Category: events

On April 17th, I am co-organizing the one-day Re:Play 2012 video game conference here at New York University.

Re:Play is sponsored by the Media, Culture & Communication Department at New York University’s Steinhardt School for Culture, Education and Human Development in collaboration with the New York University Game Center

The conference is free, but registration is required at the http://replaynyu.org/ site. Hope to see you there!

Program

9:00 – 9:45: Arrival and registration, coffee and pastries

9:45 – 10:00: Opening remarks

Panel 1

10:00 – 11:00: Video Games and Religion

Ask your average member of the clergy, and they’re likely to see video games as a waste of time at best or, at worst, as a nefarious destroyer of young souls. But games and religion, closed systems based on stringent rules and dedicated largely to ritual, have more in common than they might imagine. This panel will discuss the relationship between these two popular forms of personal reflection and communal interaction, seeing what, if anything, they might have to teach each other.
            Moderator: Liel Leibovitz (NYU)
            Panelists: Ryan Hennesy (Princeton), others TBA

11:00 – 11:15: Break

11:15 – 12:00: Interlude I: Music for EnvironManta: Painting a Universe with Melody

Katie Jacoby (NYU)

12:00 – 1:00: Lunch

Panel 2

1:00 – 2:00: Publisher Revolutions: Free-to-Play Economics

The gaming industry has proven resilient to economic turmoil and declining publisher revenues, growing at an annual rate of ten percent at a time when the U.S. economy grew only two percent per year and adding almost $5 billion to America’s GDP. This growth, however, belies the fundamental shifts currently taking place among the traditional value chain. Developers, publishers, and retailers all find themselves confronted with a changing market forcing each of them to assume a different role. This panel will discuss major trends such as the move toward free-to-play and the emergence of social gaming, and ask whether its emerging publishing models present a blue print for other entertainment industries.
Moderator: Joost van Dreunen (NYU Game Center)
Panelists: Stephen Ju (Credit Suisse), Janelle Benjamin (SuperData Research), Katharine Lewis (Fremantle

Media), Jessica Rosenblatt (Arkadium), Rainer Markussen (Gamigo), Gui Karyo (Atari)

2:00 – 2:15: Break

Panel 2a

2:15 – 3:00: Gamification Mini-Panel

In an attempt to connect theory with practice, this 30-minute panel will discuss the topic of gamification by examining and playing with its machinations.
        Panelists: Paige MacGregor (NYU), Michelle Forelle (NYU), Max Foxman (NYU), Stephanie Llamas (NYU)

3:15 – 4:00: Interlude II: Video game presentation

A representative from one of the industry’s leading studios will showcase a popular, upcoming release.

Panel 3

4:00 – 5:00: Brand new, you’re Retro: Platforms and distribution models from the Atari 2600 to Angry Birds

With interactive entertainment entering into the mainstream, the demands made on designers and publishers have changed as well. No longer exclusively focused on the legendary “hardcore” gamer, we see game designs and business models changing.
But is all of this really new? In this panel, Nick Montfort and Jesper Juul will discuss how casual games fit in the history of video game. Are casual games new, or are they a return to the simplicity of early platforms like the Atari 2600 and once-mighty commercial genres like text adventures?

        Panelists: Nick Montfort (CMS, MIT) and Jesper Juul (NYU Game Center)

5:00 – 5:15: Closing remarks

5:15 – 6:00: Cocktail reception

Speaking at our Ivory Tower Defense panel on February 23rd at the New York University Game Center.

Do games belong in the university? Do you need a degree to make games? What can we get out of studying them? What is the connection between research and design? Join us for a spirited conversation with the faculty of the NYU Game Center to discuss the complex relationship between games and higher education. Frank Lantz will moderate Katherine Isbister, Jesper Juul, and Eric Zimmerman as they debate these important issues and discuss the work they are doing to create a shared vision for the study of games at the NYU Game Center.

The talk will begin at 7:00 PM in room 006 in the lower level of 721 Broadway, and is open to students, faculty, and the general public. We welcome everyone, whether your research and teaching is related to games or you are simply curious about this rapidly evolving field. Please come, and feel free to bring any interested NYU colleagues.

Space is limited, please RSVP here.

This Monday October 3rd, I will be participating in a panel on gamification at the Wharton school in Philadelphia.

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Gamification: Practical Advice from Game Developers

Monday, October 3, 2011 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (ET)

Philadelphia, PA

Please join us for a networking event and discussion on gamification and game development, co-organized by Prof. Kevin Werbach (Wharton) and Nathan Solomon (Philadelphia Game Lab).

Computer games have long been the benchmark for well-designed, meaningfully quantified interactive user experience. Recently the term “gamification” has come into common use for applying gameplay functionality in non-game contexts. Is there more to this trend than hucksters throwing badges and leaderboards onto every website? What really makes games compelling? What can technologists, businesspeople, and game developers learn from each other?

We’ll begin with pizza and informal networking, followed by an overview of the state of gamification and a panel discussion featuring experienced game developers. Meet local entrepreneurs, developers, user experience experts, marketers, and students, and learn more about this emerging area.

Panelists:

Moderator: Chris Grant (Joystiq)

Jesper Juul (NYU)

Margaret Wallace (Playmatics)

Ethan Mollick (Wharton Management Dept.)

Eric Goldberg (Crossover Technologies)

Frank Lee (Drexel Game Program)

Attendance is free but space is limited. Register today!

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

The Unfortunate Game Events Seminar
-A Seminar on Failures, Tragedies, and other Unpleasant Aspects of Games

I have the pleasure of inviting you to the Unfortunate Game Events seminar on May 19th, 2011 at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen.

The Unfortunate Game Events seminar explores the dark side of games: It is clear that games are not simply “fun”, but what does it mean when games are decidedly unpleasant? How and why do we deal with failure in video games? Does the structure of game necessitate straightforward heroics, or can games contain tragic content? Have the introduction of usability methods into game design and the expansion of the game audience led to games becoming too easy? How can these lessons from games be applied to other types of design?

The seminar is free, but space is limited, so reserve a seat by emailing seminar@jesperjuul.net. Hope to see you there!

The seminar is sponsored by the Danish Centre for Design Research.

Up-to-date program and directions are available at http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/unfortunate-game-events

Preliminary Program

12:30   Coffee, registration

13:00   Welcome by Jesper Juul

13:15   Miguel Sicart & Douglas Wilson: Aesthetics of Abusive Game Design, From Kaizo Mario to Marina Abramović

13:55   Sara Mosberg Iversen: Failure in a broad challenge perspective

14:25   Jesper Juul: Video Games, the Art of Failure

14:55   Break

15:10   Lisbeth Klastrup: Death in Games and Social Stories

15:40   Jaakko Steenros: Tragedy and Live Action Role-playing Games

16:10   Aki Järvinen: Social Disasters: The Role of Failure in Social Games

16:40-17:00:    Final discussion

Seminar Directions

Seminar location: Auditorium 5, Philip de Langes Allé 10, DK-1435 Copenhagen C, Denmark.

Directions at http://dkds.dk/skolen/find_vej

Speaker bios

Sara Mosberg Iversen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Literature, Culture and Media at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Her research interest is new media with a particular focus on digital games. Currently she is investigating how players of The Sims 3 construct, modify and play with place. Her earlier work focused more on digital games and the ways particular designs may facilitate and motivate different types of experiences.

Aki Järvinen is Creative Director at Digital Chocolate’s Helsinki studio. His PhD on emotions and video games, Games Without Frontiers was completed at University of Tampere in 2008. He blogs regularly on Games for Social Networks.

Lisbeth Klastrup is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where she is affiliated with the Digital Culture and Mobile Communication Research Group. She researches internet communication and culture, gameworlds and mobile communication, in particular social media formats. Currently, she is focusing on forms of personal storytelling (such as blogs or status updates) and user-generated content.

Jesper Juul is a video game theorist currently at The Danish Design School and New York University Game Center. He has previously worked at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Lab at MIT and at the IT University of Copenhagen. His books Half-Real and A Casual Revolution were published by MIT Press in 2005 and 2009. He maintains the blog The Ludologist on “game research and other important things”.

Miguel Sicart is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he teaches game design. He received his Ph.D. in game studies 2006; taking a multidisciplinary approach to ethics and computer games, he studied issues of game design, violence and videogames and the role of age-regulation codes. His book The Ethics of Computer Games, based on his doctoral work, came out on MIT Press in 2009. He is currently working on developing a design framework for implementing ethical gameplay in digital games.

Jaakko Stenros (M.Soc.Sc.) works as a game researcher and a doctoral candidate at Game Research Lab (University of Tampere). He is an author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design (2009), as well as an editor of three books on role-playing games, Nordic Larp (2010), Playground Worlds (2008) and Beyond Role and Play (2004). He lives in Helsinki, Finland.

Douglas Wilson is a PhD candidate at IT University of Copenhagen’s Center for Computer Games Research, where he teaches and researches game design. He is also a co-founder of the Copenhagen Game Collective, a multi-gender, multi-national game design collective based in Copenhagen, Denmark.