Grand Text Auto

The Presidential Scholars Program at Dartmouth enables juniors to work closely with faculty on research projects. During the 2011-12 school year, I was one of three Presidential Scholars working at Tiltfactor. This past winter and spring, I learned quite a bit about game design and game research while working on a number of projects at the lab. I focused primarily on contributing to NSF-funded BIAS studies on reworking stereotypes and biases and to research involving POX: SAVE THE PEOPLE, although I also assisted with various outreach events and general lab tasks.

Yes we have Purple Blurb! The first event is in less than a week – sorry for the short notice; I hope you locals can join us. Here are the details:

As filmmaker Brett Neveu explains in his video about Christmas Bytes, he’s aiming to make the resonant Christmas movie for our (or at least my) generation, when the coveted item was not an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, but rather the Atari Video Computer System.

Ian Bogost and I donated a signed copy of Racing the Beam to the campaign, and there are a raft of other 80s-related enticements. For instance, I tend the judge the wisdom of my actions by whether anonymous San Francisco band The Residents are doing the same, and in this case, I am pleased to say that they also have contributed CDs — and are lined up to do the original soundtrack for the film.

The tickets are now diamonds!

Ian Horswill, Michael Young and I are editing a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (T-CIAIG), and your submissions are invited — until October 5, 2011. We have extended the deadline two weeks.

Specifically:

The T-CIAIG Special Issue on Computational Narrative and Games solicits papers on all topics related to narrative in computational media and of relevance to games, including but not limited to:

• Storytelling systems
• Story generation
• Drama management
• Interactive fiction
• Story presentation, including performance, lighting, staging, music and camera control

As mentioned here before, Ian Horswill, Michael Young and I are editing a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (T-CIAIG), and your submissions are invited. Specifically:

The T-CIAIG Special Issue on Computational Narrative and Games solicits papers on all topics related to narrative in computational media and of relevance to games, including but not limited to:

• Storytelling systems
• Story generation
• Drama management
• Interactive fiction
• Story presentation, including performance, lighting, staging, music and camera control
• Dialog generation
• Authoring tools
• Human-subject evaluations of systems

As mentioned here before, Ian Horswill, Michael Young and I are editing a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (T-CIAIG), and your submissions are invited. Specifically:

The T-CIAIG Special Issue on Computational Narrative and Games solicits papers on all topics related to narrative in computational media and of relevance to games, including but not limited to:

• Storytelling systems
• Story generation
• Drama management
• Interactive fiction
• Story presentation, including performance, lighting, staging, music and camera control
• Dialog generation
• Authoring tools
• Human-subject evaluations of systems

Today was the official opening of the new Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth, the new home of Tiltfactor! Thanks to the Black Family, the other donors, and everyone who made “Black Arts” become a reality! Also, a shout out to everyone who stopped by the lab and played some games with us. More pics on our facebook page. Rockin!

Modeling health system dynamics with a game of tag about zombies? Sounds impossible, but the Tiltfactor team experimented with just such a wacky game on the Dartmouth Green! The human team runs away from the zombies, because if they get tagged then they have to change teams. Meanwhile, the humans can choose to call in one type of specialist per round: either the soldiers to stun the zombies (you can’t kill them, duh), the medics to heal tagged humans, or the scientists to turn the zombies back into humans.

Games by the Book
Videogame Adaptations of Literary Works in the Hayden Library

The Hayden Library (in MIT’s Building 14) is hosting an interactive exhibition starting on September 7th. Visitors to the second floor will be able to play four videogames that are adapted from literary works, from Sophocles and Shakespeare to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Douglas Adams. The exhibit explores the range of approaches taken to create video games of literary works, The result is often whimsical, turning the worlds of these stories into spaces to be explored, often transforming them according video game conventions.

Lady Gaga is the larval stage of Yo-Landi Vi$$er. The previous, embryonic stage: Katy Perry.

Right after getting back from the crazy awesome that is Gen Con, the Tiltfactor team went into packing mode, as we are moving into a new building! Two years in the making, the Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth College is a state-of-the-art facility that, along with the Hopkins Center and the Hood Museum, will serve as an intellectual and cultural hub in Dartmouth’s new Arts District.

The Black Family Visual Arts Center official dedication is Friday September 14. We are very excited about enjoying the new space while we further our research and games development.