http://grandtextauto.org A group blog about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:41:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en FDG 2010 has put out their Call for Papers, the important date being 5th February as the paper and poster submission deadline. FDG 2009 was a fantastic conference, filled to the brim with various gaming academic luminaries, fascinating papers and a wide variety of interests. I’m looking forward to 2010, as ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/11/cfp-foundations-of-digital-games-fdg-2010/ Luis and Gay Tony in GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony Last week, the second and final installment of the Episodes of Liberty City downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Ballad of Gay Tony, was released. Unlike the more sullen story of Nico Bellic, clawing his way up from ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/11/reimagineering/ The Electronic Literature Organization’s Fourth International Conference & Program of Digitally Mediated Literary Art June 3-6, 2010 Brown University Providence, Rhode Island, USA Organized by the ELO and Writing Digital Media  at the Brown University Literary Arts Program dedicated to Robert Coover The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University’s Literary Arts Program invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference to be ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/11/elo_ai%c2%a0archive%c2%a0%c2%a0innovate/ Those of us who study computer and video games are very fortunate to have two free, online, peer-reviewed journals that do not assess page fees: Game Studies and Eludamos. And, there is at least one more free, online, peer-reviewed journal that does not assess page fees and includes articles about ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/11/eludamos-posts-new-issue-seeks-articles-volunteers/ Tiltfactor’s Mary Flanagan will be visiting MIT’s Gambit lab on Monday 2nd November, for Introduction to Game Studies. Later in the day she is speaking at the MIT series Purple Blurb about her art practice as it relates to her theory of Critical Play. On Tuesday 3rd November, Flanagan is speaking ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1351 On Monday (November 2) at 6pm in MIT’s room 14E-310, The Purple Blurb series of readings and presentations on digital writing will present a talk by Mary Flanagan author of Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press, 2009) Mary Flanagan is the creator of [giantJoystick], and author of [theHouse] among other digital writing ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/mary-flanagan-speaks-in-purple-blurb-monday-112-6pm/ First there is the series of conversations with folks like Kate Hayles, the Guerrilla Girls, and Brenda Laurel that is happening at Tiltfactor in the variable_d salon held in Hanover NH! Second, a symposium on complex systems will take place next Friday (Nov. 6) that I thought would be of interest ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1347 Yo Frankie! An open source platformer created using Blender. I recently gave a presentation on the landscape of open source software in computer games at the Univ. Rey Juan Carlos, where I am currently visiting the Libresoft research group. My slides are available here. While much of the talk covered well-known libraries ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/10/landscape-of-open-source-games/ Koster's "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" I’m a new member of the lab here, and that means that I’ve got a lot of learning to do. I need to learn about the different projects in the lab, learn about the various systems involved in those projects, and even about ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/10/its-all-about-fun-and-games/ GeoCities, founded in 1995, grew to become the third most visited site on the Web in 1999, when it was bought by Yahoo! for more than $3.5 billion. It offered free Web hosting in directories themed as different cities. Many people published their first page and first site on GeoCities. ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/invisible-geocities/ I’m organizing a small conference, The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice in Bergen, which will take place from November 8-10 at UiB and at Landmark Café. The gathering is focused on the increasing use of the network as a space and medium for collaborative ... http://retts.net/index.php/2009/10/the-network-as-a-space-and-medium-for-collaborative-interdisciplinary-art-practice/ Dartmouth College has a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position available for an Animator. In two years (or less?) this person will be leading the animation area down the hall from Tiltfactor in the new Visual Arts Center. Work with great colleagues, collaborate with Tiltfactor, make friends at the nations’ first Center ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1337 As an Atari Jaguar owner, I suppose I have something of a soft spot for the system, but I really do wish that it had more than one awesome game. There’s a recent article on the failure of Atari’s last console by Matthew Kaplan. He ends up singing of the ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/platform-readings-jaguar-pseudo-3d/ I’m not up to a writeup of the recent &Now: A Conference of Innovative Writing and the Literary Arts, a festival/conference (”festerence,” as someone noted) which just shuffled through Buffalo. But while you are waiting for the deadpan article in Harper’s about the event, these should be worth about 3000 ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/now-in-buffalo/ Babyfucker, Urs Allemann, trans. Peter Smith, biligual edition, Les Figues Press, 2010 “… mirrors and copulation are abominable because they increase the number of men.” —Borges Babyfucker is far more disturbing than the title suggests. The book, written by a Swiss author, spawned a controversy in Germany in 1991. It begins unabashedly ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/babyfucker/ Tiltfactor’s Mary Flanagan will be speaking on the panel, “Designing For Impact: Where the Talk Meets the Walk,” with several other internationally recognized social impact game makers. “As the medium of games matures and new experimentation and exploration of the medium flourish, many game designers, educators and activists of all ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1317 Hand-drawn, player-created computer game maps are sought for a traveling exhibit in the UK. They’re needed soon – by mid-November. Thanks to Ian Bogost for letting me know about this. http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/computer-game-maps-sought-for-exhibit/ Writer, publisher, and collaborator of mine William Gillespie just read (yesterday afternoon) an extraordinary piece here at the &Now festival in Buffalo. The multimedia piece is Morpheus Biblionaut, which he created with Travis Alber of Bookglutton.com. Gillespie pulls out the stops for this tale of an American astronaut and poet ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/morpheus-biblionaut/ I’m at a seminar in Oslo focused on mixed reality narrative. A couple of interesting projects: Julianne Pierce from the UK artist group Blast Theory presented Ulrike and Eamon Compliant, in which the interactor is put in the role of one of two IRA terrorists, about to undergo interrogration, and ... http://retts.net/index.php/2009/10/two-interesting-locative-gaming-experiences/ People I know have been up to many things lately, and many of these surely deserve a full, thoughtful blog post. I won’t manage that, so the least I can do is mention that … Jason Scott continues to back up Geocities, and, in the process of doing this, has posted ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/of-late/ Delightfully, the current issue of AI Magazine (Volume 30, number 3, Fall 2009) is on computational creativity. The number offers articles on the field overall; the history of workshops on the topic; computer models of creativity; and creative systems to generate music, stories and their tellings, moves of chess, and ... http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/curveship-in-ai-magazine/ Tale of Tales just released a new game or rather “experimental play experience” (a phrase surely concocted to appease those who don’t accept their repurposing of the word game).  Anyhow, it’s called Fatale and it is awesome. Starting with The Endless Forest, Tale of Tale’s have consistently created environments that exist ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/10/tale-of-tales-have-done-it-again-the-observational-immersionist-style/ On Monday, October 12th, UCSC’s Expressive Intelligence Studio will be hosting a symposium on Procedural Content Generation. Please join us to see interesting talks by speakers Julian Togelius (ITU Copenhagen), Mark Riedl (Georgia Tech), and Kate Compton (EA/Maxis). There will also be a panel on “The Future of Procedural Content ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/10/eis-hosts-the-procedural-content-generation-symposium/ A news piece on Tiltfactor’s metadata project aired Sept. 29 on WCAX-Channel 3, Vermont’s statewide television station based in Burlington. The piece features project director Mary Flanagan and one of her students, Danielle Arostegui, from Dartmouth. A print story also appears on the station’s website. http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1306 StarCraft I’ve been interested in developing AI for StarCraft for several years now. I recently came across the Broodwar API project, which provides hooks into StarCraft. It enables developers to query game state as well as issue orders to units. The Broodwar API makes it possible to write custom AI bots ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/10/using-starcraft-as-a-game-ai-testbed/ The 15th Interactive Fiction Competition games are out. You can download them and, this year, play 14 of them online. Voting in the IF Comp is done by the public at large, so you can participate at the ballot box as well as at the prompt. http://nickm.com/post/2009/10/the-games-begin/ I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Nordic Digital Culture Network, a Nordplus Higher Education network which we have been working to develop for the past year. Linking together digital culture programs from the Nordic and Baltic region, the Digital Culture Network facilitates curriculum development, student and faculty ... http://retts.net/index.php/2009/09/nordic-digital-culture-network-launched/ Mary Flanagan is in Washington D.C. at the National Endowment for the Humanities Project Director meeting. Interesting discussions emerged on the ideas about digital commons. We will have a large meeting soon with our team, technical designer, and advisory board to officially launch the project, but we have neat new project ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1284 Fantastic Monkey Island 2 render in Crysis. If anyone is yet to be convinced on the power of a great portfolio, I bet the creator, Hannes Appel, can look forward to an inbox stuffed with job offers in the coming weeks. [Via Offworld, .tiff] http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/09/stunning-monkey-islandcrysis-mashup/ “Hello, my name is Ian Bogost” (press Click to Play in the top right). I’m glad there’s no English translation of the web site, I like not knowing why he’s there. It’s like when you see Matt Damon on Japanese commercials, and you have no idea what he’s selling. Ian Bogost = ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2009/09/the-cycle-completes-game-studies-scholars-in-games/