Game Design Event @ JYU

Arto Koistinen and Antti Luukkonen, in co-operation with our Agora Game Lab and majatalo.org will organize a game design event in Jyväskylä on January 12nd and 13th. You can sign up to the organizers to present your own game concept or prototype. Wonderful opportunity to get that much needed feedback on your designs. Or you can come to see what others have come up with and test the games. The event is for board games, digital games, roleplaying games etc., so pretty much anything goes. Here’s the official announcement (In Finnish only).

Happy Holidays

The holiday time is soon upon us, so happy holidays to everyone, whether you are working in Agora Game Lab, writing your thesis on games and of course to all the other (two? ) readers! Take it easy and play some games. Instead of a pretty picture I provide you with a link to a festive flash game.

2 New Game Research PhDs

From The Ludologist: Two new doctors of game research from ITU Copenhagen, two new PhD dissertations to read on your holidays Jonas Heide Smith’s Plans and Purposes: How Videogame Goals Shape Player Behaviour and Miguel Sicart’s Computer Games, Players, Ethics. Some heavy books, those.

Nordic Digital Distribution

Nordic Game Program has started to build a common channel for digital games distribution and they need your input. An excerpt from their newsletter:

5. Channel  for digital distribution
The building of a common Nordic channel for  digital games distribution has been started. Are you a Nordic games  developer with your games already being sold digitally? Please send us information and a link. Contact Jacob Riis at jacob@nordicgameprogram.org for moreabout the project.

So, contact them if your games are already digitally distributed to give them some information on how to make the system right (the first time ). I know that some of you in Jyväskylä have games available from the web so be active, your input is needed.

CFP: DigRA 2007 Conference

The Digital Games Research Association’s third international conference takes place from September 24th to 28th in Tokyo. The theme of the conference is situated play. The call for full papers is out; the deadline is February 14th, 2007. See the call text for more information.

I was just starting to make plans for before the holidays and the next year. Seems like I still have enough time to write a paper. It woud be very cool to be able to participate and the preceeding Tokyo Game Show 2007, which is currently scheduled from September 21st to 23rd as well. But we’ll see

Nordic Game Conference 2007

Just an early heads up: the next year’s Nordic Game Conference will be held in May. In the previous years it has been during autumn, so note the new schedule. The conference will be May 15-16 in Malmö as in previous years. Let’s see if we can smuggle in some serious games stuff, too . Not much data (at all) yet on the web site, but I’ve heard that next year the attendance fee structure will be more unified and any kind of pass will grant access to all the tracks. Seems very sensible to me.

Nordic Serious Games

We are making a project proposal about Nordic Serious Games for the Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe). This is something that I’ve talked about with many colleagues in different Nordic countries about as long as I’ve been a researcher in this field. And NICe seems to be the perfect funder. Allthough we are pressed by the tight schedule (deadline is 14.12.) the fact that this seems genuinely a need in the Nordic region helps us a lot. We’ve already had numerous expressions of interest and joint operation, allthough we were able to start the proposal preparation as late as last week (NICe’s timetable, not ours). So, if you are interested, please check out our project webpage or contact me (antti.kirjavainen at jyu.fi).