Blogs

Two new positions have opened in the Center of Games and Playable Media:

Lead Game Programmer:

The UCSC Center for Games and Playable Media is conducting a DARPA funded research effort to transform the problem of proving software correct into a novel, crowd-sourced game. The game will invite users to interact with the data generated by loops to discover invariant conditions, which will be collected and employed to improve the performance of a formal verification engine. UCSC seeks a Lead Game Programmer to drive implementation of this game. Apply to job #1203954 at https://jobs.ucsc.edu

Lead Game Designer:

The UCSC Center for Games and Playable Media is conducting a DARPA funded research effort to transform the problem of proving software correct into a novel, crowd-sourced game. The game will invite users to interact with the data generated by loops to discover invariant conditions, which will be collected and employed to improve the performance of a formal verification engine. UCSC seeks a Lead Game Designer to drive the design of this game. Apply to Job # 1203940 at https://jobs.ucsc.edu

This week at IFOG:

During Tawny Schlieski’s time at Intel, she has made it her job to work with budding new technologies and to anticipate the future. An avid fan of film and video games, she sees the two coming together at an increasing rate as the demand for genuinely interactive narrative increases.

Once upon a time, stories were told around campfires and in stone plazas. Afterwards, written literature commanded the storytelling of the world. In the last hundred years, movies and television shows have taken over. Now, though, Schlieski believes that video games are the next chief storyteller of our race.

There is a parable told a wise old woodcarver. He brought to his king a carved board with many pieces upon it, a game that he called “chess”. After playing, the king was delighted with the game and asked the man what reward he would have. The old man replied that he would like one grain of rice for the first square of the board, and double that amount for the next square, and so on. The king thought this an easily paid price and accepted. He was appalled, however, when his mathematician did the calculations. Halfway across the board he owed the man 4 billion grain; the contents of a large field. By the time the entire board was counted, the amount of rice owed was a pile larger than Everest. The number was so vast that it was inconceivable.

If you’ve heard of Moore’s law, you would know that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits has doubled roughly every two years. According to Schlieski, we are approaching “the other half of the board”, as she calls it. Soon, it will be impossible to predict the exponential increase of technology.

Possibilities. It's possible. It isn't impossible. If Robin Hunicke would have you carry away anything from her talk, it is that.

As the resources required to make a game decrease, and the demand for smaller tablet-based games increases, the playing field becomes more even for indie games to be competitive. Publishers are no longer the mandatory gatekeepers to success; indie developers have begun to consider themselves part of a crowd sourced ecosystem of game development, a community driven only by the desire to make what they love.

As an indie developer, the bottom line is so much lower than for a massive budgeted and heavily invested game. Have you paid for the cost of creating the game? Do you have a roof over your head, and food? Great! That's it. And in such an environment, we as developers can for the first time truly focus on doing nothing but making games that are worth making.

"Making a game is a relationship, with the game itself and with all those who are helping you make it. You don't start a relationship just for the payout at the end."

Human interface - where the bits meet the flesh. It’s these bits that caught Tom Zimmerman’s interest back in the early 80s, when he first dreamed of inventing a way to play the air guitar with motion sensors. Since then he has continued to push the boundaries of how we interact with our technology, inciting the concept of virtual reality with inventions such as the Data Glove. Zimmerman is a human/machine devices expert with IBM Research, where he continues to push the frontiers of technology.

The last 30 years have seen a boom in technological infrastructure and data collecting devices. Very early on, people were interested in developing technologies that allowed them to use their bodies to accomplish digital tasks. As an inventor, Zimmerman always had a playful curiosity and sense of creativity that put him on the very edge of this new movement of motion sensors and simulation. He was able to understand a current technology and realize completely new and revolutionary applications thereof. In fact, he’s still doing the same thing today.

If so inclined, check out Expressive Intelligence Studio Master's Alum Teale Fristoe's Kickstarter project - Corporate America: The Political Satire Board Game.

Become a corporation. Manipulate the American people. Hijack the government. And maximize profits.

Good luck Teale!