The Ludologist – Page 40 – My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things.

Tetris Hell

From XKCD.

NYU Game Center Announces the Spring Fighter Tournament

Upcoming event here at the NYU Game Center:

On April 17th the Game Center will be hosting Spring Fighter, its first Street Fighter IV tournament.

The Spring Fighter tournament will some of the best street fighter players at NYU and around New York and a prize will be awarded to the one player who can push their way through the double-elimination tournament and take the top spot. All are welcome and there will be food available to the participants and anyone else who comes to cheer on their favorite fighters.

Only 30 spots are available in the tournament so to sign up and participate please email gamecenter@nyu.edu with your name and contact information. If the tournament is already full you’ll be put on a waitlist and contacted if spots open up.

The Game Center will be providing controllers for each participant, but if you prefer to use an arcade stick or other type of special controller you’ll have to bring your own.

Spectators are welcome! We hope to see you there!

The Spring Fighter Tournament
April 17th at 2pm
721 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York, NY
RSVP: gamecenter@nyu.edu

Universal Walkthrough

Go everywhere.

Get everything.

Use everything on everything.

Video Game-playing Pig

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.

Tablets are Dead (history tells us so)

Behold the cover of the latest issue of Wired:

Behold the article “How the Tablet Will Change the World“.

Compare to another Wired prediction, from 1997. The browser is dead and will be replaced by “push” technology:

This is not to say that the iPad will fail.

But if history has taught us anything, it’s this: If something is on the cover of Wired, it’s future is in serious jeopardy. Iridium. The Long Boom. Sega.

Perhaps this is what Wired is: Current trends, extrapolated to the max, made into the strongest possible predictions about the future.

Game Developers Conference 2010 as told to Twitter

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

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.

Leigh Alexander is news director of industry website Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland weblog, and a columnist and reviewer for publications like Kotaku, GamePro and the AV Club. She focuses on cultural issues surrounding games and gamers.