Category Archives: Misc

Mark Grimshaw have made his PhD thesis available to download. It’s a rare breed of studies in soundscapes of games. Need to check it out with time. Grimshaw, M. (2007). The acoustic ecology of the first-person shooter. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Waikato, New Zealand, http://sirfragalot.com/mainsite/phd.html.

Dirty Dancing game is is developed by Say Design. The game is based on film with the same name released in 1987 starred by Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. The game is told to be casual action puzzle game, whatever that means. Sounds potentially interesting game. (From http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=77018) John Woo and Warren Spector teams upContinue reading “Games in Production”

I got just message that told that paper Gameplay design patterns for believable non-player characters written by Staffan Björk and me was accepted to Digra 2007: Situated Play Conference (Tokyo, September 24–28). Now I need to organize funding for the trip to conference. Here is abstract: Descriptions of humans require several qualities for people toContinue reading “Paper Accepted to Digra 2007 Conference”

I started to playe Canis Canem Edit (aka Bully, Rockstar Vancouver) and I find it interesting. The game takes GTA engine and uses it to brings carricature of a boarding school, where hard-handed headmaster is keeping order and classmates are bullies. The game consist taking classes (which are different kinds of minigames), free roam, andContinue reading “Canis Canem Edit”

Rubenstein discuss about character design and the role of beauty design on blog entry The beauty myth and character design in relation to Kathrine Isbister book Better Game Characters by Design. She finds similar weakness on Isbister’s argument that I did when I was wondering why models in Vogue are beautiful females in my commentContinue reading “Beauty and Female Game Characters”

Rune Klevjer’s Doctoral dissertation What is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-Based Singleplayer Games (pdf) is downloadable. Need to read it…

GameSpy have compiled interesting list of cinematics in games: GameSpy’s Top 25 Video Game Cinematic Moments. Some game openings and cut-scenes there supports nicely Rune Klevjer’s argument on the role of cinematic in games: they function as a method of pretelling, setting up the stage for action (see In Defence of Cut-Scenes).

JiiTuomas refered on argument about philosophy of science at Rule7, which started as something else. Got interested what kind of RPG forum Rule7 is and started to read. Some arguments in thread made me write this comment. Especially view expressed by ChessyPig (which few seem to agree) raises multiple problems in terms of what isContinue reading “On Philosophy of Science and RPG”

The central question in Gallagher’s book is how embodiment shapes human cognition. He is combining phenomenology with empirical studies in, e.g., neurology, like what different pathologies, to reveal about how the brain and body work.

You can watch presentations, including mine, at Philosophy of Computer Games at tv.unimore.it.