So many plans. So many initiatives. November is going to be one hell of a month for the average Dutch gamer. Starting tomorrow, VGVisionary will also jump into a couple of game related projects. Stay tuned for more on that. Soon.

I promise!

According to recent research by a firm called I-Play, casual gamers will be more likely to start playing games on their mobile phone. And guess what I-Play sells!

I-Play’s President David Gosen had to following to say: “The frequency with which online casual gamers play is noteworthy and the fact that this group have twice the propensity to play mobile games as the average mobile user is hugely exciting and positive for the mobile games industry. Further potential is shown by the fact that nearly half of people surveyed would want to play their favorite online game on mobile, providing another positive indication of the cross-pollination opportunities between the two gaming communities.”

Let’s hope you’re right. For your own sake!

Source (and some exact research results at): Next-Gen.biz

Innovation in games has always had different aspects to it. Mostly financial. From Nolan Bushnell turning Pong into a big success, till Guitar Hero blowing away the world with funky frets. But as with Ralph Baer’s tennis game on the Odessey, Konami’s original Guitar Freaks offers a lot of resemblance to what most of the worlds population knows as Guitar Hero.

Gamasutra dug hard and wrote an interesting article on this after finding some recent licensing agreements in the Guitar Hero 3 demo. Check it out here.

Source: Gamasutra.com

It landed in my mailbox a few days ago. Not like yours truly cares, since I already had the dates in my agenda two months ago.

Alas dear international audience, all presentations will be in Dutch. You’ll have to wait your turn till May 2008!

Wanna see the invitation? Follow Demi for an English version

Read the rest of this entry »

Hopefully, ‘the Office’ will use this episode unleash all their humorous magical office powers onto the hundreds of companies that thought investing in the Second Life hype was NOT a huge waste of money. I really do. So here’s a synopsis of the specific episode:

“When the Scranton branch is asked to participate in a Dunder Mifflin ad, Michael seizes his chance to exhibit his creativity. Meanwhile, Dwight explores the online world of Second Life.”

One question arises though. Why not WoW?

Source and picture courtesy of: Buzznet.com (via Joystiq)

All is silent in VGVisionary land. Apart from getting a first independent (hopefully paid) game related project and having (finally) found a good slogan for this masterly schemed initiative. Like it?

That, and me having convinced myself that Valve’s Orange Box is indeed the first, freshly released game I should purchase in a two year long run of budget bin bonanzas and flee market hassles. But there was quite an important (and very hilarious) motive why I did so (apart from being a crazy hermit workaholic that just doesn’t want to sit down and play games anymore). So excuse me for finally doing exactly that and enjoying Valve’s latest table scratch!

Ah yes, the reason of the sudden lack of new content on VGVisionary. Now I would’ve just written an article about the brilliance of ‘le boite d’orange’ to make up for it, but you know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Edward Castranova sure deserves some credit for his economical approach to virtual worlds. His keynote addressed the results of our combined growth of interest in the economies of virtual worlds. Here’s an excerpt:

“Three years ago, we struggled to convince anyone of the economic value of items created in synthetic worlds. Today, legal battles erupt around the issue, developing already into legislative battles in some countries. Soon, virtual economy will spawn political battles everywhere. The party lines of Fantasists versus Commercants do not fit within Right and Left. It’s all very murky. Yet economic analysis provides hope for a calm and equitable solution.”

Quite. Here’s the edited version of his keynote:

Want to contribute to the Dutch game industry? Be part of an uprising quality conference? Then what are you waiting for? Take it from me, there’s no better way to expand your social network and get to know your future employers in the game industry. Descriptions are over here.

World of Warcraft is very popular among game researchers. No surprise since its really suitable for various game related research. Though much of this research is often on the same topics, it sometimes brings forth surprisingly new themes. Enter Rene Glas from the University of Amsterdam. He looked at how people were playing another game in WoW: ‘twinking’. Here’s the excerpt:

“This paper investigates one of the more controversial player practices in MMORPG’s, twinking, not in terms of value judgement but as a play from negotiating, working against and even transforming a MMORPG’s intended structure and design. Making use of participatory ethnographic observations of one of the World of Warcraft’s particular forms of twinking, this devious behaviour is discussed as being luxury play, dominance play, transformative play and standardized play, each form having its own influence on the way these virtual worlds are experienced by the player community and, notably, twinkers themselves.”

This should’ve been Dutch pride #4, since Rene rocked the Digra audience with this one.

James Portnow over at Next-Gen.biz gave me some food for thought on the topic of game expo’s and events with his article on the ‘E for all’ game expo. According to him, ‘E for all’ was “an excellent place for the industry to reach out to the consumer. It’s a place where the people building the games can come face-to-face with the people playing them.”

Shouldn’t every game expo have that aspect built in? Read the article and share your own 2 cents with us.

Source: Next-gen.biz

I thought the Second Life hype was officially over? But a few weeks ago, Law and Order decided to have an episode focusing on a perverted virtual online world. Now CSI is making up for that in a very interesting way! According to this interview with CSI creator Anthony Zuiker, they’re actually going to use Second Life as a setting for CSI related machinima with the help of The Electric Sheep Company. Antony Zuiker got me all excited on the project after he said this:

“We’re going cross platform. Setting up a narrative in first life on air and then continuing into Second Life.”

This is the good stuff that will show a lot of people what kind of potential online worlds like Second Life have. Go watch the interview here. I also found this incredibly awkward episode preview:

Source: PCWorld.com (via Gamepolitics.com)

So Henry Jenkins actually interviews others on game related subjects? Talk about a dedicated scholar gone journalist! Or maybe he’s been doing this for quite a while. I should read Jenkins his blog more often. According to his academic profile, Hutchinson has been quite the busy bee on this subject.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Today, I want to introduce you to David Hutchinson, the author of a recently released book, Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom. Hutchinson’s book promises over 100 game activities appropriate for classroom use, a selection that spans across academic subjects. [...] Hutchinson’s focus is on what we can do in our schools right now, using projects already on the market, to tap student and teacher interests in games. In the course of the collection, the models many different conceptual approaches for thinking about games — including many designed to foster core media literacy skills. The result is a book which will be valuable to classroom teachers or for that matter, parents who want to engage their children in meaningful conversations about the place of games in their lives and about how games structure the way we see the world.”

This sure beats the hell out of reading interviews done by a random game illiterate journalist.

Picture courtesy of playingtolearn.org

Good game related conferences are either microscopic or incredibly rare in Europe. Sure, there’s the European GDC, but who actually went there? Ok, Nordic had quite a lot going for it too. Too bad I found out about it after it was held.

But now, the NLGD is back. All subsidized by the Dutch ministry of Economy and ready to rock our socks off. The official opening’s on November 21st en 22nd. If you haven’t registered to attend the opening yet , you’d better (its free!).

Picture courtesy of cloggeyshop.com

My apologies for keeping you waiting! Having spent the entire weekend in a bungalow with old friends didn’t really involve any Internet access (or videogames), which is odd if you consider that most of our group of 24 people are gamers.

It’s good to get away from it all. Some times. So here’s part two of Prensky’s keynote at the Digra conference!