New History of Game Controllers

Here is a new history of game controllers, this time from Pop Chart Lab.

(The older one being Damien Lopez’ 2008 history here, also featured in A Casual Revolution.)

Click on the image for full size.

(Via Grant Reid.)

Watch GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary

If you haven’t yet watched Jason Scott’s text adventure documentary GET LAMP, here it is in full glory online, including an introduction by the director:

Practice: Game Design in Detail

Please join us for Practice, our game design conference at New York University October 28-30, 2011.

What is the practice of game design?
Out of all the disciplines needed to make a game, game design is the most critical but least understood. PRACTICE is an unprecedented gathering of professional game designers that takes a rigorous look at the ideas and methods of game design.

Bringing together veteran designers across computer and videogames, paper games and sports, PRACTICE takes a close look at the nuts and bolts of game design. Through lectures and panels, workshops and discussion, we will explore the practice of game design, with a head focus on the concrete, day-to-day activity of designing games. And there will be plenty of time of gameplay and socializing too.

PRACTICE is not a conference about business, technology, or how to break into the industry. If balancing the variables in a virtual economy or theorizing about the effect of rule changes on a player’s emotional experience sounds like fun to you, this is the conference you’ve been waiting for.

This two day conference will be held at the Game Center on October 28th-30th, will a full schedule of events listed on the PRACTICE website.
Space is limited, so those interested in participating must purchase tickets.

For more information about the conference, follow this link.

NYU Students, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni – $400 (Limited Supply!)
To purchase at this price, login to NYU Home, navigate the the ‘NYU Life’ tab, and then scroll down to the bottom to ‘Ticket Central’ where you can click on ‘Buy Tix’.

General Admission – $500
To purchase at this price, please visit the online store here: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9218275

New book: “Tabletop: Analog Game Design”

ETC Press has another book out, this time Tabletop: Analog Game Design by Greg Costikyan and Drew Davidson.

Even as the digital revolution has progressed apace, tabletop games — board and card, roleplaying and miniatures — have grown and attracted many new fans. Indeed, in tabletop gaming there is far more diversity and design innovation than in digital games, and tabletop games have become of increasing interest to videogame designers, game design instructors, and people who study games of all forms.

In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.

What PopCap Hates about Casual Games

(I didn’t blog about EA’s $750 million acquisition of PopCap since that was covered just about everywhere.)

Instead, here is a reasonably interesting list from PopCap boss Dave Roberts about what he dislikes about the casual game field that he helped create.

1. Gamification. He suggested it’s a trend enriching conference organizers trying to get corporate money into their pockets by promising to make anyone an “engagement expert.” “Really? Is everything a game?”

2. Portals. “I am sick to death of portals,” he said, specifically the commissions they charge game developers. “How can you charge developers 60 or 70 percent? I’ve been predicting for years that this would end … and it continues to mystify me.” Even with competition from Apple, Facebook and others, the portal rates haven’t come down. Roberts said he makes more money selling a copy of “Bejeweled” at Wal-Mart – with physical stores and greeters – than at Yahoo’s portal.

3. Get rich quick. “More than any other business I’ve ever worked in it seems to attract people who think it’s going to be really easy,” he said, noting that “Angry Birds” was something like the 52nd game made by Rovio.

4. Commoditization. “We have to figure out how to stop making shovelware … it really cheapens the whole industry.” Distributors need to be more selective and developers need to focus on quality, he said.

5. Money over fun. This was a reference to “evil social games” that trick people, lead to people pressuring friends on social networks and let players pay their way to the top of leaderboards. “Really those games make you feel like a beggar,” he said. PopCap is also making social games “but we don’t start in the dark underbelly” and the company doesn’t “want to ruin the environment for everybody.”

6. Simple games are easy to make. “This notion has been bugging me for years … making simple products is way more difficult than making complicated products,” he said. “Simple is more complicated, simple is elegant, simple is harder.”

7. Attack of the clones. Roberts showed a slide for a mock game called “VilleVille,” then lambasted developers who look at the top-selling game charts and then copy the leaders. “Really do you think you can out Farmville Zynga? What’s the point.” This is “a blight on the industry that drives me crazy.”

8. Stupid venture money. A lot of investors Roberts talked to over the years “look at our business as if it’s a manufacturing business” and expect it to be able to speed up production of its widgets. Money from these investors can “disrupt the entire ecosystem” putting in money “that makes it harder for people making great games.”

9. Middleware mania. Roberts called out “snake oil” vendors with tools promising to magically and instantly convert a PC game into a mobile and social title by pressing a single button. It never works, he said. “Usually the stupid venture money funds the stupid middleware companies,” he added.

10. Independent game companies. This was a self reference – PopCap was a standout independent, until last week’s sale to EA.

(From Brier Dudley’s blog.)

Well Played 3.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning

The third installment in the Well Played series is now out, covering once again close readings & playings of video games.

(Personal comment: Well Played is an important series, but I do think that ETC should work on the formatting of the text online – in fact, there isn’t any at the moment, and no illustrations either.)

• Introduction
• Pokémon – Eli Neiburger
• Final Fantasy XIII – Simon Ferrari
• American McGee’s Alice – Matthew Sakey
• Limbo – Alice Taylor
• The Neverhood – Stephen Jacobs
• Heavy Rain – José P. Zagal
• Fallout 3 – Alex Games
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Drew Davidson & Richard Lemarchand
• Mass Effect – Matt McLean
• The World Ends With You – Theresa Chen
• Chrono Trigger – Francisco Souki
• Street Fighter IV – Jason VandenBerghe
• Majora’s Mask – Scott Juster
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver – Mark Sivak
• Toy Soldiers – Charles Palmer
• Siren – Chris Pruett
• The Way of the Samurai 3 – Arthur Protasio
• Limbo & The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom – Andy Jih
• The Path – Heather Chaplin
• La Noche de los Muertos – Greg Trefry
• World of Warcraft – Crystle Martin, Sarah Chu, Dee Johnson, Amanda Ochsner, Caro Williams, & Constance Steinkuehler
• Ico – Drew Davidson
• Well Read – Jim Bizzocchi & Joshua Tanenbaum

Master Class with Marc LeBlanc

In New York at the end of the month:

*

Tickets are now available for the NYU Game Center’s Master Class: MDA Workshop with Marc LeBlanc!
Please join us on July 30th and 31st from 10AM – 5PM at the Game Center on the 9th floor of 721 Broadway for a hands on workshop about game design principles and best practices. Full event details are posted below

The NYU Game Center is pleased to announce our first game design Master Class, led by veteran game designer Marc LeBlanc. The class is a two day, hands-on workshop that is open to both NYU students and the general public.For the last 10 years, Marc LeBlanc has led standing-room only game design workshops at the Game Developers Conference, the largest annual gathering of professional game creators in the world. His widely influential approach to game design, known as Mechanics / Dynamics / Aesthetics or MDA, emphasizes the unique way that games create aesthetic experiences through their properties as dynamic systems.

The Master Class is appropriate for both professional game developers with several years of experience in the industry, as well as students and those just beginning their careers. Exercises will focus on high level game design concepts and best practices, and will result in collaboratively designed, playable games.This two day workshop will be held at the Game Center on July 30th and 31st from 10AM to 5PM. Space is limited, so those interested in participating must purchase tickets.

Ticket prices are as follows:

NYU Students, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni – $100

To purchase at this price, login to NYU Home, navigate the the ‘NYU Life’ tab, and then scroll down to the bottom to ‘Ticket Central’ where you can click on ‘Buy Tix’.

Non-NYU Students – $200

To purchase at this price, please email ‘gamecenter@nyu.edu‘ with the subject line “Master Class Student Code” from a .edu email address and you will be sent a discount code.

This discount code can then be applied at the online store here: http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9121245

General Public – $300

To purchase at this price, please visit the online store here: http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9121245

Group Discount – $250

To purchase at this price, purchase 3 or more tickets and use the discount code ‘GAMEGROUP’ at the online store: http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9121245

US Supreme Court strikes down law against violent games

The big game news of the day (in the US) is that the supreme court has ruled against the state of California’s attempt at restricting violent video games.

The ruling is surprisingly clear, well-written and sensible:

“California correctly acknowledges that video games qualify for First Amendment protection. The Free Speech Clause exists principally to protect discourse on public matters, but we have long recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try. “Everyone is familiar with instances of propaganda through fiction. What is one man’s amusement, teaches another’s doctrine.” Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 510 (1948). Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

And there it is. A court ruling stating that video games communicate ideas.

More write-ups here, here, here.