March 30, 2008 10:26 PM
Violence and Games, One Student's Perspective (Part 1)
Earlier this month,I went to the Boston State House to witness a hearing on House Bill 1423. The bill would amend Massachusetts law to explicitly include video games as in the list of media regulated with respect to content, and to additionally include violence that is "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community" as a type of obscenity. Of course, being a public hearing, there was a fairly extensive docket for the Judiciary Committtee that day, including a bill to change access to criminal records (CORI) , judicial appointments, marijuana law reform, and something or other about casinos.
March 20, 2008 2:23 PM
Live tonight at GAMBIT US: Denis Dyack
This afternoon the US GAMBIT lab is playing host to Denis Dyack, the founder and president of Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Too Human). In addition to guest-lecturing in a game design course or two, Dyack will also be giving a presentation on Games as the Eighth Art and Engagement Theory for the MIT CMS Colloquium series. The Colloquium lecture is free and open to the public, and runs from 5-7 PM this evening in building 2-105.
March 19, 2008 10:27 AM
Ubisoft visits Singapore lab
Just a quick news update. In my last update, I mentioned that we were preparing for some very important visitors to our lab. Well, the first one has come and went yesterday. The Managing Director of Ubisoft Singapore visited GAMBIT yesterday as part of his preliminary tour of the Singapore game industry. Ubisoft looks to be setting up a studio in Singapore in July, and so he was here to make contact with the people on the ground. It was a very productive session, and he seemed quite interested in the work that we were doing - both in the Singapore lab as well as the experimental research initiatives and student summer program at MIT.
This may be the start of a beautiful friendship. :-)
March 18, 2008 3:32 PM
Life, Love, and Death... in five minutes.
The below entry first appeared at IndieCade.com.
I think I understand. The screen is everything. It's your entire life. You can only see what's right in front of you. The future stretches out in a haze that dimly comes into focus as you move forward. The past also recedes back into a haze. It's everywhere you've been. Everything you've done, all sliding back into a blurry mess. But it's still on the screen. It's just squished beyond recognition.
March 12, 2008 12:00 AM
GAMBIT Singapore Lab Operational
It's been two weeks since the GAMBIT Singapore lab really got started, with a bunch of new interns and part-time staff who are waiting for their call-ups to join the Singapore National Service. There are still some finishing touches to be made (the signboard with our name still isn't up yet!) but production has begun in the middle of all the renovation and interior decor work. Hopefully, by next week we'll have everything in place - just in time to welcome a whole bunch of distinguished guests who are planning to visit our lab. (But that's another story, for another day...). In the meantime, you can go see some pictures of the lab at our Flickr photo gallery.
Or I can try to describe it in words. (Skip the next two paragraphs if you'll rather look at the pics.)
March 10, 2008 5:25 PM
Game Design Bootcamp@Danube University Krems
Teaching game design workshops is always an experience and I jump at every chance of making another one. So when my friend and colleague, Prof. Michael Wagner from the Danube University in Krems, Austria, suggested to host a biannually Game Design Bootcamp as part of his game studies master course, and that I was supposed to teach it, I was delighted. The three day kick off workshop was in early January 2008. It was fun, it was different. It was an experience I'd like to share with you.
March 4, 2008 3:35 PM
GDC 2008 Round Up
The Game Developer's Conference, GDC for short, is the annual meeting of the entire video games industry: from studio executives to indie developer to academics, just about everyone who works with games for a living either attends or follows the proceedings. Last year I covered some of the more interesting presentations; this year I'll discuss some of the prevalent themes to come out of the conference.
March 2, 2008 5:10 PM
Gambit in the News
