What was the first work of digital literature, or digital art? What was the first video game — the first computer game played with graphical display? These are the sorts of questions that come up when we start rummaging around in the pasts of fields, thinking about the boundaries, and thinking about trajectories that might have been.

I offer my thoughts on these questions — one answer considered, one initial and speculative — in the new book Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka.

Tiltfactor at Dartmouth College readies the Lab for Hurricane Irene: Lab Director Mary Flanagan finds the fire-resistant suit and begins lab preparedness…ah… preparation.

Matt Cloyd, Intern, continues to batten down the hatches– and storm windows, and power supplies, and snacks … and…

We suspect lab manager Sukie Punjasthitkul is behind the acquisition of the Flame Retardant Suit, but we cannot confirm this. He is a very prepared person.

Have no fear! Tiltfactor will brave on and make games!  In fact, tonight is a research night, playing Tichu with Mary’s relatives til the wee hours. It is the best meta-game ever! Bridge, meets 500, meets go fish, meets crazy eights, meets poker. Awesome!

Here’s another article about my talk today in Passo Fundo. It’s in Brazilian Portuguese, and has a less maniacal photo accompanying it than did the last article I mentioned. The Babelfish provides this translation into English.

Like my collaborator Noah Wardrip-Fruin, I have come to Brazil for the winter. But not to a nice warm part of Brazil — I’m in Passo Fundo, in the far South, at the 14th Jornada Nacional de Literatura. Here, it has been cold outside, but there has been great excitement about writing and literary art.

I have been correctly identified as a space man as I’ve shown and discussed interactive fiction, poetry generation, and other forms of electronic literature.

It’s winter in Rio, but I still spent a serene morning watching the waves, while mist clung to the green hills behind.

So why the picture of a sign? It’s something even more unusual, for a visitor from the US, than a beautiful beach: a mall billboard advertising an event full of professors!

In this case it’s the Regions of Narrative / Regioes Narrativas event that brings me to Rio, running the 24th and 25th at the House of Science / Casa da Ciência. It looks like a great event — with some familiar faces and some people I’m looking forward to meeting. I’ll be talking about the present and future of game narrative, including Prom Week.

MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, is seeking a tenure-track assistant professor in science writing to start in the Fall of 2012. The Program offers undergraduate courses in science writing and a one-year Master’s degree program in Science Writing. Candidates for the new tenure-track position should have significant publications, productions, or research; and/or advanced degrees combined with demonstrated accomplishment in the public communication of science. The field of specialization may be in science writing for the public, science writing/production in audio, video and or new/digital media, long-form science writing, and/or journalism about science, technology/engineering, environment, health and medicine. Teaching experience is valuable, but not required. Applicants should apply via AcademicJobsOnline, by November 1, 2011. The selection committee will begin reviewing applications in November and schedule interviews in December 2011. MIT is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer.

We want POX (the game) to spread everywhere, so Tiltfactor is announcing the POX Outbreak Giveaway. Simply ‘like’ our facebook page for a chance to win a free copy of POX!

On 9/1 we will draw 2 names from everyone liking our facebook page. First prize is a copy of POX – 2nd Edition. The runner up will receive a Tiltfactor T-shirt.

What are you waiting for? Start liking!

Thanks to everyone for the tremendous response we received at Gen Con!

Because there was so much interest in POX, we’ve decided to start shipping the second edition early! No need to wait until September. In fact, if you order before September 1st you’ll still get the discounted pre-order price of $21.95 USD!

With Blue — uncertain — stumbling Buzz —
Between the light — and me —
And then the Windows failed — and then
I could not see to see —

— J465/F591

Call for Proposals…

ELO 2012

Electrifying Literature
Affordances and Constraints

June 20-23, 2012
Morgantown, WV

Conference Planning Committee

• Sandy Baldwin, West Virginia University (Chair)
• Philippe Bootz, University of Paris 8
• Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver
• Margie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College
• Mark Marino, University of Southern California
• Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
• Joseph Tabbi, University of Illinois, Chicago

Call for Proposals…

ELO 2012

Electrifying Literature
Affordances and Constraints

June 20-23, 2012
Morgantown, WV

Conference Planning Committee

• Sandy Baldwin, West Virginia University (Chair)
• Philippe Bootz, University of Paris 8
• Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver
• Margie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College
• Mark Marino, University of Southern California
• Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
• Joseph Tabbi, University of Illinois, Chicago

The Electronic Literature Organization is moving its headquarters to MIT this summer. The organization is an international nonprofit with many partner institutions, but the main office is a particularly important site for the ELO – hence, I want to thank the ELO’s former hosts MITH (at the University of Maryland) and UCLA, which have generously sustained the organization for most of its existence since its founding in 1999. As the current president, I’m very glad that MIT will be the ELO’s host. I’ll be working with others to form a lasting relationship. As we continue to serve our international membership and pursue our mission, we’re going to have many fun events and collaborations based at MIT.

Pat Harrigan and I have just published an essay on the remarkable game Twilight Struggle in a new book that Greg Costikyan and Drew Davidson edited for ETC Press: Tabletop: Analog Game Design. We find Twilight Struggle fascinating — it is not just a game about the Cold War, in which one recapitulates many key events of that period through play, but a game that requires thinking like a cold warrior.

After reveling in the glow of Gen-Con (check out the photos on FB), our Lab director Mary Flanagan has just announced that starting this September, we are launching into a new project to develop games that explore nuanced aspects of stereotype threat and implicit bias! The  project “Transforming Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) For Women and Girls: Reworking Stereotypes & Bias” has three primary goals: 1) To understand how games could be used to shift the current cultural understandings around STEM fields; 2) challenge these stereotypes by making learning activities into games for girls– and the community–to play, and 3) develop a set a of design principles in order to recommend approaches to activities and games that increase girls’ self esteem and interest in STEM. Resulting games that incorporate the design principles will be tested with the target audience, iterated, and released for distribution on the Tiltfactor.org website and in partnership with Seattle’s EdLab, home of the National Girls Collaborative Project.

A variety of folks have been reacting to Ian Bogost’s “Gamification is Bullshit” post today (with which, for the record, I largely concur.)

This is one of my favorite responses.

The whole essay is fantastic, but I want to take a second to point out something of an aside of Mr. Nelson’s:

“…perhaps we could also read from the large body of research in areas like cognitive behavioral therapy, which includes a lot of thinking on quite relevant questions, such as how to use extrinsic interventions in a way that guides a user towards intrinsic motivation, rather than making them dependent on Skinner-box-like motivational approaches”

I have two main thrusts for this post; first, the experience of crafting/creating in real life and how that might possibly inform the process of crafting and creating in a game, and second, the impact of tools (or lack thereof) on same.  And I am starting out with a little bit of an introduction about why this concept of Creativity should be considered to span more games than “just” MMOs, where the word crafting has direct application.

Further, crafting and creation seems the most direct possible application of the concepts behind user-generated content, yet those applications have been ignored or, worse, actively thwarted (as in the case of The Sims.)

1. Creativity

And we’re oh-so excited. Gen-Con: Release your inner gamer! August 4-7, in Indianapolis. As someone new to the Tiltfactor team, I feel such enthusiasm in the lab during game-play testing that I swear it’s contagious. Gladly, no vaccine for enthusiasm is necessary. Speaking of things being contagious, Pox’s popularity had us itching to ship in some more copies of the game, and now that they’ve arrived, I get feverish just looking at the sleek, sweet packaging! Okay, okay, no more pox puns.

Come meet us all at our Gen-Con Booth. We will have Grow-a-Game as well as our Giant Pox, Normal POX: Save the People, and a massively cool new SECRET game we’re testing on-site!

Christian Bök is nearing completion of his 9-year Xenotext project.

Craig Dworkin edited Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing with Kenneth Goldsmith; it came out early this year.

Kenneth Goldsmith has a new interview up at the Academy of American Poets site.

Vanessa Place has now published two books of her trilogy Tragodía: Statement of Facts and Statement of the Case.

Well, technically all of us here at the Tilt team are Gen Con bound, but we know that you’ll be much more excited to meet the GIANT POX BOARD instead of our sorry smelly selves. (Just kidding, we do hygiene!)

BUT SERIOUSLY. It looks gameshow-tier kinda big and what fun is a gameshow without players and an audience? None.

And just so you know, the board pictured is just a prototype. The pieces for the real version have just arrived!

So if you’re just gonna, perhaps, be at Gen Con or something, don’t hesitate to play Giant Pox with us.
Maybe you can, you know, save some people, have some fun.

A couple of months back, Microsoft and the Games for Learning Institute(G4LI) challenged the public with the educational holy grail:

“Can you make learning fun?”

Tiltfactor, as the team of intrepid explorers that we are, rose to the challenge, and birthed Flagellla. Flagella was Tiltfactor’s response to Microsoft and G4LI’s task: To create games that can be introduced into schools that address certain curriculum points. Flagella is a flash game that not only addresses the concept of estimation but bundles in a mini-lesson on mutation as a bonus. In that sense it reminded me of the EA game Spore that I thoroughly enjoyed a while ago, but that’s a completely different ballgame.

In January 2009, I wrote a very short (one page) Python poetry generator that creates a limitless nature poem each time it is run. I wrote this generator, “Taroko Gorge,” mostly at Taroko Gorge National Park in Taiwan, finishing it on the plane afterwards. I later ported it to JavaScript so that it could be easily run in a Web browser.

It seems the gorge goes ever ever on. The code from “Taroko Gorge” and the form it defines have been appropriated a few times. Here are five poetry generators that use the code from that project and replace my text with different, and often much more extensive, language:

I’ve made some hopefully superficial changes to the non-blog part of my website, nickm.com. Please let me know if you notice that I broke anything.

For the past several weeks the Tilt team has been working on (among other things) a zombie-themed board game.  After several different versions with tons of interesting mechanics, we’re closing in on our final design!  Work together with your fellow players to evacuate the office before the outbreak escapes into the city.  Over the next few weeks we’re going to be testing and revising, and you should look forward to seeing a prototype in early August. We’re researching cooperative play with this one too, a hallmark of our design approach.

Want to get your undead on?  Come play the game at Gen Con, the EPIC game convention in Indianapolis!

We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context we cannot properly describe.

  –Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form