25. November 2008 by admin.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Proposal Submission Deadline: January 15, 2009
Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values through Play
A book edited by Karen Schrier, Teachers College, Columbia University,
USA, and Dr. David Gibson, University of Vermont, USA
http://www.columbia.edu/~kls2108/callforchapters.htm

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before
January 15, 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 February 1, 2009 about the
status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters
are expected to be submitted by April 1, 2009. All submitted chapters
will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. 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 “Medical Information Science Reference” imprints. For
additional information regarding the publisher, please visit
www.igi-global.com.

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25. November 2008 by admin.

       >> Call for Participation Deadline: December 19th <<

Contact:
AACE–Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education
P.O. Box 1545
Chesapeake, Virginia 23327  USA
Phone: 757-366-5606 * Fax: 703-997-8760
E-mail: conf@aace.org  *  http://www.AACE.org

Posted in Publication Calls, Interactive Arts, Conferences | Print | No Comments »

25. November 2008 by admin.

I’m working on a docugame about the Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verdean War of Independence. It is a first-person shooter designed to explore concepts in propaganda, emotion and perspective.  I have many other things I should be working on, but the idea just grabbed me. These prototypes screenshots demonstrate my weekend’s work:

I thought it would be interesting to create a game where the player is fighting the anti-democratic colonial force.  Here’s the situation:

The player is a Cape Verdean recruit in the PAIGC, the organization that gained freedom for Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau in 1974.  The player’s missions are centered on the tactics of the PAIGC, and the environment matches the Guinea Bissau environment. The player fights the Portuguese, in the 1970s

It is an attempt at creating an educational game with more traditional appeal.   I also really liked the parallel to current “terrorist” campaigns and flipping the protagonist to someone with whom we did not clearly ally ourselves then, but in hindsight may have.  Interestingly, China, Russia, and to a lesser extent Cuba did.  I witnessed China’s strong consumer base in Cape Verde first hand – they are still very much “profiting from this investment.” Although that’s honestly conjecture, as I’ve never seen what the profit margin is on a Chinese Loja.  

There are plenty of anaologies to be made, but one of the interesting claims made by people reporting about the war is that Portuguese effectively lost to the PAIGC because the incumbent Portuguese party was going bankrupt. I’m still doing the research, but I’m finding some really interesting info here.

Project Activities:

I completed the following so far (this took about 24 hours of this weekend – I let it consume the weekend)

·         Create 3D Models of environment (Portuguese Colonia Barracks, Portuguese Colonia Soldier, PAIGC Solider, Guinea Bissau Village Hut, Chinese weapons’ box)

·         Create Game Environment (trees, grass system, artificial intelligence, etc)

·         Create Game Missions (Mission 1 is to sabotage, mission 2 is to fight, mission 3 is a surprise J )

I have the first two missions completed, and if I have time I’ll move on to the next. 

The AI is pretty basic:  a way point system with incidental logic. The players have individual attack logic (or greet logic for friendlies), group attack, etc. I put together a subtitle system for giving missions, and I slapped together the rough models you see in the screenshots.  

Resources:

·         Military Photos.net: I could only find a few reference images of the war, which is listed as one of the worlds atrocities (15K died during the 10 year “war for independence”).   
Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cape Verde: Lobban and Lopes

·         A couple of websites via Stanford’s library, that offer 1960-1974 era pictures of Africa (Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Cape Verde)

·         A few records of Mar Verde, one of the big offensives from the war.

I can share the rest when I pull them all back together.  I’ll need to do this for the website I’ll create anyway.

Oh, and I might have just coined the term docugame, but who knows, someone must have used it before me.

Posted in Idea Junkyard, Interactive Arts, students, Game Sites | Print | No Comments »

25. November 2008 by admin.

IEEE Potentials and IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) are dedicated
to serving the needs of undergraduate and graduate students as well as
engineers who have graduated within the last ten years. To this end, IEEE
Potentials is seeking articles of relevance to young engineers that will be
published in a special GOLD-themed edition in March 2009. Article subjects
are explored through timely manuscripts with a goal of assisting readers on
a technical, professional, and personal level. If you’re an engineer who
has cutting-edge technical ideas, formulated concepts about what will work,
advice about professional/career development, or opinions about the forces
that influence the problem-solving process, IEEE Potentials would like to
hear from you. IEEE Potentials is interested in manuscripts that deal with
theory, practical applications, or new research. They can be tutorial in
nature. Submissions may consist of either full articles or shorter,
opinion-oriented essays. When submitting an article, please remember:

All manuscripts should be written at the level of the audience who are
students and engineers who have graduated within the last ten years.

• Articles without equations are preferred; however, a minimum of
equations is acceptable.

• List no more than 12 references at the end of your manuscript. No
embedded reference numbers should be included in the text. If you need to
attribute the source of key points or quotes, state names in the text and
give the full reference at the end.

• Limit figures to 10 or less.

• Articles should be approximately 2,000-4,000 words in length; essays
should be 900-1,000 words.

• Include a brief biography of four to six lines for each author.

• Please state your IEEE membership number(s) and membership level,
including whether you are a GOLD member.

Submit your articles on or before 1 December, 2008 to:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pot-ieee
For inquiries please e-mail Adrian Pais at a.pais@ieee.org.

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