Music as Gaming – GLS 14

IT University of Copenhagen – October, 2011

Game Lecture by Ben Light about Music as Gaming: An Ethnographic Study of SingStar.

Ben Light is a Professor of Digital Media, and Associate Head of School – Research and Innovation in the University of Salford’s school of Media, Music and Performance.

Portraying Love and Trying New Genders – Emma Wieslander

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

The story of a small village marriage on a desert planet was the canvas for an exploration of how to portray gender, relationships and sexuality in roleplaying games. While fighting uses large and bold gestures, love is a glance across the room. Emma Wieslander explains how the game Mellan Himmel och Hav (Between Heaven and Sea) had the ambition to let people out of stereotypes they might not even be aware of.

Emma Wieslander works with development of organizational management and leadership in social economy and non-profit organizations. Much of these theories has evolved from her years as a chair person of Sverok, the Swedish organization for role-playing, LARP, computer-gaming etc. She was the conceptual designer of the multi art production Mellan himmel och Hav (Between heaven and sea) that combined roleplay with light art and modern art music at Swedens national theater. The game was highly political and deconstructed the idea of gender as we know it. She is currently working on a new political vision focusing on environment issues among other things.

The Quest for the Perfect Manifestation of a Dream – Martin Ericsson

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

Martin Ericsson explains why live action roleplaying totally beats computer games when it comes to immersion. He goes on to talk about his use of 360° immersive aesthetics in the games Hamlet, a decadent 1930’s version of the Shakespeare play, and Carolus Rex, a Swedish space drama staged in a submarine.

Martin Ericsson is senior designer at games producer The Company P. Over the past fifteen years he has instigated, written and designed more than twenty pieces of participative art ranging from reality games and Shakespeare adaptations to massive sci-fi and fantasy larps. Ericsson’s recent work includes four years of pervasive games research at the Interactive Institute’s Game Studio, culminating in the creation of the Interactive Emmy Award winning The Truth About Marika, the worlds first fully integrated participation drama. Through The Company P, Ericsson has collaborated with some of the world’s most respected showrunners, like Joss Whedon and Tim Kring.

The Nordic Larp Scene – Johanna Koljonen & Jaakko Stenros

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the Nordic tradition of live action roleplaying games.

Johanna Koljonen is a writer and a radio and television host.

Jaako Stenros is a researcher at the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has written extensively on role-playing games at Game Research Lab (University of Tampere). He is an author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, as well as an editor of three books on role-playing games, Nordic Larp, Playground Worlds and Beyond Role and Play.

Transmitting a Political Vision Through Larp – Peter Munthe-Kaas

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

Peter Munth-Kaas tells the story of how the game System Danmarc used a cyberpunk setting full of excitements like drugs, violence, gangs, hyperslum and cool parties to make a point about how welfare societies today treat people who have fallen off the ladder of success. Hear how the game makers built a small city from freight containers on a square in central Copenhagen, and how players reacted to the documentary about the situation today for homeless people in Denmark that ended the game.

Peter Munthe-Kaas was one of the creators of the political larp experiment System Danmarc. His educational background is in sociology and performance design and he has participated in the making of several political, cultural and artistic projects in Copenhagen. Munthe-Kaas is currently working with facilitation of creativity and user driven innovation at the Danish Technical University and co-creating a larp about personal and political upheavals called Delirium, forthcoming in 2010.

High Resolution Larping – Andie Nordgren

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

Bringing both love and violence into a game can take players to a high resolution game experience. Andie Nordgren talks about ways to give players power to express conflicts and intimacy inside the game fiction rather than simulating them through abstract rules, and shares some of the mechanics used in the tribal larp Totem.

Andie Nordgren produced the Interactive Emmy Award winning game The Truth About Marika and is currently working as a technical producer at CCP Games. She is one of the co-founders of the Geek Girl Meetup, a member of the change-through-participation think tank Interacting Arts, and was recently chosen one of ten people whose advice the next Swedish prime minister should heed by Internetworld magazine.

Horror and Tragedy in Nordic Role-Playing – Markus Montola

Nordic Larp Talks – Copenhagen – March, 2011

Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the Nordic tradition of live action roleplaying games.

Markus Montola is a game researcher working on role-playing and pervasive games, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. He has worked on four books; Pervasive Games, Nordic Larp, Playground Worlds and Beyond Role and Play.

Code and Body a Mutual Dramaturgy – GLS 04

IT University of Copenhagen – Spring, 2010

Recoil is a Copenhagen based performance group. The group was formed in 2003 by choreographer Tina Tarpgaard and composer Pelle Skovmand, with the intention of establishing collaboration between artists across genre and borders.

For instance, “Fuck You Buddy” is the fusion of “game theory” (a mathematical attempt to pre­dict human behaviour) and the dramaturgical development in computer games in the last decade, is the conceptual and visual frame of this performance for 4 dancers and an interacting video scenography.

Strange Games – Jaako Stenros & Markus Montola

GLS 03 – IT University of Copenhagen – Spring, 2010

Presented by Jaako Stenros and Markus Montola.

Markus Montola is a game researcher working on role-playing and pervasive games, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. He has worked on four books; Pervasive Games, Nordic Larp, Playground Worlds and Beyond Role and Play.

Jaako Stenros is a researcher at the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has written extensively on role-playing games at Game Research Lab (University of Tampere). He is an author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, as well as an editor of three books on role-playing games, Nordic Larp, Playground Worlds and Beyond Role and Play.

Crayon Physics Deluxe – Petri Purho – GDC 2009

GDC 2009 – March 25, 2009

After a series of critically acclaimed monthly games released on his website, Petri Purho single-handedly produced the version of innovative physics sandbox game Crayon Physics Deluxe that won him the Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival 2008. Having completed and released it, he returns to GDC to discuss the genesis of the project, what went right and wrong in making it, and what independent developers can learn to make them successful in an incredibly competitive market.

Petri Purho (born in 1983) is a Finnish computing science student and rapid game prototyper. He has worked at Finnish independent game studio Frozenbyte. In September 2006, he made a promise to himself, that he “will create a new game every month” based on the experimental gameplay development model. This effort eventually ended in the creation of Crayon Physics Deluxe, which was nominated for the Seumas McNally grand prize from the Independent Games Festival in December 2007  and subsequently won this category at the 2008 IGF Awards on February 20. Many of his games are developed for various competitions such as Assembly.