John Hopson's 2007 Keynote

John Hopson is a pretty cool guy. He has a PhD in experimental psychology, whcih in my books already makes him cool. Then it turns out, his PhD work was done in a lab where they study animal cognition. OK, that is even cooler, as well, the cool kids take animal cognition. Then we got to talking and realized we had read each others' stuff. I know that has nothing to do with game design, but it is, to me, an indication of the serendipitous connections you can make at FuturePlay.

Anyway most of you will know John from his work on a little text called "Behavioral Game Design" which applies the psychological literature to game design. See I knew I liked this guy...

John gave a keynote at FuturePlay 2007 which I recorded with my little iRiver (this year I will use a Zoom H2 which is MUCH better). So some of the audio is a bit shall we say messy. You will also notice someone (who I will not name...) picking up my recorder and looking at it and you will hear me say "That's my recorder" when she asks what she is holding....

John basically described his work at Microsoft, working with various studios to make better games. Tell me that isn't a cool job.

This talk should give you an idea of the quality of speaker at the conference.

I hope you enjoy John's keynote from the 2007 FuturePlay conference.

T6 Episode 57 - An Interview with Diane Devenyi

Yeah I know, I said that I had interviewed her a few posts back, well, here is the interview. This is a really cool project and I really hope there are some people out there that will share their game stories with Diane.

Music by Battery Life and Jet Pin Army.

Listen and Enjoy

Interview With Eitan Glinert - Accessibility in Games

During the conference I recorded a couple of interviews, so besides the keynotes I got to hang out with some cool people and talk games. One of those cool people was (well is, I am sure he is still cool...) Eitan Glinert. Eitan and others have been working on a game that is equally playable for sighted and visually impaired people. Having low vision myself, this game is pretty interesting to me. The game is called Audiodyssey, it is available now as a free download, check it out.

He is also getting going on a startup in May called Fire Hose VIdeo Games, so if you need a job in May or so, perhaps you should contact Eitan....

Music in this episode is from Uncle Seth, (whose bass player I hung out with at the Toronto Podcast Meetup on Thursday, November 15) and The Mark Harold Band.

Listen Now.

T6 Flashback 12 - Mia Consalvo

I did not get a chance to go to Mia's talk yesterday, as I was off to the Toronto Podcast Meetup (which was cool BTW, thanks to Scarborough Dude, John Meadows, Mark Blevis et al). However, I interviewed Mia on T6, episode 52, so I thought I would post that.

Enjoy.

T6 Flashback 11 - Clint Hocking Keynote from 2006

As promised, here is Clint Hocking's keynote from FuturePlay 2006. This should give you a taste of what we have had in the past at FP.

Clint talked about getting a demo beyond the Male 18-34 bracket, there are a lot of other humans out there that could get entertained, and perhaps more from video games.

(As a side note, I think I was the only one in the room that did not fall for the 'look under your chair for you 3D glasses' bit).

Listen and enjoy

Paper Sessions - An Example

Now we have keynotes (I will post one of them later today) at FuturePlay each year and then there are the paper sessions. I recorded some guy presenting a paper on experimental psychology and game design last year in London at FuturePlay 2006.

This talk should give you a good feel for the paper sessions.

If you check this dude's blog you can get the paper and the powerpoint slides....

Listen Now.

T6 Flashback 10 - Interview with CLint Hocking of Ubisoft

Episode 41 of T6 is flashback number 10.

From FuturePlay 2006 an interview with Clint Hocking. Clint has been working for Ubisoft in Montréal for five years. Most recently he worked as scriptwriter, lead level designer and creative director on SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY. Before games he worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning a masters’ degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. He lives happily in Montréal with his fiancé and his dog.

Clint and I talked about the future of game design and the fact that games need not just be fun, they could also be what Clint calls 'engaging'. There is a whole other market out there beyond the 18-34 year old males.

Clint is working on a project currently for Ubisoft, but I could not get it out of him. Perhaps Sam Fisher knows....

Music in this episode from The Rantings of EVA and Battery Life.

Listen and enjoy....

Constance Steinkuehler Keynote

As our (why do I say that, there is just me typing these things...) coverage of the upcoming Keynotes at FuturePlay 2007 continues, let's move on the talk by Constance Steinkuehler. Constance's talk can be summarized below (from an abstract of one of her papers).

"For those with a vested interest in online technologies for learning, the knowledge and skills that constitute successful participation in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) places them squarely among the most promising new digital technologies to date. In this paper, I broadly outline the qualitative results of a two and a half year cognitive ethnography of the MMO Lineage and describe the current trajectory of research we are now pursuing, based on those findings: (a) the empirical investigation of focused research questions in order to document and analyze those core practices that constitute gameplay in virtual worlds, and (b) the development of educational activities for after school clubs that capitalize on those capacities found throughout our research. This essay concludes with a reflection on the multiple relationships between games and education, highlighting the potential for such technologies to transform not only the means of education but also perhaps the goals."

This one sounds very cool, as a psychologist, and a gamer, I am not missing this one.

T6 Flashback 8 - An Interview With Jim Parker

For episode 20 of t6 I interviewed FuturePlay attendee Jim Parker.

Dr. Parker is a specialist in computer perception (vision, hearing) for intelligent interfaces. His special interest is the use of perceptive interfaces in interactive video games, especially for teaching. His research includes vision and hearing, gesture, and gaze, and he has designed and built computer games for teaching. Jim initiated the computer games concentration and the computer game programming class at the University of Calgary.

Two of his current projects are the I'powahsin project. (Teaching aboriginal langauges using computer games) and Turtle Island a Massively Multiplayer online game (virtual universe) modeling the aboriginal world of a thousand years ago.

Dr. Parker heads the digital media lab at U of Calgary.

Enjoy.

T6 Flashback -7 Video Games Are Good For You

After the FuturePlay 2005 Conference in Lansing Michigan I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Jim Gee, who presented at FP 05.

Dr. Gee received his Ph.D in linguistics from Stanford University in 1975. He started his career in theoretical linguistics, working in syntactic and semantic theory, and taught initially in the School of Language and Communication at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. He went on to do research in psycholinguistics at Northeastern University in Boston and at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Holland.

As his research focus began to switch to studies on discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and applications of linguistics to literacy and education, he took a position in the School of Education at Boston University, where he was the chair of the Department of Developmental Studies and Counseling. From Boston University, he went on to serve as a professor of linguistics in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California and, later, served as the first Jacob Hiatt Professor of Education in the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In 1998, he became the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. From 1989-1992, Prof. Gee was a co-director of the Mellon Foundation funded Literacies Institute in Newton, Massachusetts, an organization that sponsored joint teacher and researcher research on language and literacy. From 1995-1998, he was co-director of a Spencer Foundation funded research project at Clark University that ran a community-based after-school science project for culturally diverse urban middle-school children.

Prof. Gee’s work over the last decade has centered on the development of an integrated theory of language, literacy, and schooling, a theory that draws on work in socially situated cognition, sociocultural approaches to language and literacy, language development, discourse studies, critical theory, and applied linguistics. Prof. Gee’s recent work has extended his ideas on language, literacy, and society to deal with the so-called "new capitalism" and its cognitive, social, and political implications for literacy and schooling.

More recently, he has engaged in research on learning and literacy in video and computer games. He has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education and is a member of the editorial board of twelve journals. In 1989, the Journal of Education, one of the longest running journals in education in the United States, published a special issue devoted to reprinting his early essays on literacy.

His books include Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Second Edition 1996); The Social Mind (1992); Introduction to Human Language (1993); The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (1996, with Glynda Hull and Colin Lankshear); and An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (1999); and Power Up: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (to appear in 2003).

Direct Download Link

T6 Flashback -6 - The Student Perspective

Of course, FuturePlay is not just for people in the industry and academics, it is for students too. Each year we have many students, grad and undergrad, present papers and posters and/or enter the game competition.

After FuturePlay 05 I sat down at the Speakeasy with Algoma University students Gavan Acton, Glen Hamilton-Brown, Darren Schnare and Mack Khairi. These guys were at FuturePlay 05 and did a heck of a lot of work behind the scenes, but they also managed to take in a lot of the conference.

We talked about video game design and what they learned at the conference. They also talked about what games they currently play.

I told Darren that he would be pwned on xbox live. As he has never added me to his friends list I assume he is afraid of me, and not that he just does not like me...

Direct episode download

T6 Flashbacks- 4

The beauty of a conference like FuturePlay is that sometimes you just get lucky enough to meet two people in somewhat different fields that are just talking about the issues. I know I often say that sometimes you learn more during the conference breaks than at the talks (not that the talks aren't awesome). Whether it is having a beer or coffee with someone, or just hanging out between sessions, you can meet some cool people.

At Future Play 2005, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ernest Adams and Henry Jenkins.

Ernest Adams consults on game design for many clients across the world. He is widely published (co-author of two of the industry’s required-reading list "Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design" and "Break into the Game Industry: How to Get a Job Making Video Games" and numerous articles, papers and columns) and spends much of his time lecturing on game design at conferences and universities in Europe and North America. He is the founder of the International Game Developers’ Association (IGDA) and a 16-year industry veteran. Clients have included Ubisoft, THQ, Elixir Studios, Guinness World Records, Sorrent, Terraplay, and A2M. Ernest is currently on the Program Review Board of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Annual Conference and also on the Editorial Board of ACM Computers in Entertainment Magazine. He has a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University.

Ernest’s current projects include consulting on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for THQ, and working on a textbook edition of "Rollings and Adams on Game Design."

Henry Jenkins is Professor of Literature and Comparative Media Studies & Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

His books and articles have been major contributions to existing fields of inquiry such as film history (What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic; Classical Hollywood Comedy), Political Communications (Democracy and New Media) and Children’s Studies (The Children’s Culture Reader); his works have helped to establish new fields such as media ethnography (Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture; Science Fiction Audiences: Dr. Who, Star Trek and their Followers), and game studies (From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games).

His current book project, Convergence Culture: Where New and Old Media Intersect, examines contemporary trends in the entertainment industry, online culture, and audience participation. He is the principle investigator for the Education Arcade, a MIT-University of Wisconsin-Madison collaboration to explore the pedagogical use of computer and video games. He is the co-editor of the Media in Transition series at the MIT Press. He writes monthly columns on media and technology for Technology Review Online and Computer Games Magazine. He has testified about youth and violence before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, about media literacy before the Federal Communications Commission, and about copyright before the Governor’s Board of the World Economic Forum.

Jenkins is also heading an new research collaboration, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, focused on understanding the skills children need to learn and communicate in the coming decades.

We talked video game ratings, violence in games, the GTA Hot Coffee controversy among other things.

Direct episode download.

Enjoy.

T6 Flashbacks- 3

Our third T6 Flashback features an interview with Victor Lucas of the Electric Playground and Judgement Day.

I managed to connect with Victor Lucas of the Electric Playground and Judgement Day TV series while I was at the University fair in 2005, recruiting students. Victor is the co-host and executive producer of these two shows that can be seen on G4, G4TechTV Canada, Razer, Space and well all over the place.

We talked about Vic's favourite games, his favourite all time games, about next Gen consoles and about the convergence of video games and other media forms.

While Vic could not make FuturePlay it is still gaming content so, hell, I thought I would repost this one.

Enjoy.

Direct Download

T6 Flashbacks- 1

If this is your first time at FuturePlay you might want to know a bit about some of the past conferences.

Well, I have a little (13 000 subscriber, pats self on back) podcast called thunderbird six that covers FuturePlay each year (and other cool stuff, like interviewing other podcasters, people at Algoma University, bands and people that I frankly find interesting like Cory Doctorow or astronomer Seth Shostak).

I thought it might be cool to start a series of T6 flashbacks, basically re post old interviews and content from the conference. In our second episode I interviewed Jeb Havens back in 05 before FuturePlay 2005 in Lansing Michigan.

Jeb is a Lead Designer for 1st Playable Productions near Albany, NY. and was Lead Designer on Marvel Trading Card Game for the DS, and is now Lead Designer on Disney Princess: Magical Jewels DS. Before that, he was a designer on Playboy: The Mansion and was Lead Designer on the Private Party expansion pack for that game.

Enjoy.

Direct Episode Download