Blogs

We were lucky to have Peter Brinson from the USC Interactive Media Division to join us for our speaker series today. Serious games have a reputation of being just that - serious, but Peter expressed the need, and benefit, of finding levity in such games.

Peter's background as a filmmaker was apparent in his approach to game-making, as was his interest in incorporating interaction and play into his filmmaking. Check out http://noanimalswerehurt.peterbrinson.com and participate yourself. But Peter's recent focus has been in documentary video games, where he has found the opportunity to explore narrative and character identity in unique ways.

Most recently, Peter created The Cat and the Coup, a puzzle game about the CIA-sponsored ousting of the Prime Minister of Iran. As a political science-trained game enthusiast, I was blown away by the game's ability to incorporate an unpleasant historical moment into a truly beautiful space that I wanted to explore. Many of us have become so used to ignoring, or being uncomfortable or strictly uninterested in serious topics, but the mastery of Peter's work is the ability to bring levity and beauty to a serious issue, without taking away from its gravity. Maybe the key to "loosening up" serious games is to actually take pleasure in the topic - which The Cat and the Coup does to great effect.

Congratulations to the Prom Week team for an eventful month!

The game was recently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education...read the full article here.

And we can't help but be excited that G4TV has predicted the game to win the Technical Excellence Category! Always bet on indie -- click here!

** Round of applause! **

The Center for Games and Playable Media (CGPM) invites applications from outstanding individuals for a Senior Technical Lead/Project Scientist position. The position will be responsible for directing the IMMERSE Project, a game-based cultural training system.  Responsibilities include leading the development of the autonomous character and social simulation architecture, including the animation solution for character animation, leading and participating in the implementation and research experimentation with these architectures, managing the UC Santa Cruz IMMERSE team, which will consist of staff, project scientists, postdocs and grad students, and for coordinating with leads from other institutions who are participating in the IMMERSE project. The applicant must be an analytical problem-solver, able to learn and integrate complex technical information quickly, convey complex technical concepts to others in verbal and written form, and have a strong commitment to quality and best engineering practices. The ideal candidate will have experience developing complex software in a team environment, have experience with game development and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) systems into a game, and have strong communication skills. The position requires independence and self-motivation in a team environment, and the ability to provide project and technical leadership.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT

We are very excited to announce that Prom Week, from the Expressive Intelligence Studio, has been nominated as a finalist in Technical Excellence for the 2012 Independent Games Festival!

With IGF being the largest gathering of the indie game community, the nomination is a great honor. Congratulations!

And for your viewing pleasure (again), check out the Prom Week IGF submission:

Prom Week IGF Submission Video from Josh McCoy on Vimeo.

      From left to right: Ricky Grant, Grace Lin, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and Lyn Walker

Last week in Vancouver at the Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling Marilyn Walker, Ricky Grant, Jennifer Sawyer, Grace Lin, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and Michael Buell, students and faculty of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab, won best paper for "Perceived or Not Perceived: Film Character Models for Expressive NLG". Congratulations!

Please see attachment for full paper.