a squeezable game controller

a Finnish company has made one, named Blobo!

Construct open source game creator

Another free (opensource) game engine (unity 3D, unreal 3 and now this!) Only this is for DirectX 9.
No direct programming involved, instead a clear and easy to understand interface

Physics, behaviours, bones and Python [..sounds like a conference paper title..]

screenshots here
http://www.scirra.com/screenshots.php

Want a game? Get a web browser

InstantAction Puts 3D Gaming Into Web Browsers

Torque, Flash, Microsoft..they are all converging..but what are the limitations to putting 3D games into web browsable pages?

However pushbutton’s Flash game engine does sound promising.

Update: the big boys are entering the arena.

why virtual heritage?

Reality-based games a step closer

The WOW! Factor

By Virginia Winder – Taranaki Daily News

Last updated 11:11 29/07/2009

The Forbidden City is virtually empty. Chinese tour guides, wearing red traditional costumes, wait for visitors.

Chinese tour  guides, wearing red  traditional  costumes, wait for visitors. An  Imperial woman glides past the  guides and through the  Meridian Gates to explore the  city alone. Every now and then  she passes an official attendant  or another tourist, whose  meaningless name floats above  his or her head like a sign. For a  few seconds, someone with a  number for a name and dressed  as an Imperial guard circles the  woman, then slides away.

Our woman joins a quick tour about dragon architecture and finds herself in an outer area where archers are practising. She quits the tour, checks the map and winds her way through to the Hall of Mental Cultivation and gets lost in time and the detail of the buildings. All this is accompanied by the sweet swirling sounds of Chinese music. For this is not a real tour, but an IBM-created journey that can be downloaded for free anywhere in the world.

Erik Champion, Massey University associate professor of new media, recommends having a look at the virtual Forbidden City, because it shows how much work is involved with his area of interest and expertise: virtual heritage design.

Champion, based at Massey’s Auckland School of Design at Albany, says the virtual world is not just the domain of games. He believes software developed for gaming holds huge potential.

In his research and teaching, Champion has used digital tools to create websites and interactive games on Mayan civilisation, Marco Polo’s travels and Egyptian gods. He prefers people to roam freely. “People get bored with tours – they’re probably too passive for people. I’d like to design a personally discoverable world where you can choose the interactions, the way in which you approach the site and the way you are viewed by others.”

This would be game-like, but with more intellectual outcomes. He also talks of “augmented reality” and “biofeedback”. The first relates to physically visiting a site wearing special glasses that would enable drop- down graphics to appear in your field of vision and these would change and be refreshed as you turned your head. They are being developed and used at Canterbury University’s HIT Lab, where researchers are working on interaction between computers and humans. Champion envisages using augmented reality to see the past.

“If you were standing on a sacred site, what used to be there would appear on your glasses, or maybe it would be projected on to fog between you and the real site.

“Imagine seeing the Pink and White Terraces or the spirit trails of ancestors leaving Cape Reinga – all these things we don’t normally see.”

Champion wants to help New Zealanders tell their own stories.

“I would like to create the tools and technologies so local people could design it [the world or vision] themselves.”

He’s even keen to teach people 3D, animation and programming skills so they can go forth and create using advanced tools like curved mirrors, screen warping and biofeedback receptors. If a person is playing a game or visiting a heritage site with biofeedback, physiological reactions like pulse, skin temperature and sweat can be measured by a computer, perhaps even unknowingly through a joystick or mouse.

Champion cites a New Age meditation journey, which induces people to become calmer. This is the opposite of a zombie game recently tested by a PhD student. In that game, the more stressed the player became, the more the living dead attacked the avatar (the character or identity you become when playing a game or entering a virtual situation – like the tourist became a Chinese Imperial woman).

Biofeedback holds exciting possibilities for learning about other civilisations and even religions, Champion says.

He likes the idea of using it to affect people’s states of mind in a virtual environment. However, he would prefer people got feedback that helped them stay calm. “The more calm you are, the more the world becomes obvious to you. And the more reflective you are, the more interesting things will happen.”

Champion says it would be possible to create a virtual Buddhist temple with biofeedback.

“Only when you really calm down and really slow down will you discover things.”

He imagines the avatar would levitate or have great wisdom revealed.

“It’s a bit like interactive cinema.”

Another idea he’s been working on involves people having to learn to be like the locals. This is the inverse of the Turing test (see Freaky Facts) and involves a person in a virtual world trying to convince the scripted characters he or she is an artificial intelligence like they are.

“That way the test is on you, the human, not the computer. Why would you want to do that? Because then the human players have to learn to act like the locals and learn the culturally appropriate way of behaving.”

By proving they are not imposters, the human player would learn all about the customs, history and stories of the virtual world. This would be particularly valuable if it were a heritage environment.

“You could create an inter- cultural language game whereby if you say different words correctly, things appear to you as they did to different cultures.”

Champion has just returned from a Fulbright-funded study trip to the United States, where he presented his virtual environment research at many universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Now Champion is seeking more post-graduate students to help develop software and their own ideas. The Forbidden City link is http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/FCBSTWeb/web/index.html#link=

therapeutic game

I blogged this before but this article has more detail

http://idealog.co.nz/magazine/july-august-2009/now/virtual-therapy

Mayans to moa hunters

For those people who are interested in what I do, Jennifer Little of marketing at Massey kindly wrote an article. If this link here to the article by Massey has been moved, try scoop.co.nz’s article here.

PS is tweetmeme popular or just a really cute name?

so much game development in NZ!

A game out in August to help autistic children by the Auckland game developer  metia and the University of Auckland..

A game out soon to help combat depression by Brightmind labs based in Northland NZ…

A cinematic realism game by areo

And of course bloons and SAS zombie assault and many others on their website – they are in Kumeu!-Are they mad?!

update: and a golf visualization game..

call for book chapters (ends today) for “Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds”

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Proposals Submission Deadline: 6/30/2009

Full Chapters Due: 9/30/2009

Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds:
Aesthetics and Semantics Concepts

A book edited by Dr. Gianluca Mura, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy

Introduction
The concept of virtual worlds is strongly related to the current innovations of new media communication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to virtual world studies focused on aesthetics and semantics principles from science, technology, media arts and design. It is important for researchers and practitioners interested in this area to understand the actual criteria for creating virtual worlds’ as well as their further evolution, regarding system architecture, information visualization and human interaction.

Objective of the Book
This book gives in-depth coverage of the state-of-the-art among the best international research experiences of virtual world concept creations from a wide range of media culture fields, at the edge of artistic and scientific inquiry and emerging technologies. It will be written for professionals, researchers, artists and designers who want to improve their understanding of the strategic role of virtual worlds within the development of digital communication.

Target Audience
The target audience of this book will be composed of professionals and researchers, designers, artists, and creative developers, working in various fields (e.g., information and communication sciences, art and design, education, psychology, sociology, neurosciences, computer science, and information technology). Moreover, the book will provide insights and support to innovative and creative studies concerned with the development of virtual worlds within different types of working and research communities.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Virtual world projects, concepts, methodologies in design, arts & humanities, science and technology
- Virtual reality, augmented and mixed reality studies and applications
- Human computer interaction and user interfaces studies and applications
- Human issues in virtual worlds
- Social communities in virtual worlds
- User generated 3D content
- Innovative 3D graphics, Web, Web3D, multimedia studies and applications
- Advanced interfaces and Interactive 3D immersive systems
- Real-time interactive networked media in Mobile mixed reality
- Wearable interfaces and tangible interfaces for 3D media
- Online videogames and edutainment projects
- Virtual worlds in education and training
- Virtual heritage projects
- Animated humanoid (avatars), virtual life, body and mind extensions, metacreations studies
- 3D modelling, animation,s imulation studies and applications
- Information visualization within arts and scientific visualization
- Virtual worlds in industrial systems design
- Artwork, performances, installations media arts concepts and projects
- Imaginary and creative virtual worlds

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before June 30, 2009, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by July 31, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by September 30, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference) and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in the second half of 2010.

Important Dates
June 30, 2009: Proposal Submission Deadline
July 15, 2009: Notification of Acceptance
September 30, 2009: Full Chapter Submission
November 15, 2009: Review Results Returned
January 15, 2010: Final Chapter Submission

Editorial Advisory Board Members:
Ramos Felix, CINVESTAV GDL, Mexico
Reyes García Everardo, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Toluca, Mexico
Uribe Mendoza Bernardo, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
Sourina Olga, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Watanave Hidenori, Tokyo Metropolitan University , Japan
Paul Catanese, Columbia University, Chicago, USA

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to:

Dr. Gianluca Mura
Faculty of Industrial Design and Arts
Politecnico di Milano University
Tel.: +39 0240095259 • Fax: +39 99985712 • GSM: +39 333 4522814
E-mail: gianluca.mura@polimi.it