When I was making this website I soon found that I needed "room" to add the odd comment now and then. I could have written a Blog, but I'm enough of a realist to know that I do not have the time. So this is more my corner for the occasional note.

NB. clicking on a link will open a new window (as I hope that most of you will be using a tab-enabled browser I go against usability advice here).

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• Here is something really interesting about Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. In the game you'll find a concept car by Citroën, which now has been revealed at the Mondial de l'automobile de Paris 2008. See the reveal video including interviews with the designers. Note however, it is in French
  
  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6yzq1_gtbycitroen-au-mondial-de-lautomobi_videogames

•  Another interesting find on the web: CivWorld a site for people interested in using Sid Meier's Civilization for learning academic content, including history, geography, or even game design. We have custom-designed game scenarios, curricula, case studies, and experts on using Civ for learning. Our goal is to help players, students, parents, and even teachers use the game at home, in after school centers and maybe even classrooms.
   

• Also see The History Canada Game a what if game of Canadian history also using Sid Meier's Civilization.

• Project Tomorrow's fifth annual Speak Up Survey -- which addresses the attitudes and opinions of K-12 students, teachers, parents and school administrators toward the use of technology in education -- reveals this year that online or electronic gaming is one of the technologies that students use most frequently, and that educational gaming is one of the emerging technologies that students would most like to see implemented in their schools. Yet, only one in 10 teachers has adopted gaming as an instructional tool. (Whole article Converge Magazine Online)

• While I was collecting data on gaming to compare with my own findings I came across a very curious Dutch site called VitamineG = Gaming is Good for You. An initiative of the NVPI and the Dutch Gaming Industry. They promote gaming by distributing positive news about the industry, the games and the players.

• Next-Gen has compiled a list of the 50 books from which everyone in the game industry could learn something. The list covers game design theory to histories of games companies to sociological texts to novels. Compiled by game designer and author Ernest Adams.

• Speaking of Atari, its story and that of its founder Nolan Bushnell is going to be put on the big screen with Leonardo di Caprio playing Bushnell. Hollywood is getting quite serious about computer games, aren't they. Read Bushnell's interview in Next Generation  or  CBS News

• This overview of 20 remarkable Atari Arcade games is not only nostalgic but also historically interesting. Who remembers the game I Robot (1983) which used full 3D AND had a camera change button?

• In the article The Pursuit of Games: Designing Happiness, Page 44 Studios (Freekstyle) designer Lorenzo Wang looks at recent research on happiness, and the six key findings that could help make better games.

• Read this interview on voice audio with Greg deBeer Sony's Dialogue manager. He talks about the benefits of not using well known actors and developments in creating more realistic in game dialogue 9and thus character development).

• Watch the Ubidays conference 2008 at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. I recommend the graphically stunning Far Cry 2 and for a laugh watch which body part you have to use in the upcoming Raving Rabbits game.

• For all you women and girls out there looking for role-models, see Gamasutra's current list of the twenty most influential woman in the games industry

• GDC: Ken Levine Speaks: Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story & follow-up Ken Levine on BioShock's Narrative Drive

• A tribute to Gary Gigax and the impact of D&D on today's games by Alvan Monje.

• Convergence seems to be the buzz word at the moment. Intertextuality is another option. Anthony Zuiker, creator and executive producer of the CSI franchise, gave his vision at the MI6 Game Marketing event in San Francisco, with examples of the use of cross media storytelling or in his words "cross-blending storytelling" in/around CSI.

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