Grand Text Auto

The last few weeks have seen several articles and presentations about games as movies, or Hollywood directors interested in games — a NYTimes article, reactions on Slashdot Games, Ludology.org and Terra Nova, a GDC presentation by Neil Young (designer of Majestic, now head of Maxis) about producing the successful Return of the King game for EA:

According to Young, the key to the success of the games lies in the understanding that these titles were not simply mass appeal games, but also mass entertainment experiences. Gameplay — the mechanics of game design — can certainly make or break a game, Young said, but on a broader level, the widespread success of a title depends equally on how broadly engaging a title is in terms of its general entertainment value.

In other words, does it have a movie tie-in. So it was refreshing (and ego-stroking) to find this article in the Calgary free weekly paper, FFWD:

GDC has inspired one lengthy discussion on GTxA so far, perhaps we can get another one going. As I mentioned earlier, the presentation of this year’s Indie Game Jam was a highlight of the conference for me and others (Robin’s writeup, more 1 2 3 4). I love the idea of a group of experienced practitioners getting together in a single location for a few days (pics 1 2 3 4), set loose with a shared, novel, expressive development platform, to quickly jam out an array of little interactive works, ending with an group exhibition shortly thereafter.

This got some of us thinking about doing our own version of a Game Jam. I recall Michael was immediately thinking about the idea of doing a similar event at his new Experimental Game Lab.

Wandering around SOMA a few hours before I flew home to Boston, Noah and I had a bit of time to think about the concept of a Jam. We thought, what would a Jam of electronic writers look like?

A week ago at the List Gallery in Cambridge, as part of the Son et Lumiere group show, I saw a great installation that incorporated massive amounts of electronic text. The piece was called Listening Post, by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. Apparently it’s been touring, so some of you may have already seen it. Their site describes it better than I can; be sure to click on Image Gallery. And here’s a NYTimes review of it.

Via jill/txt, a new Guardian article about the concept and writing of blog fiction.

Hmm, after reading the article, it turns out I was fooled on April 1st after all…

Google’s new free email service, Gmail, offers users 1GB of free storage, in return for ads that appear in your email. Not just any ads, though — the Gmail system scans the text of the email you’re sending, to choose customized, targeted ads based on the content of what you’re writing about.

This is bound to spook some people out — the idea that someone, some thing, is secretly reading and deciding things about your private email. However Google downplays this:

“It’s not that Google is peeking… It’s computers doing processing.”

I just came across The Cultural Gutter, “updated Thursday at noon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. The geeky triumvirate of science-fiction, comics and videogames forms the core… they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms.”

Past articles I found interesting include “Is It Possible To Have Too Much Fun?“, “Professor Zork“, “The Romance of Indie Games” and “Too Damn Talky“.

GameCritics.com’s “Caught in the Web” column reviews Gonzalo Frasca’s Kabul Kaboom!, Sept 12 and Gonzalo and Ian Bogost’s Howard Dean for Iowa Game. And Ian is this month’s Ivory Tower columnist with an essay titled “The Muse of the Video Game,” about academia-industry collaboration and why game developers should be as familiar with the humanities as they are with pixel shaders.

Rob Wittig and friends have a new blog — no foolin’!

Rob and I briefly crossed paths by way of Scott’s e-lit dinners in Chicago, before Rob moved to Duluth where he now teaches at the University of Minnesota. But I believe he and Scott and Nick and Noah go way back.

I’ll add robwit.net to our blogroll.

Next month Sony, Philips and E-Ink will be releasing the first digital paper electronic book in Japan, called “Librié” (see big pic). Its resolution is 170 dpi (newspaper quality), can download up to 500 book-length texts from a PC, has a little keyboard, and costs $375. The display only draws on battery power when text is refreshed. (via join-the-dots)

Can it run hypertexts, and if so, will e-lit finally pass the bathtub test?

A new issue of IJIGS is out, with articles by Jesper Juul, Magy Seif El Nasr and others. To read the articles, you need to click “register for free access to the papers”.

Once again GDC didn’t let me down. Here are some highlights; pictures will be added over time as they filter in.

First I’ll talk about our presentations, get that out the way, and then talk about the rest of the conference itself.

Here’s an impassioned article on GameTunnel about this year’s Independent Games Festival at GDC. The article is titled, “A Dark Day in Indie Gaming”.

Several of us have thoughts to share on this — will write some later tonight, in the comments…

Update: read more thoughts on it at WCG, antimodal, USC, GameZone… And a discussion on Slashdot Games, including a response from a developer of the IGF grand prize winner, Savage.

A proper post with substantial information about the goings-on at this year’s Game Developers Conference will have to wait until I’m back home on Monday (or maybe Noah or Michael will get a chance to post something first). Until then, just a few quick comments, and then some pictures.

GDC is consistently satisfying, my favorite conference. It’s the sheer volume of talented and creative and intelligent people sharing their work and ideas and good will that makes it so pleasurable.

Facade didn’t win any prizes at the IGF. Disappointing for sure, but made up for by the smiling and laughing crowds that surrounded the Facade kiosk the whole 3 days. Facade also caught the eye of a few uber-designers, who gave us some invaluable feedback.

Here’s some pictures, mostly of people (little of the conference events themselves, sorry). We’ll post more pictures here in a few days.

Excerpts from the announcement of this year’s Digital Storytelling Festival (mentioned previously 1 2, book):

The 7th annual Digital Storytelling Festival will be held June 10-12, 2004 in the majestic and storied surroundings of Sedona Arizona. The Festival will convene once again to inspire, educate, invigorate and galvanize the Digital Storytelling Community.

Digital Storytelling, the use of digital technology to create media-rich stories that impart meaning appeals and has become a much recognized solution in the areas of education and training, entertainment and creative design, personal and legacy storytelling, community building and corporate identity through branding and marketing. The Digital Storytelling Festival is considered the premiere arena for showcasing and discussing these solutions and applications.

Marc Cavazza writes to us with an announcement about the Interactive Storytelling system (see paper) he and others built at the University of Teesside:

We have received several requests by colleagues to make our (character-based) Interactive Storytelling architecture available as a research tool.

We are now ready to release an “alpha” version, which should include an authoring interface for the development of characters’ roles in an HTN format (the development of complete applications still requires elementary knowledge of the Unreal Tournament 2003 game engine).

A Call for Works:

The third annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, an international art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots, will take place in New York City in early fall 2004. Creators of talented robots are invited to submit their work for possible inclusion in the show. Proposals and works-in-progress are welcome, provided a detailed production timeline and samples of previous work are included in the application. The deadline for entries is May 1st, 2004.

No firm rules exist on the types of work that can participate; if you think it’s a robot and you think it’s art, we encourage you to submit.

Via Watercoolergames, Gonzalo Frasca’s Newsgaming.com has a small new piece, Madrid, a simple homage to the victims of the recent bombings in Spain.

ACM Queue, a technology magazine, has a really meaty new issue online about Game Development, including an article about AI in games, “Can Computer Games Employ AI Artfully?” (via Slashdot Games)

Follow the adventures of Chris Crawford as he journeys through Australia, where he keynoted under constraint, meditated with the local fauna, endured the spray of obfuscatory terminology all over his face, and steadfastly refused to be Emotioneered.

Via Slashdot Games, a new Gamespy article reporting on a recent talk given by Peter Molyneux, whose company’s upcoming release Fable looks to be very interesting. Some snippets from the article on the topics of AI, and interactive story:

… “we [the games industry] have to take on challenges that the academic world has been trying to tackle for years.”

… The central problem that developers have been wrestling with for years is “how do you tell a linear story in a simulated world?” He didn’t propose a solution other than to say that you need to have the world — and the story — react to the character as a gamer plays. Simulation and AI and the other technologies he described would have to be developed to that level.

Robin Hunicke and Rob Zubek, friends of ours and both currently PhD candidates in Northwestern’s Interactive Entertainment Group, recently got a sneak peek at the current build of Facade (which is still a few months away from completion). On her blog, Robin wrote up her reaction and discussions she had with Rob, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the project as they perceived them.

Since virtually no one has gotten a chance to play Facade yet, I’m not sure how much the specific points about the project will make sense to readers; but certainly valuable to readers, Robin poses several good and interesting general questions about IF, player feedback, natural language processing, etc.

The Boston Globe ran an article last Sunday about Sherry Turkle, who is hosting an “Evocative Objects” symposium held tomorrow, Friday March 5, at MIT.

The article touches on emotional robotic and virtual characters, including robots in nursing homes.

What has become increasingly clear to her is that, counterintuitively, we become attached to sophisticated machines not for their smarts but their emotional reach. “They seduce us by asking for human nurturance, not intelligence,” she says. “We’re suckers not for realism but for relationships.” … “We need a national conversation on this whole area of machines like the one we’re having on cloning,” Turkle says. “It shouldn’t be just at AI conventions and among AI developers selling to nursing homes.”

GameSpot has an article previewing the upcoming Independent Games Festival at GDC, including a blurb about Michael’s and my project, Facade. Judging by the accurate details in our blurb, they’ve actually played the projects they’re writing about.

Update: GameTunnel has started a series of articles on the IGF.

Adventure Gamers is a site that reviews and discusses commercial adventure games, as well as independent / amateur productions:

Although the days of classic adventures may have passed, the heart of adventure gaming lives on through the work of amateur designers who create adventure games in the true spirit of the classics, and make them free for all to play. This site is dedicated to throwing a spotlight on those independent, free adventures.

They report that “the amateur adventure community spirit is alive and well”, and that “2003 saw some of the greatest Underground releases that we’ve ever seen.” To honor them, the site has just held its first annual Underground Awards; the winners were announced last week. (via Slashdot Games)

Following on the heels of last week’s AP news article about game studies is a new NYTimes article that interviews several researchers, including grandtextauto’s own Nick Montfort.

New to grandtextauto? Our URL managed to make it into the article too, so as is custom when this happens, for any new readers visiting for the first time, we like to offer a list of links to noteworthy discussions we’ve had over the past year about games, interactive narrative, art, and so on. These are in reverse chronological order. Add new comments to any of them, to continue the discussions!