GAME – Page 161 – The department of Game Design at Uppsala University, campus Gotland

2011/10/14 - Fri2011/10/16 - Sun - 1 Comment
Guest Lectures

Masaki Hayashi: Text-To-Vision and TVML

T2V is a technology that converts text to vision. It enables a user to create computer animation by simply typing in a script on a PC. We developed a PC application named “T2V Player” that interprets a user’s script to produce animation in real-time by using real-time computer graphics (CG), synthesized voices and other techniques.

In his presentation, Masaki will first explain the basic concept of T2V and TVML and show some demonstrations with T2V Player actually in working and introduce available functions of T2V Player. Then, he will introduce number of activities so far and related developments. Lastly he will discuss the future prospect and research theme examples based on this technology.

Masaki Hayashi received his B.S., M.S. and Dr. Eng. in electronics engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1980, 1983 and 1999 respectively. He has engaged in research on CG, image-processing, image compositing systems and virtual studios. He is currently involved in research on automatic TV program generation using scripting language TVML.

Masaki Hayashi on the web.

Time: Monday, Oktober 17th, 10:00 – 12:00
Location: B51

This workshop is open (and strongly recommended) to all GAME programming students!

2011/10/10 - Mon2011/10/29 - Sat - Comments Off
Guest Lectures
human rights

Jonas Thente: Can Gaming Increase the Awareness of Human Rights?

This lecture is part of the Serious Games for Human Rights. It is open to the public!

As digital games are becoming one of the major platforms for storytelling and actual interaction between players from all over the global community, games producers are struggling to answer the call for sophisticated and borderless narrative. Common denomitators of being human comes to play.

Jonas Thente is a literary editor and critic at Scandinavias largest morning daily Dagens Nyheter. He is also the editor of the papers games section and a doctoral student at the department of literature, University of Lund.

Time: Friday, Oktober 14th, 14:30
Location: E22

The rest of the programme:
13.00 Lecture by Daniel Nord
“Why international law matters in creating more challenging games”
14.30 Lecture by Jonas Thente
“Can Gaming Increase the Awareness of Human Rights?”
16.00 Panel debate with the speakers, Anne Duse from Gotland University GAME and game designer Ernest Adams.

2011/10/06 - Thu2013/08/23 - Fri - 1 Comment
Blog
outreach

Swedish Game Conference

We went to Swedish Game Conference this week, to talk about how Swedish game educations and the Swedish game industry can improve their use of each other. There were some interesting points made, and some very cool data shared – and we will surely spend a lot more time analyzing it all when we get back to the island.

One of the problems discussed during these days was that only 1 out of 4 game development graduates (eg. those who actually complete their studies) end up working in the Swedish game industry.

… that seems pretty good actually?

We must realize that the Swedish game industry is a super small subset of the places you might want to go after studying game development. Many of our students find work abroad. We know that we have alumni working in Germany, England, New Zealand, the US, Iceland and Norway! Our students commonly start their own business and others find work in one of the many successful independent studios not counted in the above stats; Frictional Games and Mojang are two examples you might’ve heard off…

The real problem I see in this data is the huge drop-off between students being accepted and students completing their studies. I can see several causes of those stats, but that’s a discussion for another post; we have to catch the ferry back to Gotland now. I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures from the past two days!

2011/10/06 - Thu2011/10/29 - Sat - Comments Off
Guest Lectures
human rights

Daniel Nord: Why international law matters in creating more challenging games

This lecture is part of the Serious Games for Human Rights. It is open to the public!

Discussions on international law, human rights and digital games are often held along the lines that certain games, especially some FPS games, violates these rules in the game play and that there is a risk that individuals/gamers may be affected and carry out these violations in real life. While the second part of this argument is controversial and yet to be backed up by convincing research, also the first part is not fully convincing, since unlike humans in real life, the pixels on the screen does not have rights and obligations. It is after all only a game. But in real life, also in a conflict zone, legal matters plays a very important role in how people and organizations decides to act, what they do and don’t do. Introducing aspects of human rights and laws of war into the game could be one way of creating a more realistic, thoughtful and challenging gaming experience and to take it to a new level.

Daniel Nord joined the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as it’s Deputy Director in 2005. He previously worked in the Secretariat for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC), an international commission headed by Dr Hans Blixt. He has also worked as a Legal Adviser to the Swedish Red Cross.

Time: Friday, Oktober 14th, 13:00
Location: E22