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Why photography makes good gameplay: Photography is strategic. Photography involves collecting, exploring, investigating. Photography has clear compositional rules. Photography is a twitch game. Photography relates to weaponry via conceptual metaphor: shot, a shoot, snapshot, aim, capture, fire-off, even camera shy is a play on gunshy. As such, it can easily play off the natural affordances of current game engines and frameworks.

Just some things I'm thinking about as I'm writing a paper on photography and games.

Posted by cloo @ 12:37 PM EST [Link]

Well, that explains it...



Which File Extension are You?

Posted by cloo @ 08:04 PM EST [Link]

We've confirmed our games line-up for the PoV Alternative Games exhibition. I think during the review process I had sort of moved into a more abstract, practical state concerning the exhibition games, but now that the games are set and planning for the show has begun... now I'm a bit more "how COOL is this!"

Blowhard
Escape from Woomera
Mindbending Software
Molleindustria (Queer Power & Orgasm Simulator)
Dyadin
Organum

Plus, unconfirmed rumours there will be a VJ performance opening, several artist talks and a "curator's choice" system for some of our personal favorites that for whatever reason could not be part of the main exhibition.

Posted by cloo @ 02:57 PM EST [Link]

Back on blog...I don't know what the problem has been with my website permissions over the last several months, and now everything is spontaneously working again, so I don't care!

Small travel update: I will finally be presenting "Point and Shoot" (photography in digital games) at Entermultimediale ("People who play do not make trouble!") in Prague May 9-12th, then off to Bristol for Playful Subjects, (newly updated: ooh, a debate) and a cruise around UWE, for reasons I can't yet disclose. Then several arguably holi-days in London, seeing old friends and stopping by Middlesex. Just because.

Posted by cloo @ 05:33 PM EST [Link]

Idle Thumbs' Games Beyond Games is a report on the Innovation in Game Design Symposium in the Netherlands (Feb 2005), including a wonderful formulation by Ian Bogost on how games meet reality, and reality meets games in the 'documentary' game: exposing the system underlying a process based in reality (e.g. Civilization); games that refer to real events as the backdrop for a fictitious scenario (I wonder how this relates to games that include real historical artifacts like Brothers in Arms); and my personal favorite, games that tell a specific story using a system (e.g. Waco Resurrection, and possibly Escape from Woomera?) Ian puts forth these categories for 'historical' works, but I would argue a documentary does not have to be historical-- in fact, some of my favorite docs are social activist or character driven works.

This is great to find as I start to think about whether there is in fact such thing as a documentary game, and if so, what are the potential strengths and limitations of the genre, and what are the social responsibilities inherent therein.

Posted by cloo @ 05:14 PM EST [Link]

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