Greg Costikyan dates the first ever course on game design to 1972.
Given the size of the German board game scene (now), I do wonder if there were any early board game design courses / events in Germany as well.
Month: April 2004
Webby Award Game Nominations
The nominees for this year’s Webby Awards have been announced:
BrettspielWelt
Samorost
Star Wars Galaxies
There
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
As you can see, it ended up being a rather motley collection of sites. I am judging this year, and I do think one of the nominees stands out.
Ludology in the media (again)
The Philadelphia Inquirer mentions ludology in a news story on video games and learning. People quoted: James Paul Gee, Henry Jenkins, Justin Hall, Greg Lastowka. (I.e. US-centric, but never mind.)
I guess the use of ludology without any references is an indication that the word is now mainstream. Yup.
Story: It’s everywhere
I will be posting some more detailed few things about Japan, GDC, and games in general in the following days, but as a quick warmup, here’s a picture of a Japanese women’s magazine:
It’s much like the example of the “narrative” clothing section at Nordstrom, and the question is this: What makes it an attractive idea that your life would be like a story? I guess it is a content-oriented view of story – a story consists of meaningful and interesting events. Buying the Nordstrom clothes or the Story magazine means that your life won’t just be “one damn thing after another”, but a series of interesting and important events.
And it’s true that many games (like life sometimes) consist mostly of not-too-meaningful events, too much drudgery and too few things really interesting. Some of the game/story discussion comes from this.