This blog is still a bit confused about what is “cross media and games”.While waiting for a soon-to-come definition, here is a useful link from the Second Life Insider about twenty trends in new virtual worlds from the Virtual Worlds Forum Europe

Arden, the world of William Shakespeare, and also of Edward Castronova who conceived the online experience, has been released last week, together with Castronova’s book “Exodus to the Virtual World”.You can play it here.Various press releases highlight in turn its educational potential, the power of virtual worlds as “theme” social networks, the power of interaction and play in learning and so on. The question on how much can virtual worlds fall into the category of “gaming” is still open.At first sight Arden might fall under “adaptation” rather than transmedial storytelling, but in fact the player is engaged in creating new subplots within the storyworld, so the whole experience is truly cross media. I just started playing, will update later.A post on Terranova by Castronova says that as an experience “it’s rather boring” (it’s just a quote!) and that several of the playtesters said “Where are the monsters?”Apparently the lack of monsters were badly affecting the game experience. The answer to that was to take back Arden I and release Arden II: London’s Burning, which was initially conceived as a game.(This would answer somehow the question if virtual worlds experience can be considered as “gaming”, and the answer would be a sound “no” - more debate to follow)So, what you can see now online is Arden I, boring, apparently (I didn’t say that), but of immense interest for the academic community.

Another event related to the Magic Circle, this time in Tampere, from the Hypermedia Lab - my source is the Terranova blog, anyway here it is:?Breaking the Magic Circle?Call for Papers: Game Studies Seminar, Tampere 10-11 April, 2008One of the classic theories of games and play was presented by Johan Huizinga in his work Homo Ludens (orig. from 1938). Huizinga wrote about the free and voluntary nature of play, how it is “an activity connected with no material interest” and how it “proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space”, involving and absorbing players utterly into a separate world set off from the “ordinary” life, while being created and maintained by communities of players.Huizinga’s view has become widely known within contemporary game studies, and it is often referred as the ‘Magic Circle’ view on games and play. This concept has also been widely criticised, as it has become increasingly obvious how various “games external” areas play an important role in digital play, and also because digital games have become more widely enmeshed with and applied into various economical, educational and other social and cultural processes and uses.”Breaking the Magic Circle” seminar invites presentations from multiple?> points of view, including theoretical as well as empirically based studies into that question or expand existing conceptions regarding digital games and play. Particular fields of study might include, but are not limited to:• pervasive, mobile or location based gaming,?• alternate reality gaming?• casual, non-immersive or coincidental forms of play,?• professional gaming,?• money gaming, betting and gambling within digital games and play.The seminar is fourth in the annual series of game studies working paper seminars organised by the Games Research Lab in the University of Tampere. Due to the work-in-progress emphasis, we strongly encourage submitting late breaking results, working papers and/or submissions from graduate students. Early considerations from projects currently in progress are most welcome, as the purpose of the seminar is to have peer-to-peer discussions and thereby provide support in refining and improving research work in this area. After the seminar, separate consideration will be given to various options of publishing the seminar papers.The papers to be presented will be chosen based on abstract review. Full papers are distributed prior the event to all participants, in order to facilitate discussion.The two-day event consists of themed sessions that aim to introduce current research projects and discuss ongoing work in studies of games, play and their relation to surrounding phenomena. The seminar will be chaired by professor Frans Mäyrä (Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere). Paper commentators include researchers Markus Montola, Aki Järvinen and Simon Niedenthal, associate professor of interaction design.The seminar will be held in Tampere, Finland and will be free of charge; the number of participants will be restricted.Important Dates• Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2008?• Notification of Acceptance: January 30, 2008?• Full Paper deadline: March 27, 2007?• Seminar dates: April 10-11, 2007Submission GuidelinesAbstract submissions should include maximum of 1.000 words (excluding references). Abstracts should be send to info-gamestudies{at}uta.fi as plain text only (no attachments). Guidelines for submitting a full seminar paper will be provided with the notification of acceptance.Our aim is that everyone participating has been able to read materials submitted to the seminar, therefore the maximum length for a full paper is set to 6.000 words (excluding references). Note also that the presentations held at the seminar should also encourage discussion, instead of only repeating the information presented in the papers.Tentatively, every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes. -

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, conference, cross media, games, locative games

Perhaps you knew about it already, I didn’t : during the Mediamatic workshop Fredrich Kirschner mentioned an episode of South Park happening in War of Warcraft, episode 1008 (episode 8 of the 10th season) to be specific; take a look at the teaser here and then FIND the episode and watch it, if you hadn’t before - awesome

Tomorrow night, at 10 pm eastern time, 7 pm SLT, CSI: NY “Down the Rabbithole” will go on the air - detective Mac Taylor / Gary Sinise will have to follow a killer in Second Life, but he won’t find him/her until spring. In the meanwhile all viewers have a shot to catch the techno-savy murderer in the CSI island, or working shoulder to shoulder with pros at the Crime lab in Second Life.
The interesting thing is that the CBS network had to build a simplified interface to Second Life because the main one was considered too difficult for the average TV viewer - the OnRez viewer will combine Second Life features, like chat and teleporting, with services such as virtual shopping.
Definitely worth attending, I ll be there

Technorati Tags: alternate reality games, cross media, event, virtual worlds

This is no news at all, as it happened on April 4, but it is still interesting: the organization Adventure Ecology decided to flood several parts of Second Life for a few hours, to show the (not-so-future) effects of global warming.
Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, and the entire Mediterranean island of Ibiza went under,

although the in-world people would quickly get organized with boats, swimming suits and swimming scripts, watch video on YouTube.
Interesting enough, I am hearing from one of the organizers that the event affected mostly press, while Second Life inhabitants didn’t pay that much attention. I wonder how many other media-activist actions are being performed on Second Life; there is a lot of activism around there indeed, but mostly related to First Life politicians ( Democrat John Edwards’s campaign, and the Front National, french extreme right party (what are THEY doing in SL?!), below you can see some reactions)
) I wonder if this lack of activism from “engaged” members is because of the in-world demographics (not so many engaged members, maybe?) , or simply because I don’t know more about it.

Today I found in the spam mail an invitation to “the virtual world of gambling”.
PKR offers “the most advanced poker rooms, stunning 3D graphics” etc, with fully customizable avatars. I am wondering if they are aware they are selling two games at the same time.


Or maybe the virtual world medium has already become so transparent (a 3D avatar is already as obvious than an icon in a chat?) and the audience is already so blasé that the main attraction of PKR will be in fact playing poker?
If so, are we going to see 3D environments hosting cooking lessons, meditation, gardening and what not?
Anyway, I am not sure virtual worlds are automatically cross media, nor that they are automatically games, this is indeed a very grey area that need further investigation.

The uber-cool Mediamatic in Amsterdam is organizing a workshop devoted to the creation of cross media projects for children - the headline reads : “Games and Internet are gradually replacing television as children’s favorite media. How can media makers use games and game culture in crossmedia productions? If you can’t beat them, join them”.
The training team includes Friedrich Kirschner, Daniel Van Gils, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer and Julian Oliver, the angle is to create film and television in 3D worlds like Second Life, The Sims and others.
Very interesting (for me of course) the connection between cross media and games, I really hope to be able to go.

Technorati Tags: cross media, event, workshop

another great chance to ponder about the interrelation between cross media structure and games, and another call for papers that I am going to miss:

“The Future Play Conference focuses on three main themes. The first theme, future game development, addresses academic research and emerging industry trends in the area of game technology and game design. The second theme, future game impacts and applications, includes academic research and emerging industry trends focused on designing games for learning, for gender, for serious purposes, and to impact society. Finally, the third theme, future game talent, is designed to provide a number of industry and academic perspectives on the knowledge, skills, and attitude it takes to excel in the games industry.

Future Play addresses these issues through exciting and thought-provoking keynotes from leaders in academia and industry, peer-reviewed paper sessions, panel sessions (including academic and industry discussions), workshops (including design, technology, and career workshops), and exhibitions of posters, games, and the latest game technologies and supports from industry-leading vendors. The highlight of the games exhibition is a peer-reviewed competition of games in three categories: Indie Games, Serious Games, and Student Games.

For Future Play 2007, Algoma University College teams up with the Ontario University Institute of Technology to bring you some of the most thought provoking and talented people in the gaming world today.”

Submission deadline: June 30, 2007

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, conference, event, games