Game Designers Discuss Video Games as Art
http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/labA6.html
Host Marge Myers, associate director, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
Guests Heather Kelley, adjunct faculty, Entertainment Technology Center Rod Humble, senior vice president, Electronic Arts Gregory Peng, senior, School of Computer Science
Heather Kelley, Rod Humble and Gregory Peng all experienced game designers give a look into the process, people and resources involved in creating a video game. Aside from a game's plot, art and music, they argue that game developers offer an artistic statement in controlling, through "rules," the way a player interacts with the game's environment, characters, and what they have to do to win.
Events _____________________________________________________________________
The Art of Play Symposium and Arcade March 31 to April 1
Can video games be art? That will be the topic of exploration when the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) host The Art of Play Symposium and Arcade, a two-day event from March 31 to April 1 exploring games as a unique expressive medium. The Symposium brings together a diverse group of researchers, artists and game developers to survey the games that can inspire us with their unique creative vision, and to frame the medium moving forward.
Events include the Art of Play Arcade, a two-day exhibition in which attendees can check out and of course play groundbreaking art, independent, and commercial games. The arcade is curated by Kokoromi, a Montreal-based group that creates and promotes experimental gameplay. On Day 1, guests can also see presentations by Heather Kelley of Kokoromi, Randy Smith of Electronic Arts LA, Jason Rohrer of Arthouse Games and Jesse Schell, a professor in the ETC.
Day 2 features the Poetics of Gameplay Master Class, in which 12 Carnegie Mellon students will present games and receive feedback from the symposium guests. The symposium finishes with a panel discussion and an after party. There will also be tours of the ETC.
A complete schedule of events along with speaker biographies can be found at http://www.theartofplay.com/. For more information, call 412-268-2409 or e-mail artscool@andrew.mcu.edu. All events are held in the College of Fine Arts or Margaret Morrison-Carnegie Hall on the Oakland campus. Shuttles will be provided for transportation to the off-campus ETC.
For a primer on the size of the video game industry, the process of producing games and the are video games art? question, listen to a podcast with Kelley, Rod Humble of Electronic Arts and computer science student Gregory Peng at www.cmu.edu/cfa/labA6.html
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Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference April 2-3
Do video games have the potential to assist the peacemaking process? If so, how do game creators incorporate social values into games? These and other provocative topics will be the focus of the Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference, April 2-3 at Carnegie Mellon Universitys Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). This first-of-its-kind conference provides a forum for discussing the impact and the potential that interactive technology holds for peace and peacemaking.
Featured speakers include Lucas Welch, president and founder of Soliya, a non-profit organization that uses new media technologies to help college students with productive discussions of cultural and social differences; Eric Brown and Asi Burak, social entrepreneurs and creators of the video game PeaceMaker; Carnegie Mellon Computer Scientist and MacArthur Fellow Luis Von Ahn; and Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon faculty member and former creative director of Disneys Virtual Reality Studio.
Brown and Buraks work on PeaceMaker while at Carnegie Mellon initiated the discussion about the potential for using interactive technologies to educate people about peacemaking. In PeaceMaker players act as the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president and try to establish a stable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The conference, sponsored by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, which focuses on peacemaking and diplomacy, will also include many other speakers who will explore applying interactive technology to conflict resolution and international affairs. A full list of workshops and speakers is available at www.etc.cmu.edu/peace2008/.
The conference brings together 200 professionals, professors and students to collaborate in workshops including Peace Pitch and Values at Play: Integrating Human Values into Games. In the Values at Play workshop, conference attendees will work with members of the Tiltfactor Lab, the first social activist game lab in the country, to incorporate social messages into games.
Our hope is that this will be the first of many conferences which explore the application of technology to pressing social issues, said Brenda Harger, co-chair of the conference and an ETC faculty member.
The ETC is interested in exploring how media and technology can have positive impact and effect social change, said Drew Davidson, director of the ETC-Pittsburgh. We're excited to host this conference with Lounsbery's support that will bring together influential and inspirational people to share ideas and strategize about the future of technology and peace.
Registration for the conference is required. Media inquiries are welcome. For more information, contact Anne Humphreys at ah34@andrew.cmu.edu.
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