Category: Guest Lectures

Vice chancellor Jörgen Tholin wishes to invite you to a talk by Adam Hałaciński, Poland’s new Ambassador to Sweden.

On Wednesday 10 November, at 16:00 in Room E 22, Ambassador Adam Hałaciński will give a talk on “Poland and Sweden – Partners across the Baltic”. The Ambassador will speak about Poland’s forthcoming presidency of the EU. He will also talk about university exchange, the economic situation and industrial development – especially as it relates to technology and the entertainment area.

Kjell Albin Abrahamson – a renowed journalist who early this autumn gave a lecture at HGO as part of the course “Human Rights in Serious Games” mentioned that successful game companies have developed as a result of outreach from some polish universities. Their market is predominantly American. The ambassdor will talk about a possible cooperation in this context.

Time: Wednesday, November 10th, 16:00
Location: E22

Together with a few collegues, Michael created the interactive story “Façade“, an interactive drama about the relations between three persons in a small flat. Michael holds the MacArthur Chair at University of California, Santa Cruz and runs their Expressive Intelligence Studio where they explore the intersection of artificial intelligence, art and design.

“Our goal is to create compelling new forms of interactive art and entertainment that provide more deeply autonomous, generative and dynamic responses to interaction”, says Michael.

His talk is titled “How New Playable Models from Recent Work on AI Can Enable New Types of Serious Games, i.a. Games about Human Rights”. The lecture is given as part of the course “Human Rights in Serious Games”.

Time: Thursday, October 28th, 16:00
Location: E22

Our dear Professor Ernest Adams is back to open your eyes and blow your minds.

In this lecture, he’ll show you the past and future of women in gaming: what they contributed to the early development of the medium and how they will change it in the 21st century. He examines several different aspects of the question, including the way women are portrayed in games; women as designers and developers; and the wants and needs of the female player.

“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.” Women game developers must also work backwards and in high heels — backwards because they are usually developing games for a male market; in high heels because they are often impeded by a masculine development culture.

This talk is open- and highly recommended to all game students!

Time: Friday, October 1st, 13:00
Location: E22

Media Molecule is a British video game developer based in Guildford, Surrey. The studio was founded in 2006 by the same people who produced Rag Doll Kung Fu while still at Lionhead Studio, but you guys probably know of Media Molecule as the creators of LittleBIGPlanet for the Playstation 3. 🙂

Daniel Leaver designed and created levels for LittleBIGPlanet and LittleBIGPlanet 2. And to quote the fluently persuasive and articulate video game critic Ben Croshaw –

[…] the level design is really, really good. Like something good. That’s… made of chocolate.

Daniel also helped in most design areas, from gameplay elements to scoring and the online aspects of the game. The content of his talk is currently kept under wraps, but his enthusiasm is promising. 🙂

The objectives of this lecture is to familiarise the student with common AAA level design techniques using examples from LittleBigPlanet. We will look at the process of designing a level from “white box” to completion using motifs. Gameplay flow and player direction as well as co-operative gameplay will be discussed. Finally we will also have a look at team work when doing level design at a game development company.

This talk is open for the public, with priority for students taking Level Design II.

Time: Tuesday, September 28th, 13:00
Location: E22