In this new article, Giovanni Viglieta studies the complexity of video games based on game mechanics and manages to explain how some early video games still manage to challenge us.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995

Interesting article from Volition’s senior audio designer Ariel Gross explains why your audio designers are “emotion designers,” and why they and other members of your team need to remember that.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39905/Team_Audio_Emotion_Designers.php

Call for Speakers ECGC 2012 is now accepting submissions for speakers for the upcoming conference! The early submission date is February 19, with a late submission date of March 11. Prospective speakers are encouraged to submit their ideas for lectures, roundtables, and panels for the conference as soon as possible.

This year, the ECGC board is seeking sessions in game-related tracks including but not limited to Academic, Business, Design, Programming, Production, Social, Mobile, Serious Games, and Visual Arts. For more information on the seven topical tracks at ECGC, please visit the Track Overview.

The East Coast Game Conference is the largest game conference on the East Coast and will take place at Raleigh’s state of the art Convention Center on April 25/26, 2012. This is the premier industry event for developers to make connections, share ideas, and find inspiration in the Eastern US.
If you have a great talk and are a great speaker please submit it to ecgcspeakers@gmail.com!

Speaker Expectations
Conference attendees expect excellence from ECGC speakers. They will evaluate your sessions based on delivery, knowledge on the topic addressed, and the visuals presented. Please consider the following when proposing to speak:

* The proposed outline must match the talk you present at the Summit.
* You agree to commit adequate time to prepare for your session.
* You may be required to submit your presentation slides for review prior to acceptance.
* We strongly encourage that you rehearse the delivery of your session for it to be effective; preferably in front of your peers.
* Your presentation materials will be subject to review prior to the conference.
* You agree to have adequate visual accompaniment to your speech.
* You agree to allow ECGC to record and distribute copies of your presentation.
* The submitter also agrees to be available to present his/her session during either day of the Conference-April 25/26, 2012.

This week, I had the pleasure to attend the GBL summer school 2011, an event organized in Autrans, a peaceful and welcoming village located in the French Alpes, a few kilometres from Grenoble.

The event was held for a week and provided phd students with a fantastic opportunity to network, learn more about GBL, and present their work and views on GBL.

Participants included lecturers, researchers and phd students from European countries (e.g., France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Australia, or England).

Most days included keynote presentations in the morning, followed by workshops in the afternoon. The themes of the presentations and workshops included adaptive games, new technologies, the user experience, evaluation, and virtual reality.

I found these themes highly relevant as they addressed many of the issues faced by researchers and also showed future trends. Students also demonstrated very interesting work and ideas in their posters, with topic such as collaborative learning, authoring tools for teachers, increasing creativity through gbl, adaptive multiple user systems, scenario-based learning, risk management training, multi-modal approach to language learning, user profiling, mixed reality games, interactive tabletops, factors impacting on motivation or 3D virtual environments.

I particularity enjoyed discussions with researchers and students on their work. It was great to see the enthusiasm and drive of all students attending this event. Overall, this summer significantly highlighted the need for user-centered environments that empower user to teach and learn, and provide experiences that are both educational and entertaining.

Informal feedback from attendees tends to indicate that this summer school was a success, that it has managed to provide students with feedback on their work, an overview of the issues and challenges faced by GBL researchers, and useful ideas for their future work.

I believe such events are extremely important for students, who may feel the need to discuss their research with other students and researchers, but may lack opportunities to do so. Some students may not feel confident enough to talk to other researchers at conferences, and summer schools may just give them this opportunity.

More importantly, this event may be organized every year and all participants will continue networking virtually on Linkedin.

Thanks to the organizers for their incredible work and efforts.

Thanks to the students, for their ideas, enthusiasm, and the fantastic work they have produced so far.

Overall a fantastic event that I would highly recommend!

Patrick

On Thursday 16^th June 2011, I ran a workshop on creating video games as part of a STEM summer camp organized in Waterford Institute of Technology by CALMAST (Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology). The group included 14 secondary schools students with no or little background in Computer Science. The workshop consisted of an introduction to GameMaker, a free 2D game engine, followed by a project whereby they had to construct their own game. The workshop lasted for 8 hours, with breaks in the morning, afternoon and for lunch. The workshop was organized around the them of pac-man. Students were introduced to GameMaker, including: graphical interface, designing a level, creating sprites, objects and rooms, moving objects, collecting objects, displaying score and lives, creating variables, modifying variables, conditional statements, etc. This experience was extremely inspiring:

1. Students were extremely engaged in the creation process. They were willing to learn new concepts in order to improve their game. During the breaks, the majority of students insisted on staying in the classroom in order to work on their project.
2. The majority of them had little or no computing background, but concretely applied some simple programing concepts without realizing it.
3. Most students took their project at home in the view to improve it and possibly publish it on the yoyogames website.
4. Collaborative patterns appeared after few hours. Some students had become “experts” and where helping their peers. Students were also evaluating each-others’ project, providing feedback.
5. Many students developed their ICT skills by creating/editing sprites for their games using GameMaker build in editor.

A new video was posted on the mets11 website. METS (Maynooth Educational Technology Showcase 2011) is a technology showcase developed for student teachers and their lecturer. The first video from METS11 is now available, and includes interviews of teachers on the topic of Game-Based Learning. It particularly relates to the use of Scratch a powerful, yet simple tool to introduce programing concepts, mathematical and computational ideas, in a fun and enjoyable way, notably through stories, animations, games, music, and art . For more information on Scratch in Ireland, see http://www.scratch.ie/about

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AYLCkC8C]