Assassin’s Creed 2 marketing via short films

Not uninteresting to see the merger of games and film continue in the Assassin’s Creed universe. Not only did they start a short film contest ‘Live by the Creed’ (deadline Nov 17 – here is one contender) organized by IFC medialab but they also announced the release of a number of professionally produced live action short films before the game launch

Apparently 70 per cent of the ’sets’ of the short films – shot almost entirely on green screen – are taken directly from the game. Most of the actors involved in the motion capture and voice-acting are also being used for the shorts. (says IGN)

Game-machinima-cosplay film-bluescreen short-feature film -all become seriously blurred. It fits only too well that, then, that Mechner pitched his idea for a Prince of Persia movie with PS2 game footage.

BBC 4 programme about games

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe

There’s a version online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n1j8q.

This version is not subtitled – but it will be broadcast in the UK over the next week (till October 5th) on BBC 4 – dates at the above link, and it’s broadcast with subtitles – at least the one I watched last night had them.

Lars von Trier videogame?

Rumor has it that a video game might be underway based on von Trier’s Antichrist. Morten Iversen from the Zeitguys studio in Copenhagen is supposedly involved. Even if nothing comes out of it, it seems still interesting to see the Dogme95 approach making a reappearance in video games. It has been mentioned in independent game development as well as machinima before and seems to keep attractive for developers.
And Dafoe should be ready for this. After all he already had to deal with some twisted video game experiences in eXistenZ.

Bio-Sensory data and game play

For those of us interested in the effects of game imagery and game action: there is a new article over at Gamasutra: Shoot to Thrill: Bio-Sensory Reactions to 3D Shooting Games. Among other things it discusses the value of cutscenes on emotional involvement.

More zombies

Left 4 Dead – a zombie game with “a cinematic vibe”, it says here.

Zombie lore

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set

Link to article in which Simon Pegg defends the classic zombie shuffle. The “fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.”

Meaningful Play 2008

Details for conference Meaningful Play 2008 are online at here at http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/

Augmented realities

2nd International Workshop on Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality.
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
August 28-29, 2008
More information is here http://regard.crg.ulaval.ca

And this might be of interest too – City Hunters – mobile phone game (see their paper as well)

Narrative and Presence

An article with an experiment/quantitative approach to narrative and players, by Lee, K. , Jin, S. , Park, N. and Kang, S. “Effects of Narrative on Feelings of Presence in Computer-Game Playing” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Sheraton New York, New York City, NY (date?) from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p13584_index.html…quote from the abstract “Two experiments examine the effects of narrative on game players’ feelings of presence and evaluation of the game. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 30) played a computer game either directly without any intervention or after watching a 5-minute narrative movie about the main game character. The results showed that watching the narrative movie positively influence game players’ feelings of presence, and their evaluation and enjoyment of the game.”

Space, time and play in Rotterdam

V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, presents:
Space Time Play: Gaming in Urban Space
Friday May 2, location: NAi, Museumpark 25, Rotterdam
This event will be streamed live at http://live.v2.nl
Links:
www.v2.nl
www.workspace-unlimited.org
http://happening.nai.nl

Featuring: Matt Adams (UK), Mary Flanagan (US), Workspace Unlimited (BE), Steffen P. Walz (D) and Matthias Böttger (D), Petr Kazil (NL), Theodore Watson (US), The C-men (NL) with Jeroen Tel a.k.a. Maniacs of Noise (NL)

An evening dedicated to computer games, architecture, art activism and urbanism as theorized and practiced by artists, architects and game designers, organized by V2_ in cooperation with Workspace
Unlimited.

The starting point for the evening will be the book “Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level”, published in late 2007 by Birkhäuser Verlag and edited by Steffen P. Walz who is a research associate and teacher within the ETH Zürich’s computer aided architectural design group, and Friedrich von Borries and Matthias Böttger who run the organization Raumtaktik, the “Agentur für räumliche Aufklärung und Intervention.”

At this event, a range of contemporary virtual and physical game spaces in and around the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam will be discussed and explored. These spaces offer options for social and cultural interaction in urban space and are often characterized by the superimposition of physical space (the city) and virtual space. Continuing from where the book Space Time Play and its themes leave off, the evening will cover topics ranging from gaming
strategies of the Situationists to gaming strategies for social interaction in contemporary urban space. Artists, architects and activists will present projects and strategies for critical game
design alongside theorists who will discuss the fundamentals on which such practice is based. The audience will be encouraged to play an active role in this event and explore the physical and virtual space-time-play dungeons of Rotterdam!

www.v2.nl
www.workspace-unlimited.org
http://happening.nai.nl

Play in films, literature and culture

Play Conference,  May 23-24, University of Edinburgh

The Graduate School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh invites you to consider the notion of play and how it can illuminate topical concerns in the arts and humanities. Papers may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Play and identity:

• Playboys and playgirls: gender and sexual play.
• Playing with the self: race, gender, nation, class.
• The body as playground: transformations and decorations.

Play and the arts:

• Representations of play.
• The play’s the thing: performance and theatricality.
• Playing with representation: from avant-garde to postmodernism.

Playing the game:

• Playing the field: sport and play.
• Leisure and organized play.
• From Mancala to Majong to Mario: the games people play.
• Play.com: the internet as playground.

Play and philosophy:

• Philosophy in play; play in philosophy.
• The limitations of play: play as a finite concept.
• Language games.

Play and transgression:

• Playing with fire: dangerous play, serious play, subversive play.
• The carnivalesque.
• Parody and satire.

Studentships

University of Salford
A Greater Manchester University

CASE Studentships
3D Vision
The Centre for Virtual Environments

Closing date for applications 15.2.2008

Two CASE studentships, one partnered by BBC and the other by OMG VICON, will combine computer vision, immersive virtual reality, motion capture and telecommunication, to allow surround 3D vision based capture and reconstruction of people in real time.

For more information follow this link.

EA’s Entertainment Industry Speaker Series

This is a reminder email of EA & BAFTA’s upcoming event which is the next edition of EA’s Entertainment Industry Speaker Series. We are once again proud to partner with the British Academy of Film & Television Arts as we welcome Henry LaBounta – Chief Visual Officer, Worldwide Studios who will be speaking at an exclusive event in London.
Formerly a visual effects supervisor in the film industry, Henry worked on numerous blockbusters including Minority Report, Mission Impossible:II, and Twister (the latter earning him a BAFTA Award in 1997 for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects). Henry’s background in film and expertise within the games industry makes him an ideal speaker on ‘Believable Character Motion’.
The Entertainment Industry Speaker series is designed to bring the games, film, TV, and music industries closer together in an environment to share best practices & new ideas and meet key industry leaders in an informal setting.
If you have not registered for the event, space is limited therefore pre-registration deadline is midnight Sunday 22nd April. Successful registrants will receive a confirmation RSVP email on Monday 23rd April.
If you have registered for the event, this is simply a reminder note and successful registrants will receive a confirmation RSVP email on Monday 23rd April.
Below are details of the event and if you would like to register for tickets please send us an email with your full name, email, phone number, company and title to events@ea.com by midnight Sunday 22nd April.
DATE: Tuesday 24th April
LOCATION: BAFTA – 195 Piccadilly, London
DOORS OPEN 6.30PM
SPEAKER DISCUSSION 7.30PM – 8.15PM
We look forward to seeing you at the event!
Events Team
events@ea.com