gaming media event, Camp EA (or as it was renamed this year for whatever reason, Hot Summer Nights). Basically, every game that EA is developing or publishing during the coming fall and winter gets trotted out to show media people how things have been going since E3. A handy side effect of this is that people who actually work at EA also get a chance to try out all the other games we're making, which also gives the assorted marketing groups a few chances to dry run their schpiels before they go live.

Many people might not realize just how isolated EA's dev teams are from each other's products. Walking onto the floor of our gymnasium, all decked out with gaming kiosks for the show, there was a certain kind of giddy enthusiasm that electrified the air. A couple hundred of my game-loving coworkers were crowded inside with all the energy you might expect from a gym of gamers eager to try out demos of unreleased games, but this was further injected with the energy of people feeling gratified watching others enjoy the games they were working so hard on. I can honestly say that there's some stuff coming out of here that I'm really looking forward to playing after it ships.

Now this really wouldn't qualify as gaming website coverage of a gaming expo without an exclusive scoop of some sort, and, even though this really isn't the sort of thing you normally see on GGA, I would hate to disappoint. Your official insiders-only scoop: the development studio at EA's corporate headquarters goes through approximately 25 pounds of coffee each workday. You heard it here first.

Robin's Wrap Up

GGA pal Robin Hunicke has posted an E3 Wrap up on her site, the usual blend of engaging photographs and provocative text. She's a smart person and demonstrates a willingness to have a studied opinion on the games industry. Combine that with a good eye and an itchy shutter-finger and we're looking at some of the premier photojournalism happening in video games. Go Robin! More to come, she says.

Robin on E32004

Women's Game Conference

The WGC will run from September 9th and 10th this year in Austin. That's concurrent with the Austin Game Conference, which is I suppose meant to draw more participants but also seems like potential scheduling conflicts for attendees.

A full program hasn't been announced yet. Maybe I'll see if my band can swing through Austin on those dates.

Summarizing the Education Arcade

E3 is upon us, the early summer festival of energetic electronic entertainment. The expo this year opened with MIT's Education Arcade, the continuing convergeance of academics and game designers on the subject of molding our minds. What did these people say when they were up on stage or in the hallways together? I would tell you myself, but the Education Arcade was wildly over-subscribed, and I'm a chronic late registerer for conferences and events.

Fortunately, Ian from Watercooler games was present, and he has written up a rather lengthy report of Education Arcade, day 1. Remarks summarized from Henry Jenkins, Wagner James Au, James Paul Gee, Warren Spector, Brenda Laurel, Kurt Squire, Amy Bruckman, Ben Sawyer, Scott Fisher, Andrew Court, Alex Chisolm, Bonnie Bracey, Todd Logan, Celia Pearce, Johnny Wilson and Tom Piper.

Geeks Gone Feral?

(Thanks to Harvey Smith for the link.)

The Norwegian demo scene party known only as "The Gathering" is now over, and from the sound of things, not everyone had a good time. Blogger Katla explains in her somewhat broken English: "God dam assvipes made a movie, of a closeup of all the girls here, a closeup of their tits and ass."

Further, they did this without asking any of the girls for their permission, which is what I think really takes this over the line. Commentary on the blog entry suggests that this sort of thing happens every year, and the edited T&A videos are thrown up on the web as "babez@tg[year]".

Most of the European game developers I know have the demo scene somewhere in their background, and although this was probably just the work of a couple of stooges, this kind of behavior only makes everybody look bad. We try to build up this environment of mutual respect, and then it all just comes tumbling down.

Perhaps most disturbing is Katla's sense that "now there is not female geeks here anymore. but girls, and doubt not for a secound that they are here for your pleasure only. fucking assholes."

Fucking assholes, indeed.

Fainaru! Fantashii! Raunch!

I can't remember exactly where I heard it the first time, but Monday, March 22nd, The Playstation Store at the Metreon in San Francisco was going to have a party to celebrate the release of Final Fantasy XI (the MMO one) for Playstation 2 from 8 PM until 2 AM the next day, with the PS2 Harddrive with FFXI preloaded going on sale at precisely 12:01 AM. And there was going to be a costume contest. Thus it was that I went straight from work to spend approximately forever sitting on trains to get to the Metreon, camera in hand, to see (and record) what there was to see.

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GGA Game-Nation Panel at SXSW

I was on a panel at South by Southwest Interactive: The State of the Game Nation, with Sheri Graner Ray and Wagner James Au.

There are some notes from Joho the blog and from Molly Steenson.

The panel discussed three question, rather broadly. First, how do game designers shape communities and societies in online communities? Second, how do players or users respond to developer's programmatic guidance? And finally, what's in the future for virtual societies?

We only had a hour, so we glossed over these questions, but I think it went well and a surprising number of people were there for a Tuesday morning session!

Thanks again to James and Sheri for being so generous with their time and expertise.

Child's Play

Gabe, the pencil-wielding maestro behind the art of Penny-Arcade, has decided to give of himself to the world. Uh, not like that! He's launching a charity drive to give toys and video games to sick kids this holiday, in part to combat the perception that video games are training kids to be ruthless killers.

He's set up an Amazon wishlist for the kids of Seattle Children's Hospital. I can't really put it any better than he did when he wrote:

"Penny Arcade has a readership of something like 150,000 gamers across the world. We are arguably the largest community of gamers on the internet. The important word there being community. This isn’t IGN, this isn’t Gamespy, we are not a faceless corporation, you are not just a number tracked by a database and then relayed to hungry advertisers. You guys have proven yourselves to be a powerful force when stirred into action. Here is your opportunity to use that power to do some real good.

Let’s give these kids the Christmas that they deserve and let’s give the news papers a different kind of story to write about gamers."

This just makes me love Gabe and Tycho all the more - as if I needed more reason to. So log in and pick out a gift - spread the love of gaming.

Spread it!

[Update: Snowmit adds that P-A has this permanent link to the Child's Play project. Thanks, Snowmit!]

Gaming Major League, Part 3

This is part three of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker. Read Part One and Part Two.

If the first day of the Major League Gaming tournament in New York City started with a steady pace, Sunday’s championship games went at a full blown sprint.

As Soul Calibur II, Gran Turismo 3, Madden 2004, and the big momma of them all, Halo all started to reach the final games the atmosphere inside of GameTime Nation became electrified.

Unlike yesterday, when most of the playing was met with playful conversation and helpful tip sharing, today’s games were mostly serious business. Players watched each other game, and crowds drew up for the big final matches. People on the street saw crowds inside the small facility and went inside to watch.

It was Sunday that MLG’s plan to make videogames a full-blown spectator sport became really realized. Watching people come in not to play, but to cheer on other players was an interesting experience. We’ve all at one time or another sat on the couch and watched a few friends go at it in a game, but here crowds drew. Even after being eliminated, many players stayed for the entire Halo tournament to just see how it would end.

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Gaming Major League, Part 2

This is part two of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker. If you haven't read it yet, read Part One.

Meet Bonnie Burton. Bonnie’s 12 years old. She’s got a blonde pony-tail and rosy cheeks. In fact, if you saw her on the street, you’d think Bonnie was just a regular middle school student from Pennsylvania.

Bonnie is also in the winner’s bracket final round of Major League Gaming’s free-for-all Halo tournament. In fact, in the matches played so far, she’s rarely done worse than fourth place out of eight, often beating well-known professional players.

“I just love playing Halo,” Bonnie, who calls herself “Xena” in the game, said. “My brothers introduced me to the game, and I decided to compete.”

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Gaming Major League, Part 1

This is part one of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker.

It’s been big in Asia and especially Korea for years now. Professional gaming. Getting paid for being good at videogames; it may just be the dream of many a gamer. However, in America, tournaments have almost never been much larger than city-wide, and never consolidated on an international basis. They payouts have mostly been small pots made by the players themselves. And now, an upstart company, Major League Gaming, is trying to change that.

Major League Gaming has so far played their cards right. They’ve scored a spot on ESPN 2’s show Cold Pizza. They’ve spent plenty of capital to get their project off the ground, and their forums show them to be pretty well known amongst the competitive crew.

However, now, the weekend of October 24th-25th, Major League Gaming has its first real test. According to the co-founders of MLG, they’ve put a large amount of money into the event, and the success of the upcoming tournaments really decides whether or not the business becomes either the NFL of gaming sports or the XFL.

The first tournament, in Halo, Soul Calibur II, Madden 2004, and Gran Turismo 3, takes place at GameTime Nation in New York City, New York, a small console-based gaming café.

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NERO Nearly Killed Me

Actually, it did kill me. But thanks to a kind Earth scholar, I was brought back to life by one of the few remaining Life spells. Huzzah! I've successfully played in my first LARP.

Though I'm not exactly a newbie to gaming in general, I've been intimidated by the Live Action aspect of this particular form of Role Play. My first experience was several years ago with Vampire, and it just didn't do it for me - it seemed to moody, angsty, and just a touch pretentious. My next experience was at GenCon this year - the Changeling LARP, which was way too complicated, even though they kindly ran a class for beginners. I have to say that NERO was just right, in many respects - pretty simple to pick up, and everyone I talked to was most helpful with tips and answers to my dumb questions.

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Justin's TGS Coverage

Mr. Hall wrote a very lengthy article for Gamasutra on his experience of the Tokyo Game Show. He talked to some interesting people and took great photos. Check it out.

My Leather Vest's at the Cleaner's

This weekend in Los Gatos, a snark of nerds (okay, what's the collective noun for nerds?) will collect to play NERO, a fantasy LARP with props and combat and costumes. I've tried LARPing in a hotel basement, which was a little less than ideal. This time might be my chance. But what to wear?!?

Fellow girl-geek and attendee Min Jung mentioned something about "hoops" so I know she's got a costume of some sort. And Ernie will certainly have something going, that sassy boy. Darn it, where did I put that corset? And could I justify a camera as a magical item of some sort?

NYC is the Place to Be

Near the end of the month, I'm going to two interesting events in New York City. First is "Storming the Playground", conversations around Katie Salen's and Eric Zimmerman's upcoming book from MIT Press, Rules of Play. It'll be a talk show format, with folks like Warren Spector and McKenzie Wark and Frank Lantz and me! That's going to be Friday, October 24th, from 7:30-9:30 at Tishman Auditorium, on 12th street between 5th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. The word is Warren going to show a sneak preview of Deus Ex II!

The very next day is the Machinima Festival in Queens, at the American Museum of the Moving Image. I'll be there with friends Souris and Silvio from Invasiv.

Maybe I'll see you there.

Lounged and Arcaded

We went to Lounge Arcade last night and had a great time. It's not a LAN party, it's not an arcade; it's a bunch of retro multi-player consoles grouped together amidst comfy couches in a cozily designed space called Halcyon (which initially made me think I was going to some kind of crazy gaming rave.) It's a small game party put on by Seth Rosenfeld. By day he's a producer at NewKidCo; by night, a track-suit wearing party promoter. We got a chance to chat with him about Lounge Arcade and the way electronic games have become a socializing activity.

We'd heard over and over again that there aren't that many game developers in New York City, for a variety of reasons. So I consider us lucky to have been able to meet with as many as we have. Of course we were staying with the kids who are starting Invasiv Studios, because they are generous wonderful people we can have a lot of laughs with. At Halcyon we also met not only Seth, but Jason Schreiber, president of Powerhead Games; he took the photo of us interviewing Seth on camera. And now we're crashing with Eric "gameLab" Zimmerman. Every time we come to New York there's a steady increase of people and parties we want to check out. So much so that we've extended out stay by another day. And there's so much more to do. We haven't even gone shopping yet!

I think I speak for Justin (and Andrew W.K.) when I say, "I! Love! New York City!"

(photo (c) 2003 Jason Schreiber)

Lounge Arcade

Jane and I are going to stop by Lounge Arcade tonight in Brooklyn; some antique and modern consoles in a bar with DJs and strangers. If you're in the neighborhood, let us know!

Creativity This Weekend

To mix things up a bit this weekend, Jane and I will be attending the New-York based "Creativity Now" conference. Hosted by Tokion magazine, it's jammed sixteen significant culture producers into a marathon session of artistic explanation. Somewhere between Yuko Shimizu, responsible for Hello Kitty, and Melle Mel, who wrote raps for Grandmaster Flash, there's two figures more immediately relevant to games: Stieg Hedlund, running his own design shop after long work with Blizzard on Diablo II, and Matthew Barney, the director of Cremaster the longest video game homage to emerge from the Guggenheim this year. It's heartening to see video games presented as an integral part of a discussion of modern culture! We'll participate and take notes.

I Went to GenCon and...

... I wrote an article for RPG.net: FemCon: Gaming Girls at GenCon.

Plaything Symposium in Sydney

Zina sends this item in: a very interesting line-up this fall at Sydney University. I think I may be somewhere in Asia, and perhaps Australia won't be too far away to visit!

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dLux media arts
In association with University of Sydney present
Future Screen 2003:

Plaything.
Choose Your Weapons!
Digital Games Symposium: October 10,11,12, 2003
Location: Sydney University, Eastern Ave Auditorium

Plaything is a major international symposium focusing on current and future trends in the field of digital games, featuring key Australian and International game designers theorists and artists. Plaything will bring together people that develop, analyse and play digital games, and will provide a forum for discussion, play and critical discourse. Plaything is curated by Josephine Starrs.

International Speakers Include:
Eric Zimmerman
Co-Founder and CEO of Gamelab, New York. Zimmerman has lectured in game design at MIT, NYU, and Parsons School of Design.

Mary Flanagan
US digital artist and cybercultural critic. Flanagan's co-edited book, Reload: rethinking Women and Cyberculture was published by MIT Press in 2002.

Feng Mengbo
Renowned Beijing artist whose work uses the the styles and structures of contemporary electronic games.

Eugenie Shinkle
Artist and Lecturer in photographic theory and criticism in the School of Media, Arts and Design at Westminster University, London, UK.

Registrations for Plaything Symposium commence in August 2003. Registration for 3 days: $50.00
Concession: $35.00
Please visit www.dlux.org.au for updates.
email: Vicky Clare

dLux media arts gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance received from the Australian Film Commission, New South Wales Film & Television Office, Australia Council for the Arts, New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, Sydney College of the Arts. and the University of Sydney's School of English, Art History, Film and Media and the Arts Informatics Program.

dLux media arts: PO Box 306, Paddington, NSW, 2021. Phone: 02 9380 4255

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thanks, zina!

Austin Game Conference

The Austin Game Conference will be September 11-12 this year in the inimitable city of Austin. Raph Koster (Star Wars Galaxies) and Mark Jacobs (Dark Age of Camelot) will be giving keynote speeches, and a lot of other great people - Jessica Mulligan, Sheri Graner Ray, Mike McShaffry, Rich Vogel, many others - will be speaking. The focus - as you may have guessed from the glimpse of the line-up above - is online games.

Also, Machinima films will be shown at the conference. Machinima blends 3d technology, animation, and traditional film-making. More information is available on their pretty but pretty annoyingly Flash-driven official website.

We're headed to the Tokyo Game Show later that month but maybe we'll stop over in Austin to visit friends at Ion and check out the conference. See you there?

Homeward

In twenty minutes I'll be downstairs getting a shuttle to the airport. I'm still working on some longer wrap-ups of GenCon. You can get a some of it over at Ogre Cave in the meantime.

Well, Indy, it's been fun, but I miss California. I've got my D&D bag and my 20-sided die and my GenCon sweatshirt and I'm coming home!

The Sound and the Flurry

It's been very pleasant in Indianapolis. The mornings have a freshness to them, a light breeze; the evenings are warm but not overly opressive. But this morning was hot, heavy, and humid; the sky was dark; the wind almost knocked me over.

It's thunderstorm weather.

As nice as everyone is here - the town was very well prepped to receive a bunch of geeks dressed in armor and corsets - still, I would hate to be stuck here because of inclement weather.

Although, I suppose I could always catch a ride to somewhere else in the Midwest!

Extreme Again

PeterMe says it's time for another round of California Extreme, Northern California's largest classic and contemporary arcade game expo. Jane and I went last year, and she published this article. If you're near San Jose and you've got time this weekend, July 26-27, it's worth the price of admission to get loads of free gaming in. This year they're staying open until midnight on Saturday - a recipe for delicious toasted synapses. We enjoyed some of the panels on Atari history as well, and the chance to run into many game friends.

Looks like they're going to have more discussions this year - if anyone goes, take notes and write a short story that we can post up here!

GenCon: Future of Gaming?

I posted a review of the "Futures Trends in Gaming" panel over at Ogre Cave.

P.S. I didn't get into the LARP last night - I showed up late, talked my way in without having to pay the (!gulp!) fifteen dollars, and when I got in, I couldn't get what was happening. There were lots of friendly people sitting at tables and talking about strange events, but I was lost and I dind't want to be obnoxious newbie girl. Plus I was feeling guilty because I hadn't paid, and didn't feel right about playing. So I observed for a little bit and then went back to my hotel. Yeah, I'm a total wimp.

But tonight! I'm going to check out NASCRAG, with Ben Johnson, who wrote a great article for Play this month. Maybe I'll get to play a pirate! Arrrrgh!

GGA at GenCon

It was a bit strange to walk into a games convention and not hear any noise except the excited breathing of the fans. The music doesn't melt your mind, the lights don't cause seizures. It's actually a rather civilized affair. Nintendo, EA, and Microsoft have modest booths here; it's Wizards of the Coast who have top billing, with Upper Deck Entertainment a close second.

I think I like it.

Anyway, I'm in Indianapolis, at GenCon till Monday morning. I'll be posting some updates here and some to Ogre Cave. If you're here, too, and you see me, say hello! I'm off to play some LARPs.

E303: Kentia - Where Gamers Fear to Tread

A young videogame programmer felt a sudden urge at airport security in Los Angeles. It was Saturday morning, and he was headed back east from E3. Dashing over to the gray plastic bins reserved for laptops, he grabbed one and immediately vomited in to it. A caring security officer approached him: "Are you okay?" she asked. Slightly chagrined, he didn't mention he had a thorough hangover from a night of drinking with his mates. Instead, he said quickly, "I'm okay, I just have a little fever." He was immediately stuck in quarantine until he could be checked out by a medic.

SARS hung in the air over E3 this year, perhaps because there wasn't any bigger news.

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E303 Panel: Reaching The New Gamer

More voices, more games, more players. It's a deep desire of anyone who loves this medium. Today at E3, the games conference in Los Angeles, software publishers and journalists discussed the issues surrounding a maturing game market. They decided that games should respond to a players mood and behavior, movies will be advertisements for games, the core gamer is dead, and there should be more sex in games.

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Emerging Tech Conference: Play Time BOF Session

Jane and I will be hosting a "birds of a feather" get together called Play Time, to talk about issues in video games at the Emerging Technology Conference. Thursday night, 7-8pm, if you're near Santa Clara California and you have time to stop by the Westin Hotel, join the conversation!

Emerging Tech Conference

This week Jane and I will be at the Emerging Technology Conference in Santa Clara. Amidst the talk of nanotechnology, social networks, cooperation amplifiers and wireless webs, the are a few sessions devoted to game paradigms and game design.

Yesterday, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow wrote up notes on a session by Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, who still hasn't found a publisher for his book on Xbox hardware hacking.

We'll be keeping an eye out for the other innovators and teachers there and we'll post our findings here. If you're around, say howdy!

E3 Panel on Asian Games

Following the crash and burn of American video game pioneer Atari, Japan took over the worldwide video game market. Today, Sony and Nintendo command the console and handheld markets, with Microsoft posing the first real Western hardware challenge in two decades.

All the while, South Koreans have been playing PC games, online. They have the most massively multiplayer of all the online games, Lineage, and scores more online games in genres Western gameplayers seldom touch.

South Korea likely has something to show the world, and Japan has always been fascinating, though some have recently been arguing over a decline in Japanese game making. And what is happening with games in China? Taiwan and Hong Kong have their game cultures, but I know very little about gaming on the Chinese mainland.

Differences in video games between East and West are fascinating, as are similarities. Increasingly, the differences between these cultures seem less like a gap and more like a wide gray area. I'm looking forward to learning and discussing more about games in Asia, in part for a panel I'm moderating on this topic at E3 in May in Los Angeles, America's largest video game exposition. Details posted below.

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Video Game Competition - TBA

Gamecaster, a streaming video show focusing on "e-sports", announced a national video game competition to be held in Las Vegas. When? No details yet. What venue? Uh, check back later. Which games? No information at this time.

But you can pre-register! Or, scratch that, just sign up for an email that will tell you when official registration opens.

Okay, so not as well-organized as the WCG. Still, Las Vegas is an entertaining place to visit, and while you're there you could practice your advantage player techniques.

Social Engineering in Online Games

I'm still processing Raph Koster's high speed broadband brainblast on user manipulation and management talks involving network theory, emergence, six degrees of separation and power laws. This is stuff I usually hear from webloggers. It felt like a harmonic convergence to hear one of the game industry's thought-developers using these concepts to explain experiments run with large numbers of paying game-players in massively multiplayer online games. Raph described social engineering without flinching, perhaps a concession to the audience of aspiring online game-based social engineers.

It was fast and sweeping; as Katherine's friend from Georgia Tech pointed out: truth through speed. Though he did encourage the development of small, boutique online communities, that's not the business that he is in. It was unsettling seeing his studies of social dynamics harnassed to build effective subscription-based online life simulators for multinational megacorporations.

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The Destiny of Games

I'd wanted to go to the academic summit at the Game Developers Conference because, for whatever perverse reason, I am still attracted to the academic side of any equation. The summit was mostly about how game developers and academics might work together to further mutual interests.

I won't try to summarize all the speakers' remarks, because those notes will be shortly available on the GDC webpage and in any case, I couldn't do them justice. I'll just comment on a few things which I found most compelling. The theme that resounded most of all to me was the need for communication, not only between the game industry and game academia, but also between academics, between designers and consumers, and among all of us as consumers of this relatively new cultural product. A new shared language might spark an open source grass-roots revolution in the way we think about games and gaming.

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DICE

If you can measure the importance of an industry by the number of trade shows and events it has, then the video game industry is definitely on the rise. In the United States, there's Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Jose next week, and then Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles in May. The former is a developer-centric event, and the second is more for publishers. In the midst of those add a wide range of small academic events (tracked by Gonzalo).

Today and tomorrow there is another entry in the range of developer/publisher events, a "summit," the second annual D.I.C.E. from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, hosted at the hipish Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. GDC is a sprawling geekfest, I guess the people behind DICE felt there might be some draw from a celebrity-game-designer driven discussion of broad game design concepts minus programming. D.I.C.E. is single-track, meaning there's only one speaker at a time. Add a limited attendee pool, no sub-800$ registration, a strong selection of luminary designers, and it's likely an entertaining, perhaps enlightening, if slightly endogamous chance to develop thinking about games.

Got an Experimental Project?

This year's GDC Experimental Gameplay Project is looking for participants! If you're an indie game developer, a basement tinkerer, a conceptual artist, or a total amateur with a totally awesome idea, here's your chance to present what you've been working on among a community of like-minded folks. So polish off that dusty code and get yourself to the GDC!

Smoking a Super Bowl

Super Bore

The last Super Bowl I watched was in 1985: the Niners and the Dolphins. I don’t remember who won. I do remember that I had never watched an entire football game before and it was rather exciting. I watched with my dad, whom I would not call a football fan, but I remember he was excited too, sometimes to the point of shouting at the screen. I have never watched since, until last Sunday. The Raiders were playing, I thought maybe I would watch some of it again, for old times’ sake. And because, obviously, as a media monitor it’s my duty to investigate these things.

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Video Games to Get Grammys, not Oscars

Perhaps in an effort to bring gaming to the forefront and increase exposure to the public, The New TNN is going to host a first ever televised video game awards ceremony which is being dubbed "The Oscars of Gaming." Maybe they should have found an Executive Producer other than the President of Nickelodean, because it sounds more to me like it's the Grammys of Gaming.

Categories will include: Hottest Hero and Heroine, Most Addictive, Coolest Villain, Best All-Around Badass, Most Difficult to Master, Best Free For All Carnage, Best Soundtrack, Hottest Graphics, Best Kick Ass Weapon, Best Game based on a Movie and Best Celebrity Actor and Actress in a Game, Best Pro-Sports Game. In addition, games will be competing for the Hall of Fame Award and Game of the Year.

Hottest Hero and Heroine?! Best Celbrity Actor and Actress in a Game?! Best Kick Ass Weapon?!

What kind of categories are these, anyway? Sure, there's about three or four that fit the bill (Best Soundtrack, Hottest Graphics, Game of the Year), but it sounds a lot like someone who has never played games in their life came up with them. Without categories such as Best RPG, Best MMORPG, Best FPS, Best Action Title, Best Driving Game, Best Flight Simulator, or Best Gameplay, it seems that this ceremony is seriously missing the point.

WCG: Russian Domination

The 2002 World Cyber Games are drawing to a close, and it looks like Russians "own" First Person Shooters this year. Russian players took top honors in both Quake 3 and CounterStrike. These have been the two most significant games for serious first-person shooter players. That Russia dominates this year is a testament to that country's dedication to the sport of FPS computer gameplay. Alex Hafez of Gamers.com wrote a bit of commentary on this for us:

It certainly sounds like the Russians are rocking the proverbial house over there at the WCG. Crazy. Their Quake players are so far ahead of the curve right now, it's sick. They have 20 times as many lan competitions as we get over here, and well over a dozen top notch duelers that are as skilled as any in the world. You simply can't put a price on being able to get that kind of practice so regularly, and it shows in their play. It's a testament to the sick depth of the scene when one of their top duelers, Lexer, who won Quakecon this year, didn't even crack the top three at the WCG Russia qualifier to make the finals.

Certainly, Russia had a number of reporters at the WCG this year, reporting for sites like CyberFight. There are rumors of Russian Mafia involvement in professional gaming - it looks like myth and media making about pro-gamers in Russia is beginning to build.

(Photo: Russia, on the left, battling Canada in the Counter-Strike final - the match broadcasted on two large screens in a large hall cold as Siberia or the distant Yukon).

World Cyber Press Room

Games are hot news all over the world - at least you might get that sense from the mix of Malaysian, Russian, Thai, Peruvian, Korean and Turkish journalists in the press room at the World Cyber Games. For our use, free international phone lines, ethernet drops, power outlets, Coca-cola, coffee. A private hive amidst the gaming cubicles from which to broadcast to the world up to the minute news of national standing from these swelling cybersports contests. But not too many reporters from the United States have been able to drop by.

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Computer Gaming: A Spectator Sport?

Check out the crowd gathered to watch Guillaume Patry ("AMD_Grrrr..." from Canada) vanquish Igor Campolina ("HellGhost" from Brazil) in StarCraft: Brood War at the World Cyber Games 2002.

And this was the semi-finals in the loser's bracket! Looks like gaming has some slight potential as a spectator sport.

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WCG: Nationalist Controversy

Delve into the world of pro-Quake controversy - nationalism, pride and financial reward have converged to create some International online confusion.

Shack E.S. is covering questions about the hot-contest between Russia and the United States over Quake 3 here at the World Cyber Games. Matt Huey's post "WCG heads into third night" describes the debate over whether Cooller purposefully lost his game to Ni3 to keep Zero4 from advancing to the next round, while linking to some of the flame-filled boards covering the same topic elsewhere.

The nationalistic flap mars what has otherwise been an exciting, eye-opening event so far. Countries such as Hungary and China have put themselves on the first-person shooter map for the first time, and they're two countries that represent the growing trend for more and more countries to become competitive in the pro gaming world. It was just a few years ago that Chinese Q3 duellers were getting wooped on by New Zealand stars like Mirage: now their best players are capable of running with the best in the world (Rocketboy finished 5-0 and beat Daler in his pool, and Jibo represented himself well too). In the midst of two gaming superpowers going to war, the rest of the world's skill is coming closer together.

It's Official: Microsoft buys Rare

According to this article from CNN, Nintendo has confirmed the sale of its 49% stake in Rare, Ltd., and Microsoft's subsequent purchase of the company. Rare is a company familiar to Nintendo fans everywhere, having made Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong Country, Starfox, and many other classic Nintendo titles. Starfox Adventures is said to be the last game Rare will produce for Nintendo, and while Nintendo will retain rights to the Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong and Starfox series, Rare will keep Perfect Dark, Conker, and Banjo-Kazooie, and will likely develop future X-box-based sequels.

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Nostalgia Extreme

It was almost unbearable to wait in the registration line at the California Extreme classic coin-op games expo because from within the central keep you could hear the chimes of hundreds of pinball machines and the electronic phaser fire of a thousand retro-futuristic virtual weapons. The excitement was, as they say, palpable - it rang in your ears.

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When Games Cost Real Money.

If you are old enough to remember when most of the coolest games you saw were pay-to-play, then you might be part of the target audience of old-timers for California Extreme, a classic arcade games show. This coming weekend (September 7-8) the San Jose convention center will be filled with bleeping buzzing clanging old-school dedicated game machines and the men and women who love them. Highlights are likely to include a panel discussion about Atari featuring one of the guys who made Gauntlet: "Panelist needs water, badly."
From Slashdot.