Nordic DiGRA, short recap (#ndigra12)
Posted 2012-06-11 - Archived under: Codename:Heroes, conference, Nordic DiGRA - 1 reply
There’s been a couple of reali interesting presentations during these two days at Nordic DiGRA. Linderoth and Björk on Boundary Maintaining Mechanisms, Waern on framing games, Stenros on defending the magic circle and Hoch-Koon (can’t find a link) on elliptical learning is probably my favourites. Also the panel on ‘the dark side’ and moral choices in games are interesting. Most presentationsin the panel are case studies, but Linderoth bring it more towards a way of framing the problem overall. Also he gives a good argument on Goffmanian Frames over Huizingan Magic Circles.
Also the opening keynote by Nick Montford on the computer demo scene, was interesting, looking at likeness and difference between them and gamers. But I had a hard time concentrating because of his use of the word ”scener” as someone being part of that scene. I haven’t been involved in a long time, but I’ve never herd them refere to themselves as ”sceners”. Have you? Is this used and I’m just to far away nowdays, or is it a strange word to use?
Also, Waern mentioned, Codename:Heroes, the new game we’re working on in the closing panel. If you’re interested check our facebook page and like, so that you will get our updates as things move along. If you want to make sure to see the update, go to the web page and add your name in the form and we will send you an email whenever there’s a game test!
Finnish Games Then and Now, Nordic DiGRA Warmup
Posted 2012-06-06 - Archived under: afrikan tähti, conference, DiGRA, finnish games, Nordic DiGRA, tampere - Reply
Arrived in Tampere around five. The Nordic DiGRA Conference starts tomorrow. This evening it was time for the Finnish Games Then and Now Exhibition produced by Annakaisa Kultima (@aakoo) and Kati Alha.
During the past decades the Finnish game industry has produced a wide variety of multifaceted everyday entertainment. Large media companies and one-man enterprises alike have churned out games ranging from Commodore 64 titles and board games to live action role-playing events and downloadable mobile games. This whole gamut is now available for the public to explore and experience in a unique exhibition where select items from almost a hundred years worth of Finnish games and game design are brought into the limelight. Many of the items on display are also playable!
Among them of course huge ones like Angry Birds, and not so huge but very recognized as Finnish Shadowcities. But there were some news for me as well. I did not know African Star (Afrikan tähti, or as we call it in Sweden: Jakten på den försvunna diamanten) was of Finnish design! For those of my readers who are not Swedish, African Star is a board game, originally publised in 1951, it’s one of those games that everyone have played here. In it is included a bunch of secret tiles with different tresures, oe of them is the diamond African Star, and in almost all well used versions of the game I’ve seen it has tiny bite marks from tiny teeth. Something makes every kid want to chew on that star. My guess is it reminds them of how you treat gold in movies to know it’s real.
The exhibit also tried to claim Mordheim as Finnish because of a Finnish main designer, but I’m not so sure about that one. Even if the gameplay is quite different it’s to such a large extent based on the Warhammer rules that I don’t really think it counts. Dont read me wrong, defenetly counts as a game, and a rather good one, but when adding points to team Finland? Nope!
Other interesting games was a game about Finland during world war one, published in 1918, just months after it happened. There was also a (really old) computer game about fur farms, where you played the farmer, shooting at political activists trying to free your animals. As described, based on a true story, although nobody died in the real incident.
Over all a nice exhibit, with a lot of playable games. Also some nice discussions, among them Jonas Linderoth (@JonasLinderoth) pushing me to describe and clarify what my thesis will be about. Always a bit hard and scary to turn thoughts into words on the spot, but I think I managed quite well, maybe even cleared some things out for myself (that’s the good thing about words instead of thoughts) and I got some good knowledge back from him. So, thank you for that!
As stated in the beginning, tomorrow the conference starts for real. I will try to get some updates done (but you probably know how bad I am at prioritizing that). Something special you would like me to look for, or someone special you want me to ask something to?
Swedish Internet of Things Day
Posted 2012-02-09 - Archived under: conference, Mobile Life, SICS - Reply
Visited the Swedish Internet of Things day at SICS (yes, just over the hall, but still a big event with about 300 participants). Sadly I had previous engagements in the afternoon and could only visit half the day. But on the few hours I was there I heard interesting things.
A lot of what was presented is things we work on in the Mobile Life Centre, but also some new insight into what others are up to. Among the “new stuff” I found Mike Kuniavsky’s talk on “the Internet of people: integrating Internet of Things technologies is not a technical problem” the most interesting. He focused on IoT not being about connecting machines, but about finding what people are interested in and among his ideas was a focus on services, not machines. In his example he mentioned how people visit services from multiple different machines, but want to find a similar experience in all of them. The loyalty is to the service, not to the artefact. It doesn’t matter if you’re at your phone, your laptop or your TV; the service is viewed as the same entity in all of them.
Now, lets just see how to connect this to our view of pervasive gaming…
Just returned from Prolog
Posted 2012-02-05 - Archived under: Codename:Heroes, conference, convention, game design, gender, larp, Prolog, workshop - Reply
I’ve just returned home from this years Prolog. A Swedish larp-convention with both games and development forums. A nice place to meet others with similar interest in a quite relaxed environment.
During the convention among other things I presented my view on larp as a designed activity, and that’s one of the reasons for writing this now, even though I’m really tired. I promised my audience to put something up, and I will… tomorrow. But for now it will have to do with this short comment. And you are most welcome to comment back to me if you want to get in touch or discuss something around what we talked about!
Other interesting things during the conventions: I visited several gender discussions, some body language and power technique workshops, and I got to run a test on our new game Codename:Heroes. The link to the game work, but the page is mainly for mobile phone, and you won’t be able to run the game unless we are there running it with you… But if you sign up you will get an email telling you when we have something more compleated!
Staging Illusions, London and Busking (mostly the first one)
Posted 2011-12-12 - Archived under: conference, critical game, dark rides, design, game design, game designers, magic effects, peppers ghost, phantasmagoria, plans, show, Staging Illusions - Reply
I came back from the Staging Illusions Conference yesterday. The conference was Thursday – Friday but I stayed in London looking at busking spots for the project in the spring. Not that many buskers out of course (wrong time of the year), but I got to see the three main spots at Covent Garden and the one at London Eye and found some action at Picadilly Circus. Also I found the time for a lunch with Andrew Sheerin (one of the designers of War on Terror: the Boardgame) and some discussions on his network for critical game designers. The plans are still quite young, but could turn into something fruitful. Keep me up to date Andrew!
Staging Illusions
A two day, yearly, conference on staging illusions. Mostly people from culture, media and gender studies, also some historians and some with a bit of a technical background. And quite many practicing magicians, nice! This is not really my field, but it was a great way to broaden my mind and find new angles on what I’m doing. If I should really distil the main content from the conference I would say Vanessa Toulmin’s keynote gave a good overview, from pantasmagoria and Peppers ghost to George Méliès movies and Dark Rides.
Other talks I found interesting was:
Read more »Jacquelin Hylkema’s speech on history and how the public focus changed from the deciever to the victim around the change of the century 1800 – 1900.
Max Schneider‘s overview of directing miracles and magic effects. Mainly the three roles of a magician:
- Playing the magician, a superior being, an alpha male.
- Magician playing a role, in a story.
- Magic in a play, without one clear magician
Also the split into three types of magicians is interesting:
- Killer
- Victim
- Witness
Kate Genevieve presented “Give me your hand” where the participant is blinded, but with a video showing the surroundings. This builds upon the idea of relating to a rubber hand if you treat it the same way as your real hand (Google it).
Jon Armstrong presented his idea of magic in theatre performance. He’s got a different vocabulary but a lot of thought connect well to what I’m thinking, and especially to the project I call ‘Spooks’ (yes, I’m talking to you Arkadia).
Adam Bee presented an art project called Telekinesis, this I need to delve deeper int before i give my judgement :-)
Astrid Enslin had a lot of good ideas around metalepsis as a transmedia phenomenon. How levels of story collide and different ways of looking at it. There was a lot of good references and I need to look more closely at her work in the future. Among other things she compared:
- Mimesis, the illusion of experience reality (Plato, Aristotel, Averbach, Ricouéur, Genette, Wolf)
- Fourth wall (Diderot, Auter & Davis)
- Willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, Ferri)
- Immersion (Murray, Marinelli, Salen & Zimmermann, Boellstorff)
Also there were some talk around Bergson’s intuitive method that was quite interesting
