Mature Games podcast at GDAM

Have you lately been following the developments over at Sande Chen’s Game Aspect of the Month (GDAM)? The blog is known for serving as a platform for discussion  for game designer and scholars alike. So far, GDAM featured many articles on subjects like player death, prototyping, and trends of simplicity. This month’s July rally, however, came with the launch of [...]

Latest news over the Langdell issue at the IGDA

Over ay Man Bytes Blog, owner Corvus Elrod -also member of the IGDA Writing SIG executive board- has released his personal statement over the Tim Langdell issue at the IGDA.
As you might now, there has been some unrest among the IGDA membership in regard to Tim Langdell’s business ethics over recent months and the issue became [...]

“What’s wrong with me?” Part II: The background of the GDSIG approval

The whole story with being forgotten to be invited to the SIG admins mail-list by our ISC-fellows becomes much clearer when we consider the historical context of how the story with the founding of the GDSIG developed.
The proposal for the SIG had been drafted and reviewed by a small and dedicated group of volunteers. It [...]

“What’s wrong with me?”: Latest news about the IGDA GDSIG

The IGDA Game Design Special Interest Group (GDSIG) is in it’s sixth month. It is an officially approved IGDA SIG with it’s offical blog and mailing-list. I’m one of its Interim Steering Committee (ISC) members.
Recently, I found out about the existence of an IGDA SIG admins mailing-list. Since I was a SIG admin, I wondered why [...]

Update: PhD

It’s 100% official now: I’m a PhD student!
I spent the last week in Turkey to care about application issues. After I handed in all required legal documents, I was asked to choose an area of interest and an advisor. As you might already know, my area of interest is “Video games narrativity” and my advisor of [...]

End of classes!

Today I held my last classes for the semester. I’m very happy in general with how things went in the past few months. It was very productive and now I’m happy that I finally get some rest. On Monday we start with exams. And then I’ll have a nice holiday until the mid of February.
We [...]

2008, 2009

So, it’s the last day of the year. Time for a little aftermath.
2008 was a year of awakenings for me. A self-critical process which I entered in summer 2007 reached a point where I feel that I can be happy with how I changed and what the change helped me to achieve. I will continue [...]

Update: IGDA Game Design SIG

The IGDA Game Design SIG initiative arrived at a new turning point. We received a very positive response from IGDA chair Jason della Rocca for our efforts to present a succinct proposal for the SIG. You can have a look at the document by clicking the link below.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfscf3d9_92f6wxv2gm
We feel encouraged to promote our effort and wish [...]

This is not a bite

Belgian painter René Magritte is known for his paintings which are questioning the relationship between images, language and reality. One of his most famous paintings in that regard is often known as Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe, or “This is not a pipe”.
This painting became the basis for a book which was published in 1973 by french philosopher Michel Foucault. [...]

I’m back!

Since a few months, I was waiting for an amnesty for ex-PhD students.  Yesterday the law regarding the amnesty passed through the turkish parliament. This means that I’ll be allowed to return to my old PhD program… after a break of almost 10 years!
A lot of things changed meanwhile. Back in 1998 I prepared myself to write a thesis on [...]