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I have completed my paper: Beyond Boy's Toys: Women, Play and Mindstorms Robotics [pdf]. Well, maybe its complete and maybe its not, but I'm not editing it anymore! (I think...)

Posted by cloo @ 09:25 PM EST [Link]

The bizarre world of electronic toys: Of the toys showcased at the American International Toy Convention, Liar, Liar Pants on Fire: your child's very own toy lie detector. Critical Art Ensemble, we need you!

"...Just as the mere presence of a lie detector in a police station sometimes gets an accused criminal to confess, Liar Liar Pants on Fire is intended to spark parent-child conversations. The instructional manual shows parents how to use the game to raise questions about drug use and other difficult subjects..."

Yikes. Glad I dodged that bullet by being born a few decades early. What else do you get when you cross toys with technology? Apparently, everything that can talk, does talk. Can anyone forsee that eerie moment when you walk into a child's playroom, only to find the toys holding secret conversations with each other...

Posted by cloo @ 11:04 AM EST [Link]

Super Synchronicity Advance: I'm in hyper-critic mode between hiring a Multimedia Programmer for the CIHR Games project and helping to shortlist entries for the New Forms Festival. Bizarre synergies are emerging. For example, we're looking at a fabulous game art/hack project and paper proposal by Paul Catanese that appropriates the GBA Console (of course, I'm a big sucker for that one). Two gruelling hours later we slog through the last of the submissions, and I'm shifting gears-- I thought I'd ask a friend of mine (who's apt we were in, coincidently) if he could recommend any good resources for Director 3D programming. So he pulls out two books-- the first name that catches my eye, Paul Catanese, author of Director's Third Dimension...

Check out Paul's work at skeletonmoon. Or preview Super Icthyologist Advance at Select Parks.

Posted by cloo @ 12:10 PM EST [Link]

Social Protest in online games via Gamegirl Advance.

Posted by cloo @ 10:10 PM EST [Link]

Think tanks for Gamers. An org like Collective Detective is great example of a cross-game player artifact, albeit one that pushes the definition. In other words, thesis fodder! Thanks a ton to Gonzalo Frasca and Chico Queiroz.

Posted by cloo @ 04:49 PM EST [Link]

Brian-Mitchell Young writes:

Think about the notion of a documentary videogame. not a documentary about a videogame, but a videogame that is a documentary. Such a thing doesn't seem possible does it? Think about the implications of that...

Well, with that provocation, I did! The response that follows appears (more or less) in comment sections on the JCCalhoun Popular Culture Gaming blog:

Why could you not make a video game documentary? This would be an interesting use of the medium, say, if you were looking at an interesting culture/subculture (Trekkies, Buena Vista) or event... I think this was along the lines of what the group producing Aux Deux Mondes was trying to do-- model a real life confrontation... Aux Deux Mondes sought to explore the real life gentrification of an ethnic neighbourhood. Presumably, by playing the game you could get a sense of the real life challenges of this situation. The fact that it may not turn out exactly as it did in the real life situation may actually be a plus-- it serves to universalize the experience. Unfortunately, I can't find online info anymore (I know it was produced by French artists). But they were featured in the final issue of Artbyte (*sniff*, we miss you!) with a few other groups...

...Documentaries need not only document events, that have a historically fixed solution (i.e. what "really" happened). Docs can explore cultures and processes that, as systems, seem natural to adapt to games. Not only that, you can allow the player to take multiple perspectives and engage themselves in the issues...

...The movie/documentary division can be a fine line. Often the distinction is in narrative (although I've seen narrative in docs) and focus (telling a story vs recounting reality/faux-reality). Some docs are movie-like, some movies are doc-like. I'd consider The Royal Tenenbaums, for example, a fake documentary with narrative vignettes. So, say for example we're making a Buena Vista Social Club game-- we simulate that very real environment, we recreate 'characters' or allow players to take on characters, we build our challenges on the real life challenges of people in that environment...

A good documentary producer constructs a beginning and ending, characters, and viewpoints from their raw material. Its not just a data-dump. The film medium then dictates a certain organization of that material. Using that material in the game medium would be different, to be sure, but that's not to say it can't be done! And I think it opens up an interesting possibility for the medium.

Posted by cloo @ 07:51 PM EST [Link]

I've been quite ill over the last week, so I've been taking advantage of my wireless network by lying half-comatose on my couch and updating a few things on shinyspinning. Aside from fixing a few bugs (I've never thoroughly converted my Greymatter blog template on the main site, although I've done it on most of the mini-blogs) and adding a couple of links, I've also added my (complete? it's never complete!) agency research (annotated bibliography and formal lit review). Also posted my critique of embedded agency theory Against Embedded Agency: Subversion and Emergence in GTAIII. Obviously, if anyone has anything interesting on the subject that I'm missing, I have a mild interest in the subject ;-)

Posted by cloo @ 07:37 PM EST [Link]

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