Category: games

On May 6th, starting at 5pm, the NYU Game Center will be hosting a reception for No Quarter: An Exhibition of Games.

No Quarter consists of four games that explore the possibilities for social play in real-world environments, to imagine a new arcade that generates complex, surprising, and playful interactions in the public setting of a gallery space.

Three of the games were commissioned specifically for the exhibit:

Raging Hadron is a two player competitive game by independent game designer Mark ‘messhof’ Essen that combines swashbuckling swordplay with 8-bit psychedelia.

Deep Sea is a graphics-free, audio-only game about the terrors of deep sea diving by sound designer Robin Arnott.

Recurse is a manic game of twisting bodies, quick reactions, and physical feedback by game designer Matt Parker.

The exhibition will also feature 16 Tons, a four-player game of strategy and negotiation by the team of Game Center faculty Eric Zimmerman and architect Nathalie Pozzi, which was created for the Art History of Games Conference.

One of the goals of the Game Center is to support the New York game scene and to encourage experimental and innovative work by local independent game designers. To pursue this goal we intend to commission small-scale games on an ongoing basis. We believe that games, like other creative forms, can thrive outside the context of commercial development.

Please join us then on May 6th for a reception featuring all of these games and a chance to meet with their creators. The event is open to students, faculty, and the general public.

Food and wine will be served.

After the reception the games will be on display in the Game Center lobby through June 4th.

721 Broadway, 9th floor, New York, NY 10003

From XKCD.

Go everywhere.

Get everything.

Use everything on everything.

I’d heard stories about pigs playing video games, but it turns out there is actual video footage to be found.

In this slightly condescending program about animal intelligence, go to 2:31 to see Hamlet, the video game-playing pig!

Hamlet appears pretty adept.

Weirdly, the game played is remarkably similar to one of the balance tests in Wii Fit, where you also have to move an object on top of a bluish rectangle. I don’t know what that means.

Back from Game Developers Conference 2010 and trying to get my bearings like everybody else.

On the heels of my twitter map of GDC 2009, here is a word frequency map of this year’s conference. I think they give a decent picture of what was going on if you weren’t there.

Monday: Day before GDC

Anticipation before the conference starts.

Tuesday: Tutorial and summit day 1

Social games loomed large, as did Facebook, FarmVille, the iPhone, Android, and indie games.

Wednesday: Tutorial and summit day 2

While social games and tutorials were still happening, this was completely overshadowed by the announcement of the PlayStation Move controller.

Thursday: Day 1 of main conference

The expo floor opens (“booth”), Uncharted 2 is big, and the award show dominates.

Friday: Day 2 of main conference

Sid Meier’s keynote, parties, more expo booths. Harmonix, FarmVille. @pocketprotector wins the prize for most tweets.

Saturday: Final day (3) of main conference

Phaedrus’ aka Will Wright’s “surprise” talk takes a lot of space. Mass Effect.

Sunday: Post-conference

A great time, PlayStation move (again), Gabe Newell, time to go home. “See you guys next year.”

Notes:

• Thanks to Mike Edwards for providing the captured tweets.
• I have deleted all occurrences of the quite frequent “game”, “games”, “gdc” and “rt” as they did not add any information.
• “PlayStation Move” on Wednesday is a hundred times more frequent than I would have guessed from going to the conference. This is probably because we are more likely to tweet news items than casual conversation.
• Made using Wordle.

The NYU Game Center Lecture Series: Journalist Panel

Date: March 25th

Time: 6PM to 7:30PM

Location: 721 Broadway, Lower Level Room 006

RSVP: gamecenter@nyu.edu

Please join us for a panel discussion with three important voices from the world of game journalism. Who writes about games? What is the future of game criticism? Where does game news fit into the game industry ecosystem? How is the game press affected by the collapse of print? Why are we still looking for the Lester Bangs and Pauline Kael of game reviews? Come hear our esteemed panelists wrestle with these and other questions and be sure to bring your own.

Stephen Totilo is a reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. He’s the deputy editor for video gaming blog Kotaku. Prior to joining Kotaku, Totilo worked for four years as MTV News’ first full-time video game reporter. His work appeared on-line and on-air across MTV, MTV2, MTVu, MTV’s international channels, MTVNews.com and the MTV Multiplayer blog, which he founded. He also has written about video games for The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, IGN, and Gamespy. One of his best-known projects was a series of critical exchanges written with former Newsweek games writer N’Gai Croal. Totilo holds a masters’ degree from Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. He also Majored in English at NYU.

Jamin Brophy-Warren is a writer covering arts and entertainment with a focus on videogames and the president of Kill Screen Magazine (http://www.killscreenmagazine.com/). He spent four years at the Wall Street Journal as an arts and entertainment reporter and previously was a music critic for Pitchfork Media.  He’s spoken at Harvard and New York University and currently writes columns for the Wall Street Journal and GOOD Magazine (http://www.good.is/series/kill-screen-on-good/).  In 2009, he was chosen to be a member of Slate’s annual gaming club (http://www.killscreenmagazine.com/) and his writing has appeared in LA Times, Vanity Fair, Fast Company, and others.  He graduated from Harvard University in 2004 with a focus on cultural theory and lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Sorcha.