this is a call for papers for ECGBL 2012 in Cork Ireland 4-5 October, 2012. Abstracts are due 16 March 2012.
Also please note that proceedings for all conferences are kept online at http://academic-conferences.org/proceedings2011.htm
Category Archives: game
August visit to Scandinavia via Singapore itinerary
I am landing in the Nordic region to finish a book project on organic design theories in early modern Nordic Architecture (Aalto, Asplund, Lewerentz, Fehn, Utzon and also some less well known architects like Kampmann and Knutsen). The main writing is based on a 90,000 word thesis, (plus a 30,000 word subthesis on pastmodern architecture), but I need to update the references, develop a more critical and philosophical approach, and take a great many photos! Rough itinerary so far is below.
BTW: I’d appreciate knowing of cultural heritage and digital media research centres that are open to visitors.
| Wednesday | 10-Aug-11 | land in Singapore |
| Thursday | 11-Aug-11 | Fly to Copenhagen, travel to Aarhus |
| Friday | 12-Aug-11 | Aarhus to Aalborg to Skagen |
| Saturday | 13-Aug-11 | Skagen to Frederikshavn to Oslo |
| Sunday | 14-Aug-11 | Oslo to Hamar |
| Monday | 15-Aug-11 | Oslo/Gothenburg |
| Tuesday | 16-Aug-11 | Gothenburg to Lund |
| Wednesday | 17-Aug-11 | Lund |
| Thursday | 18-Aug-11 | Lund |
| Friday | 19-Aug-11 | Lund |
| Saturday | 20-Aug-11 | Lund |
| Sunday | 21-Aug-11 | Lund/Malmo |
| Monday | 22-Aug-11 | Stockholm |
| Tuesday | 23-Aug-11 | Stockholm>Helsinki |
| Wednesday | 24-Aug-11 | Helsinki |
| Thursday | 25-Aug-11 | Helsinki |
| Friday | 26-Aug-11 | Helsinki>Jyvaskyla |
| Saturday | 27-Aug-11 | Jyvaskyla |
| Sunday | 28-Aug-11 | Jyvaskyla |
| Monday | 29-Aug-11 | Jyvaskyla: talk on cultural heritage and gaming. |
| Tuesday | 30-Aug-11 | Rovaniemi>Tampere |
| Wednesday | 31-Aug-11 | Tampere>Copenhagen |
| Thursday | 1-Sep-11 | Copenhagen back to Auckland |
| Friday | 2-Sep-11 | Auckland |
Li Wang (Neil) wins best student paper prize at CHINZ 2011
Neil Wang, a Master of Design student at the Auckland School of Design, was awarded the best student paper at the CHINZ2011 conference in Hamilton yesterday. He presented his pilot study results, (final results will hopefully appear later). Neil received NZ$300 and a certificate from the 12th ACM SIGCHI-NZ Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, held at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, over 4-5 July 2011.
Title: A Pilot Study of Four Cultural Touch-Screen Games
Abstract:Four simple single-player games (based on the “Four Arts” of traditional Chinese culture) have been designed in Flash for a touch-screen display. The aim is to allow players to experience a digital interactive recreation of traditional Chinese culture, in order to understand features of traditional Chinese culture and related philosophical concepts such as Daoism. To evaluate the effectiveness of the design, a pilot study was conducted with twelve participants, six were Chinese speaking and six were not. The pilot study suggest that there are differences between Chinese and non-Chinese users in perceived notions of authenticity and ease of use and it has provided us with ideas on how to improve both the games and the evaluation.
The “Go” game on the HP touchscreen.
PhD project finally published in article form
The Adobe Atmosphere virtual environments that were the central part of my PhD thesis, but which I never directly published on (apart from a preliminary teaser in VSMM2003 in Montreal+VR in the Schools) is now – in nearly full experimental glory or honesty – available online or (soon) in printed journal form in the journal Virtual Reality (Springer website).
title: The Palenque project: evaluating interaction in an online virtual archaeology site.
authors: Erik Champion, Ian Bishop and Bharat Dave.
url: http://www.springerlink.com/content/y7750p3738878110/
abstract: This case study evaluated the effect on cultural understanding of three different interaction modes, each teamed with a specific slice of the digitally reconstructed environment. The three interaction modes were derived from an initial descriptive theory of cultural learning as instruction, observation and action. A major aim was to ascertain whether task performance was similar to the development of understanding of the cultural context reached by participation in the virtual environment. A hypothesis was that if task performance is equivalent to understanding and engagement, we might be able to evaluate the success of virtual heritage environments (through engagement and education), without having to annoy the user with post-experience questionnaires. However, results suggest interaction in virtual heritage environments is so contextually embedded; subjective post-test questionnaires can still be more reliable than evaluating task performance.
Gamification, torture and Escape from Woomera
I don’t normally do this but I am copying a comment I had posted at Play The Past regards the Gamification of Interrogation article.
It may be entirely coincidental that in the same day I was tweeted this post:http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/not-gamification-its-exploitationware/…or perhaps not. One issue for me on integrating games into the curriculum is that it may take away freedom from students who
a. don’t want to learn information through the games in the curricula or
b. are adept at finding information directly, and not hidden through games which are acting less as games and more as “behavioral skinner boxes.”
One game (well HL1 game mod) you may be interested in looking at further does not feature explicit acts of torture but does have the interesting aspect of the player trying to extract information from illegal immigrant detainees is “Escape from Woomera”. See http://www.ljudmila.org/~selectparks/archive/escapefromwoomera/
Postscript: I wrote the above as a shorthand way of trying to encapsulate the following thoughts:
-readymade jargon, such as “digital natives”, web 2.0″, “new media”, gamification” et al are often less useful than they first appear.
-just because something is game-like does not necessarily mean it is morally or otherwise desirable.
-the extra effort required to make something “game-like” should be considered against the extra resources required-is it necessary or even desirable?
-to gamify learning content may make the learning content easier, but perhaps making learning content easier (as in apparently more accessible) does not make it more effective.
reminder: I need book chapter proposals for GAME MODS (ETC Press)
Call For Book Chapters: Game Mod Design Theory and Criticism
This will be both a practical and reflective book on game-mods, designing, playing and evaluating the quality, success and effectiveness of game engines for modding, individual game mod levels, related tools and techniques, and the social and cultural issues related to the design and use of game mods.
The type of book chapter content I am looking for:
· An overview of what is possible and what is commendable or admirable with exemplars.
· Critiques of game mods and game mod/engine technologies (and reviews of mods as creative and critical and reflective extensions of games and game audiences).
· The ethical and social implications using commercial game engines and the content supplied · A comparison of game mod technologies.
· Case studies (Unreal, Source, Panda 3d, Blender 3D, Neverwinter Nights, Marathon, XNA, Oblivion, Cobalt, Crystal Space, WoW, Halo, Far Cry and Crysis etc, Sims, Jedi Academy, Ogre 3D) etc.
· Feature art and aesthetics.
· Machinima features hindered and helped by mods.
· Review of terrible experiences trying to build game mods. · A feature list to help people choose the right game engine for their mod.
· Some sample chapters on how to get started, tips, quick step tutorials as simple 3D, animation, lighting, behaviors, interface customization.
· The social and cultural implications of using and designing game mods (issues with violent content, cultural empathy, copyright, educational issues and so on).
The publisher will be ETC Press, an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com The book will be published under a Creative Commons license. For more details about ETC Press refer http://www.etc.cmu.edu.
Time Line
· March 18 2011 Please send me a title and 300 word abstract, the earlier the better! Please email your submission to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com
· March 25 2011 you should have heard back from me.
· June 10 2011 draft chapters to me.
· And after many drafts and checks and proofs later…by the end of 2011 (optimistically speaking), publication!
Editor:
Associate Professor Erik Champion
Auckland School of Design, Albany Village Campus
College of Creative Arts
Massey University
Auckland New Zealand
email: nzerik AT gmail DOT com OR e dot champion AT massey DOT ac DOT nz for general questions.
Send submissions to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com
New paper on Biofeedback and Architecture to be presented at CAADRIA 2011, 27-29 April
I just sent the final paper off to the organizers of CAADRIA 2011.
It is rather a rare paper by Andrew Dekker and myself as it talks about atmosphere, 19th Century German empathy theory, Heidegger (indirectly), Wild Divine biofeedback and Zombies. Actually it is not really about Zombies but about how indirect biofeedback could be used for architectural visualization, social worlds and virtual places in general. I was trying to make the case for indirect biofeedback to augment the environment, and to allow enhanced information or interaction based on mastering/achieving calm, rather than on raising excitement levels. It is a step in my attempt to convey an experience of holy places and cultural sites using (indirect) biofeedback. Biofeedback has been seen as highly subjective, variable, and unreliable as a direct interaction method which is one of the reasons I am so interested it as indirect and augmenting rather than direct and dominant. Anyway, the abstract follows:
INDIRECT BIOFED ARCHITECTURE
Strategies to best utilise biofeedback tools and interaction metaphors within digital architectural environmentsThis paper explains potential benefits of indirect biofeed-back used within interactive virtual environments, and reflects on an earlier study that allowed for the dynamic modification of a virtual environment’s graphic shaders, music and artificial intelligence (of Non Playing Characters) based on the biofeedback of the player. It then examines both the potential and the issues in applying biofeed-back (already effective for games) to digital architectural environ-ments, and suggests potential uses such as personalization, object creation, atmospheric augmentation, filtering, and tracking.
CFP: Game Mod Design Theory and Criticism
Call For Book Chapters: Game Mod Design Theory and Criticism
This will be both a practical and reflective book on game-mods, designing, playing and evaluating the quality, success and effectiveness of game engines for modding, individual game mod levels, related tools and techniques, and the social and cultural issues related to the design and use of game mods.
The type of book chapter content I am looking for:
· An overview of what is possible and what is commendable or admirable with exemplars.
· Critiques of game mods and game mod/engine technologies (and reviews of mods as creative and critical and reflective extensions of games and game audiences).
· The ethical and social implications using commercial game engines and the content supplied · A comparison of game mod technologies.
· Case studies (Unreal, Source, Panda 3d, Blender 3D, Neverwinter Nights, Marathon, XNA, Oblivion, Cobalt, Crystal Space, WoW, Halo, Far Cry and Crysis etc, Sims, Jedi Academy, Ogre 3D) etc.
· Feature art and aesthetics.
· Machinima features hindered and helped by mods.
· Review of terrible experiences trying to build game mods. · A feature list to help people choose the right game engine for their mod.
· Some sample chapters on how to get started, tips, quick step tutorials as simple 3D, animation, lighting, behaviors, interface customization.
· The social and cultural implications of using and designing game mods (issues with violent content, cultural empathy, copyright, educational issues and so on).
The publisher will be ETC Press, an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com The book will be published under a Creative Commons license. For more details about ETC Press refer http://www.etc.cmu.edu.
Time Line
· March 18 2011 Please send me a title and 300 word abstract, the earlier the better! Please email your submission to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com · March 25 2011 you should have heard back from me.
· June 10 2011 draft chapters to me.
· And after many drafts and checks and proofs later…by the end of 2011 (optimistically speaking), publication!
Editor:
Associate Professor Erik Champion
Auckland School of Design, Albany Village Campus
College of Creative Arts
Massey University
Auckland New Zealand
email: nzerik AT gmail DOT com OR e dot champion AT massey DOT ac DOT nz for general questions.
Send submissions to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com
Kinect for the Web Through Javascript – KinectHacks.net
I cannot keep up and won’t try to keep up with these kinect hacks, after this one. Nice though to hear Microsoft say (via pcmag) they are happy for the ‘modding’ community to use the usb connection as long as they don’t interfere with the kinect software itself. Interesting though, that you don’t need a PC or an XBox, a Mac will do.
http://kinecthacks.net/kinect-skeleton-test/
I think this is very cool but I am easily impressed these days.
http://kinecthacks.net/kinect-for-the-web-through-javascript/
Fluid Interfaces Group have developed an open-source Chrome extension that makes it possible for Javascript to talk to the Kinect. It’s called DepthJS. This means that web sites can provide custom interfaces to everyone with a Kinect and the DepthJS extension installed without requiring them to install any new software. Check out the video:
Two Kinects at once! – KinectHacks.net
http://kinecthacks.net/two-kinects-at-once/
Oliver Kreylos has done what many thought were impossible – using multiple Kinects to capture different angles of an object simultaneously. Interference between the different IR-dot grids is a problem, but it is a much smaller problem than expected.
world’s greatest shadow puppet xbox kinect hack
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/19/kinect-hack-creates-worlds-greatest-shadow-puppet-video/“..installation prototype created by Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson using an Xbox Kinect connected to a laptop using the libfreenect Kinect drivers and ofxKinect. The openFrameworks system tracks the elbow, wrist, thumb, and tips of the fingers to map a skeleton onto the movement and posture of an animated puppet.”
Hands Free 3D: Open Source Predecessor of Microsoft Kinect? | ARCH Virtual
http://archvirtual.com/?p=2873
nice post on technology that predates kinect..I wonder if it might appear one day in Opensim..
“$2,000 is the current bounty for free/open Microsoft Kinect drivers (via Adafruit Industries), which really jarred some memories for me. Whatever happened to ‘Hands Free 3D‘ – the “prototypical interface” that enabled the control of virtual worlds “hands free” …without a mouse or keyboard? Competitors for the bounty might be wise to look it up.”
NB some engadget kinect hack/tools
Monday and Tuesday-interactive entertainment conference Wellington!
On Monday and Tuesday I will be in Wellington New Zealand, at the College of Creative Arts – Old Museum Building, Buckle St, Wellington, Teagardens (upper level east part of the old Museum Building), for..
The 7th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment-ie2010!!
The Katie Salen Keynote is open to the public!
Katie Salen- Leading game designer and author of ” The Rules of Play” will be at the IE2010 conference at Massey next week. Her keynote talk is open to the public. Monday 22nd November at 9.30am in the Tea
Gardens, Massey University, Museum Building, Buckle Street, Wellington.
Tickets are $20.00 waged or $5.00 student. Tickets available at the door.
motion controller/sensors on game consoles
I am very interested in xbox kinect, playstation move and nintendo wii (or wiimote plus) reviews, especially to see if and how they can be modded..here is an early review http://www.cnet.com.au/xbox-360-kinect-vs-playstation-move-vs-nintendo-wii-remote-plus-339307363.htm?feed=rss
here is a youtube video of using xbox move as a form of 3D scanner http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/Kinect/index.html
an article on the above at http://hackaday.com/2010/11/15/rendering-a-3d-environment-from-kinect-video/
nb (wiki) From a design standpoint, Ars Technica‘s review expressed concern that the core feature of Kinect, its lack of controller, would hamper development of games beyond those that have either stationary players, or control the player’s movement automatically; remarking that the similarity of the genres of the launch titles owed to the hardware not being able to “handle much else”, they predicted that Microsoft would eventually need to release a “Move-like” controller in order to overcome this limitation.[76]
Postdoc / Visiting Fellow opportunities
I am not sure this is news for this site, but I have been lucky enough to be awarded a Massey University Research Fellowship (URF) which will pay for teaching relief for a semester in 2011. My university in its wisdom only supplements sabbatical or study leave research overseas, so I intend to look for an appropriate visiting fellow/scholar/professor roles in other countries next year. That may mean in 2011 this blog will hibernate a tad. Anyway, I’d appreciate knowing of opportunities in cultural heritage and new media, virtual heritage, digital architecture and design, interaction design or game design. I am also more and more interested in collaborative design and learning, not just because I am speaking on the topic in a few weeks here and next month in Italy, but it truly is fascinating (edusim, wave in a box, multi-touch, group biofeedback and camera tracking etc)! Ok, back on topic, under this post I will accumulate links to related visiting fellow and postdoc opportunities-I have trouble finding appropriate ones so I am assuming I am not alone.
Will Adobe Flash 11 feature a proper 3D rendering engine and API
I spoke to an Adobe sales guy last week who knew nothing of this.
Is it premature to think Flash 11 will feature 3D?
The next version of Flash, amidst growing competition from emerging 3D-in-the-browser technologies WebGL and O3D, will feature support for 3D graphics.
But don’t get too excited just yet — we’ll probably have to wait until October and the Adobe MAX 2010 conference before we find out more. There, on October 27th, a Flash player engineer will give a talk about “the next-generation 3D API coming in a future version of Flash Player.” How exciting is that?!
NB see also http://www.tcmagazine.com/tcm/news/software/29151/flash-player-plans-embrace-3d-more-info-coming-october
Please Biofeed the Zombies demo video up on Youtube
Our paper on biofeedback used for a half-life 2 zombie game was shown at DiGRA 2007 (Toyko). We presented a new demo movie last week at UX Australia 2010 in Melbourne during our talk for Blood Sweat and Fears which is now up on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-MinR-17CA. Thanks to Andrew Dekker!
PS I love the idea to sketchnote conference talks.
cfp:Design Ed Asia
http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/designedconference2010/index.php
Design Education has the chance to preserve world cultures, and the skills of those cultures, through digital, fashion, graphic, interior and product design. In some regions of the world, it may be one of the only ways to preserve the visible language of a culture. Do you have an important story to tell about design and culture? Are the artifacts your students design steeped in the culture of their region or are they made for a nondescript global market? Please share your insights with us at DesignEd Asia.
We invite papers in the following topic areas:
- Successful cultural content integration into the curriculum
- Regional cultural design projects
- Sustainability and cultural designs
- Entrepreneurial local cultural designs
- Designing for other cultures
- or a topic of your choice that relates to design education
Abstracts Due: 31 July, 2010
Abstract Review and Notification: 30 August, 2010
Conference: 30 October and 1 November, 2010, Hong Kong
CFP: History and heritage in games and virtual worlds: Special Issue of Games and Culture
Title: History and heritage in games and virtual worlds: Special Issue of Games and Culture (SAGE).
The virtual worlds of modern games provide a unique way for us to interact with our memories, interpretations, beliefs, and traditions. This can be the digital simulation and interpretation cultural heritage in the real world, or the equally real social legacies of online communities. We invite you to tackle the complex issues of making these histories come alive in this special issue of Games and Culture.
Submissions can include (but are not limited to):
• Critiques of games and online worlds that involve historical situations or heritage sites.
• Guidelines and arguments as to the design and experience of games and virtual worlds for history and heritage
• Interviews (both physical-world and in-world) with designers of the above games and virtual worlds.
• Critiques or evaluations of sandbox games and virtual environments regarding history and heritage.
• Reports on accidental or planned historical or cultural events, artifacts and rituals that take place in games and virtual worlds.
• Explorations on how to best utilize the unique interactive, technical and psychological aspects of games and virtual worlds for the purpose of historical or heritage-based learning.
This special issue of Games and Culture has two overarching goals:
• To provide case studies involving the design, use and evaluation of history and heritage-based games and virtual worlds.
• To outline the key theoretical debates pertaining to the issues raised by the design, use and evaluation of these games and virtual worlds.
Authors are encouraged to include a critical perspective, including discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of their own methods.
EDITORS
Erik Champion and Jeffrey Jacobson
SUBMISSION
A one-page abstract describing the scope of your manuscript should be sent to invirtualworlds@gmail.com by September 10, 2010. Please include proposed topic, an overview of chosen methods and tools, and what games or virtual worlds you will explore in your manuscript.
Abstracts accepted for this special issue will be asked to submit manuscripts electronically to Games and Culture at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/games by January 7, 2010. Submissions must be Microsoft Word or Word Perfect file format, conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition) style guidelines, and indicate in the cover letter that you wish to be considered for this special issue. Manuscripts may not exceed 9000 words, one or two images may be included.
KEY DATES
Abstracts Due: Friday 10 September 2010
Abstract Judgments Due to Authors: Friday 8 October 2010
Full Papers Due: Friday 7 January 2011
Decision Letters and Revision Suggestions For Papers By: Monday 21 February 2011
Final Drafts Due: Monday 4 April 2011
Final Decision/Revision Response Due To Authors: Monday 16 May 2011
Final Manuscript Due: Monday 13 June 2011
Copyedited and Typeset Proofs Completed By: August 1 2011
Publication Date: October 2011 16.4 issue
For any inquiries please email Erik or Jeffrey via invirtualworlds@gmail.com
WordPress for iOS
so even wordpress is creating new UIs for the iPAD (even if the iOS is not really unique-yet-grumble grumble).
But now even I am beginning to see the value of the iPAD to the point of even purchasing one–is there a stand to use it with Unity 3D games? And a webcam for augmented reality interaction?
And a stylus to use as a secondary monitor for collaborative sketch applications? Now that would be useful. As well as a less fragile look.
Ear Zow Digital