Author: Jesper

Serious Procrastination: The PS2 startup screen recreated

It comes from looking too often at the Playstation 2 startup screen: I wondered what the principle was behind the 7 circling dots:
The PS2 startup screen, recreated

Here’s how it works: The 7 dots simply move around a circle, increasing the distance from each other while the sine and cosine parts of the circle go out of sync (this makes it look like the circle is “turning” in space). Sometimes the dots overlap to give the impression of fewer dots. It’s hard to explain, but I find it extremely cool that they chose to use 7 dots (rather than the more pedestrian 8).

So I recreated it using the new version 6 of wonderful Game Maker (the registered version). Download your own Project file, executable, windowed executable.

“The Emerging Emergence” & “Is interactive narrative an oxymoron?”

Slides from Jon Weinbren’s talk “Is interactive narrative an oxymoron?” at European Developers Forum early September.

That title sounds vaguely familiar, wait, it’s in Andy Cameron’s Dissimulations article from 1995.

[…] the term interactive narrative is an oxymoron

Perhaps it’s time to adopt a cyclical view of history?
Or perhaps it just tells us something basic about the video game medium.

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More interesting, Warren Spector’s keynote “The Emerging Emergence” threads ground that is becoming familiar (perhaps I’ve been to too many Harvey Smith talks). I am certainly trying to spoon-feed the students at my current game design course with this stuff.

Question: Will discussions of emergence reappear cyclically in the future?

BE John Kerry: Kuma War gets political

Latest twist in the serious game department: Kuma War is about to launch an episode based on John Kerry’s much-discussed Vietnam heroics.

News.com has a writeup here.

What does a game mean? I wonder if games are persuasive when they represent historical events. After all, the game is likely to have several possible outcomes, and the outcome you want for the John Kerry game probably depends on what outcome would fit your pre-existing convictions?
I don’t exactly have a background in empirical research, but I think it would be really interesting with some studies to see if a game can change people’s minds!

Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios

It’s starting to look like a pattern: In order to get into the game industry in a big way, simply create a top-notch mod for a bestselling game.
In this case, Trauma Studios, makers of the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 has been bought by Digital Illusions.

DIGITAL ILLUSIONS BUYS TRAUMA STUDIOS

Digital Illusions buys New York based game developer Trauma Studios Inc.
Initially Trauma will work with the development of a concept for a new PC game.

– Through Desert Combat Trauma showed they are remarkably good at developing products the consumer wants. They understand our technology and are experienced and skillful game developers. This was the major factor to our acquisition, said Patrick S?derlund, CEO at Digital Illusions.

– With Digital Illusions award winning team and Trauma Studios’ talent, I am confident we will be very successful together. We really look forward to being part of the Digital Illusions family, said Frank DeLise, CEO at Trauma Studios Inc.

Digital Illusions buys all assets of Trauma and employ all its employees. Digital Illusions thereby buys the trademarks Desert Combat and Trauma Studios.

Continue reading “Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios”

Canada in June: Changing Views – Worlds in Play CFP

The official call for papers for the DiGRA video games conference at Simon Fraser university is up. Deadline is November 30th.

Hope to see you in all June 16th-20th 2005.

Where are we on the graph and what does the graph look like? Was DiGRA 2003 in Utrecht the peak or a small harbinger of things to come? Is there one game studies field or will it splinter into several? To be continued…

Honestly, WE are the good guys. Here is what you should believe.

Off-topic, I continue to marvel at the ferocity of people who are promoting an esoteric intellectual idea that is somehow understood to be good in some absolute sense. OK, so everybody is doing it, but a sense of history could be of value. Terry Eagleton writes in a book review in the New Statesman:

We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity – all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.

It’s strange, but so it goes.