MINE: Digital Arts Festival 06
Today, I visited MINE: Digital Arts Festival 06 in Thingbæk Kalkminer. Well, there was lots of light and sounds in a cave. I especially found the videogame art exciting, and I would like to emphasize: Samorost 1 and Samorost 2 by Amanita Design and Edge Bomber by Susigames due to the high standard for each of these games. The Samorost games were an artistically aesthetic experience while Edge Bomber turned out to be an interesting pervasive games experiment.




Susigames: Edge Bomber


Plato's Cave?

Viking-Con 25, Copenhagen
This weekend I role-played Jonas van Courtland at Viking-Con 25 in Copenhagen. It's amazing 25 years of game fiction! The live role-playing game was a classical World of Darkness scenario with lots of intrigues. I had a fantastic co-player in Signe Demuth Winther Rasmussen who played Caroline van Courtland.
The scenario was titled: Hjertenes Nat, Skyggernes Nat [Night of Hearts, Night of Shadows].


Jonas van Courtland

Ultima Online lecture
Kjetil Sandvik lectured this afternoon here at Aalborg University on the subject of Online Worlds, presenting Ultima Online as the main case. The students got insights into how computer games may be percieved as theatre. It was of course to some extent based on Brenda Laurel, but Kjetil had gone a lot further with this approach.


Kjetil Sandvik

Marvão
Joseph Olin e-mailed me this picture of the steps leading up to the castle Marvão [pron. Marvaong] in Portugal. I'm a bit afraid of heights, I must add. Still, I managed to climb these dangerous steps.


Steps to Marvão

Jason Della Rocca's travel report about Games 2006 in Portalegre, Portugal.

Games 2006 in Portalegre, Portugal
Chris Crawford made an outstanding performance, saying that the paradigm shift in videogames would go from "fun, spectacle, and excitement" towards "interactive storytelling". This might have been a convincing statement ten or twenty years ago, but now it seemed as if he was the old paradigm. As I said he was quite a performer. Yes, it certainly was not boring to listen to. Jason Della Rocca and I had to tell him he was barking up the wrong tree though.


Chris Crawford

On the positive side Jason Della Rocca and Joseph Olin both gave realistic visions of the future of videogame industry. They were very laid back and a pair of fine lads. In the evening we got together with animation researcher Veronica Costa and had an exquisite meal with lots of meat. More than any of us could eat. Luckily, Veronica spoke portuguese.


Joseph, Jason, and Veronica

More on the positive side Hugh McCabe had some exciting thoughts on videogame cinematography. Joris Dormans made a point about how to make better dialogue in games, and Laura Vallius had some interesting ideas on experiences in videogames with some expressive examples. My own presentation about sub-creation went pretty well too. My message got through and maybe someone will even try to use these ideas some day. Who knows?


Laura Vallius