Richard Bartle on Human Rights in Virtual Worlds

For those of you who missed his excellent talk at the Gotland Game Awards, Professor Richard Bartle is coming back for a new lecture the September 2nd!

This marks the first of a series of public lectures hosted by GAME this autumn in our course Human Rights and Diversity in Serious Games 2010. Like last year we’ll invite speakers from the industry, arts, academia, press, government and more, to discuss human rights and diversity in the context of modern interactive technology. All lectures are free and open to the public!

Bartle is a professor and game researcher at the University of Essex. He’s most famous for having created MUD (multi-user dungeon) – the first of what would later evolve to become massively multiplayer online role-playing games. He’s one of the regular writers over at the popular science blog Terra Nova, with a focus on the study of virtual worlds and he was the examiner for our own doctor Mirjam Eladhari’s dissertation. 🙂

He will be talking about human rights in virtual worlds and his work with the European Council to create an HR-manifest for games.

Time: Thursday, September 2nd, 16:30-18:30
Location: E31

Sjoerd De Jong from Teotl Studios

Teotl Studios (formely known as Toltec Studios) is a young game development studio located in central Sweden, currently in its final stages of production on its debut game, The Ball.

Sjoerd De Jong – lead designer and developer of The Ball, and founder of Teotl Studios – is coming here this week for two reasons: first to give you guys feedback on the levels you’ve produced since his last visit, and second; to give two lectures.

Thursday, 22nd April (10:00 – 17:00, E31)

  • Feedback from Sjoerd

Friday, 23rd April
Lecture 1: The Ball (10.00-12.00, B51)

  • A look at an alpha build and introduction to the game and story
  • History of the project
  • How we work and organize ourselves
  • Efficient Design – Why a ball?
  • The concept and gameplay analyzed
  • The pacing and balance of the game.
  • The Art Style

Lecture 2: Working in the Games Industry (13.00-15.00, B51)

  • How I started and how I got to where I am today
  • Whats good about working in the games industry
  • Whats bad about working in the games industry – The problems
  • The challenges of the future and how the games industry is constantly evolving
  • Small companies compared to large companies
  • Freelancing
  • How to break into the industry and get hold of your first job.

Game Concept Challenge 2010

Note: this talk has been cancelled due to problems with flights!


Marlene from Game Concept Challenge 2010 is coming here to present and explain the rules for this years contest… Deadline is in October.

GCC is a prestigious competition for game concept developers. GCC has now been running for 8 years. GCC has previously been opened only for students from SOFE (School of Future Entertainment) and Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH. But is now opened for students studying in all areas within game development as well as graduated students, not yet working for the industry, from all over Sweden.

The winner of GCC will receive an attractive award – 500 000 SEK to develop their game concept to full prototype stage. This goes hand in hand with a developing spot at Sweden’s first game incubator, GamePort. Thereafter, coaching and support will be given to professionally pitch the result to publishers. With publisher backing, getting to the next step, full-scale game production is possible.

Time: Thursday April 22, from 11:00 – 12:00 (cancelled due to flights)
Location: E31

Level Design with Sjoerd De Jong


Sjoerd De Jong has been working with the Unreal Engine since 1999. He’s been involved in the development of five commercial Unreal Engine titles, has authored two books, released a training video and runs the worlds largest Unreal Engine 3 tutorials website! Add to this his five very large non-profit projects and more than 30 award winning Unreal levels and Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong can safely claim to be an expert level designer and environment artist!

Hourences is visiting us next week for a week long workshop in the UDK! The workshop is reserved for SIM2 programmers and graphics, as a part of your Level Design course.

Time: Mon – Fre, March 1st – 5th, 08:00 – 18:00
Location: TBA

Goals for the week:
-Fully playable level in general
-Has some kind of gameplay valuable (needs a layout – not just a flat space…)
-Supports bots, and has weapons and such
-Actually resembles something (a building or landscape – not simply a bunch of cubic shapes)
-Needs at least one door and one elevator, and two scripted events.
-Needs to have a sky visible, with sunlighting.
-Needs at least one self-made particle system
-Needs at least one self-made material
-Needs to make use of both Meshes and Brushes.
-Needs at least one pool of water/lava/some other liquid