It will be a bit of everything in game design as science. About design issues, maybe some dos and don’ts, definitely about the game in itself, probably about game design as science, for sure about the core audience of young women and how to design for empowerment. I also promised it will be a bit about how we in the play spaces project and in Mobile Life design for ‘the good life’, beyond efficiency and work. And, it will be a discussion, so make sure you get involved and bring the focus to the areas you find most interesting!

So, even though I wont be there,if you are part of EIT ICT Labs I think you should take the opportunity to come and listen to a(nother?) great young mind in game design research!

(Interested and outside of EIT ICT Labs? Contact me and I’ll send you forward to the people to speak to)

The article does not talk about whether games are bad or not, but instead about the fact that it is an argument, and only in certain situations. We (you might read ‘the media’) often blame video games for violent acts. But this argument is usually only there if the act is performed by white people originating in the western world (as we in the Scandinavian countries are mostly white and in the western world).

In the example Spelfunderingar mentions the terrorist act at Utöya in Norway. The first thing that happened was people started to blaim extremist Muslim organisations, but quite soon it became obvious that the terrorist was white, blue eyed, right-wing and with roots in Norway. This is when the debate turned towards video games. Gratefully people did not buy into that and it died off quite quickly, but it still went there!

Similar things have been seen in many situations (I can think of school shootings in both Finland and USA for example). The thing is, the debate is never there when the terrorist is immigrant or a foreigner! Of course it would be absurd to blaim Al-Quaida on Grand Theft Auto, or Halo for the Bush administration, but  when you look at smaller attacks with a few or a single attacker this difference is there. White guys kill because of video games, Muslims kill because they are terrorists.

Somehow this relates to us wanting to understand what is close to us, why someone, kind of like us, do something so horrible; and that is a natural thing to do. But if the tone of your skin is enough for us to switch explanation, then there is something wrong; both with the explanation and with the society around it!

Both me and the original source write with a Swedish viewpoint. Is this the same elsewhere? The world is a big place, this seems to fit for Europe and northern America. But what about the rest? Is there someone who knows?

Avoid missing ball for high score.

That’s the full text version of the original instructions for PONG, and today is it’s 40th birthday!*

In 1972 Allan Alcorn developed pong for Atari. After many technical problems, problems in manufacturing, strange business decisions and lies, and so on, the game was finally announced to the public on the 29th of November. The game is, contrary to popular belief, not the first tennis simulator, there are a couple of other versions before and it’s a bit of a debate which one is actually first (my guess is tennis for two, but that is a guess). Many also think it is the firsts arcade machine, but this is also not really true. That honor goes to Computer Space.

However, even though it’s not really the first, few -if any- games has had so much impact on computer games as PONG. It is one of the games we all think of when we talk of the origins. It is an icon!

And so, I say: Happy Birthday Pong!

Now, go read the wikipedia article for all the details!

Flip through it all by yourself: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4c3e4a62

…or go directly to my favorites:

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4c3e4a62#/4c3e4a62/42
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4c3e4a62#/4c3e4a62/72
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4c3e4a62#/4c3e4a62/140

I feel I should mention that Toys ‘R’ Us are also trying, but BR do a better job so I will give them most credit.

Here’s that catalog if you want to compare: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/cd73c6ee

Links:

• How to Take Constructive Criticism Like a Champ

• One of Nineteen “greatest game scholars” « being playful

• The recent Ph.D. Montola « Persona

Our team cosisted of four people: Marta Clavero Jiménez, Jacob Garbe, Sahar Vahdati, and myself. The game we developed worked with teams of two players with different roles and a limited capability to communicate. One player played an investigator solving a riddle in the castle that was our home for a week. The other player played a ghost that communicated with the investigator. The ghost was sitting in one place and could follow the investigator an a map. The ghost also knew where the investigator needed to go to find the next clue. Meanwhile the investigator did not have this information but could instead talk to the ghost. While the investigator could talk, the ghost could only answer by knocking on his device, and this signal was transformed into buzzing on the investigators device.

Jacob wrote more on the game on his webpage: http://jacobgarbe.com/passingon and you will be able to find more information on both our game and the other teams on the TOTEM web page in the future.

Links:

• A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling Takes Over Shelves | ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network

• PHD Comics: Vacation, part 2

• xkcd: Crowdsourcing

Tweets:

• Kinderspiel des Jahres 2012 announced: Schnappt Hubi! (http://t.co/iBLqHjI5)! >>

• Kennerspiel des Jahres 2012 announced: Village (http://t.co/37gGeWYR)! >>

• Spiel des Jahres 2012 announced: Kingdom Builder (http://t.co/8Hi5FCYn)! >>

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!

Tweets:

• Time to slow down after #ndigra12. Thanks for a nice conference! Lots of new thought, and notes for the reading list, as always! Now, sleep! >>

• GRA!!! As Annika said, game design going on again. http://t.co/LdxJfhQb if you’re interested. Like it and follow the development! #ndigra12 >>

• RT @personamatters: .@JonasLinderoth providing fireworks with frames versus magic circles. #ndigra12 >>

• RT @LizardEnigma: People who laugh at the ridiculousness of larp have clearly never seen clips from digital games. #ndigra12 >>

• Hmm.. did I link the wrong person last tweet? It should be @JonasLinderoth, not @LinderothJonas I think… Sorry. >>

• Linderoth (@LinderothJonas) defining larp: ”a bad excuse to make out with people you’re not supposed to” #ndigra12 #afterhours >>

• Kind of new project. Interesting for some, if they (we?) manage to get it more complete, keep your etes open! #larp http://t.co/jQEoHUaZ >>

• RT @LizardEnigma: GRA!!! #ndigra12 (J. Tuomas points out that most player typologies break down when you look at non-digital games as well.) >>

• ”1985 – The year of communication”. I think I herd this more recently as well :-) #ndigra12 >>

• @aakoo Different colours of the #ndigra12 discs, but which ones the winber? >>

• Nordic Digra 2012. Confrence starting, looking forward to interesting thoughts, presentations and discussions! #ndigra12 >>

• RT @davidgauntlett: Live stream for Henry Jenkins (@henryjenkins) talk STARTING NOW at http://t.co/LHH1G73A #digitaltrans >>

• @MariaMyhr crap! I built a filter against that. Obviously it doesn’t work. Will fix! Thanks for mentioning. >>

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?