PAST EVENTS

GRAVEL Grant Project Review
November 16, 2004
The recipients of GRAVEL grants in Spring 2004 presented reports about their findings and the next steps they intend to take with their research. The afternoon long session will kickoff with a speech by human-computer interaction and girl-game expert Brenda Laurel, followed by the grantee reports, and concluding with a discussion by UM professors who are using, or exploring, game technology in their work.

If you are interested in joining the discussion about GRAVEL, please sign up for the discussion list at http://atlas.socsci.umn.edu/mailman/listinfo/gravel.

GRAVEL: GRAVEL Community Meeting
October 19, 2004
Kickoff of a new round of Game Research and Virtual Environment Lab meetings on Oct. 19. Dunwoody Academy teacher Matt Taylor (the man who never sleeps) has been working with SJMC Professor Kathleen Hansen and INMS Director Nora Paul on a massive modification of the off-the-shelf game, NeverWinter Nights. They are scripting new characters and conversations in around an information gathering scenario to reinforce the principles of research taught in Professor Hansen’s Information for Mass Communication course. Your feedback and advice will be appreciated as the design and implementation of the game continues.

DIGITAL GAMES & EDUCATION: BEYOND PLAY TO PEDAGOGY
When: Monday, May 24, 2004
Where: Macalester College, St.Paul, MN
Time: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
This event will be held at Macalester College in St.Paul, MN and is open to University Faculty and Graduate students (free registration for the first 15 who sign-up). This event is sponsored by the Humanities Institute, Institute for New Media Studies and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. If you think digital games are only violent diversions for teenage boys, you need to come to this seminar. If you are already exploring digital games as pedagogical aids or as a research area, you need to come to this seminar.

CONTENT FOR GAME ENGINES
When: Monday, May 17, 2004
Where: Murphy Hall Conference Center (Room 100)
Time: 1:00 - 5:00 P.M.
Featuring: Mark McCahill, director of the University Technology Center and Chuck Carter, Smart Bomb InteractiveGame engines, the software used to design digital games, are becoming end-user friendly. Many commercial game engines let users into the game editor to create their own levels and modify the worlds of the game. But there are other implications for simplified game editing capabilities. Come to this discussion of two new game design environments, Open Croquet, and Bombshell. We will be discussing and brainstorming about content applications for these types of design tools. Please join us to help imagine ways that game engines can be used to develop and design new digital resources.

April 13, 2004:
GRAVEL COMMUNITY LECTURE SERIES
Where: Murphy Hall 314
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 P.M.
Featuring: Matt Taylor, Gary Dahl and Nora Paul
Topic Description: Discussions of the recent Game Developers Conference and the Serious Games workshop in San Jose. Overview: The three featured speakers all attended the GDC and Serious Games workshop and met to discuss what they heard and saw. The strong turnout for the Serious Games conference was particularly relevant to the GRAVEL initiative in that there was clearly a movement toward the use of games for purposeful pursuits.

April 8, 2004
GRAVEL CROSS UM CAMPUSES REGIONAL MEETING
A UMN campuses-wide GRAVEL meeting was held in Brainerd in April. This was the first meeting to connect the efforts of the Twin Cities based GRAVEL initiative more broadly across the Univ. of Minn. System. The goal is to find opportunities for cross-campus development of game research projects.

Nora Paul, Director, Institute for New Media Studies, Minneapolis
Lisa Valdez, Director, Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab, Duluth
Nick McPhee, Associate Professor, Science / Math, Morris
Alex Jarvis, Junior, Computer Science Major and Student Rep., Morris
David DeMuth, Assistant Professor, Physics and Math, Crookston
Pete Angelos, Technology Director, College of Liberal Arts, Duluth
Don Krueger, Program Director, School of Business and Economics, Duluth

<<See the Regional Gravel Meeting notes>>

March 25, 2004:
GRAVEL COMMUNITY LECTURE SERIES
Where: Walter Library - Room 402
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 P.M.
Featuring: Mark McCahill
Topic Description: Extending Open Croquet for Higher Education

February 23, 2004:
WORKSHOP ON THE ECONOMICS AND LAWS OF VIRTUAL WORLDS
(see more info)
.Featured at the workshop:

F. Gregory Lastowka, an attorney in the intellectual property litigation group at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia. His paper, co-written with Dan Hunter, on the Laws of Virtual Worlds can be found at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=402860

Edward Castronova, Associate Professor of Economics in the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. His paper "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Front" (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828) is the most-downloaded economics paper at the Social Science Research Network.

The spillover of the virtual into the real worlds of economics and law is growing. Digital assets acquired in games are being sold on Ebay. The legal and moral rights of avatars in virtual worlds can have implications for the real world gamers. The emerging issues of virtual economics and law are just beginning to be explored.

Professors Greg Lastowka and Ted Castronova spend a lot of their research time in other worlds. Massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) such as Everquest and Sims Online have become their lab spaces. On Feb. 23 they spent the day with the Virtual World Laws and Economics participants discussing the legal, moral, and economic issues they have discovered in their forays into these elaborate online environments. The structure of the day was a lecture by Professor Lastowka on the legal and moral issues in games followed by a roundtable discussion with the participants about the implications of what they heard, and a lecture by Professor Castronova on the economics of virtual worlds followed by another roundtable. The transcript of the roundtable discussions will be developed into a white paper on the important research implications of virtual worlds.

February 13, 2004:
GRAVEL COMMUNITY LECTURE SERIES
A strong turnout of both University and community people came to the Feb. 13 GRAVEL Community Lecture. The lecture featured Ben Lindau, a recent Architecture Masters' graduate who created a virtual Northrup mall using the Unreal game engine. He inserted a new architectural structure into the Northrup environment and demonstrated how interaction with an architectural design in a game space could enable iterative design of structures as well as community involvement in design decisions. An article about Ben's project appeared in the Minnesota Daily on Feb. 12. http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2004/02/12/8278

October 3, 2003:
GRAVEL Kickoff Event
Walter Library, Room 402 - 12:00 - 5:00

November 3, 2003:
GRAVEL LECTURE SERIES
On Monday, November 3 - 12:15 -1:15, Robert Nideffer - digital artist, cultural studies scholar and director of the University of California – Irvine Game Culture and Technology Lab gave a talk for our first GRAVEL Lecture Series event in the In-Flux space within the new Art Department building. Nideffer was introduced by Steve Dietz, former curator for digital art at the Walker Art Center and currently Dayton Hudson Distinguished Visiting Teacher / Artist at Carleton College. The lecture was co-sponsored by Lynn Lukkas and the UM Department of Art. Nideffer talked about his work with the Game Culture and Technology Lab:
"The mission of the Game Culture & Technology Lab is to expand the notion of how game metaphors, design principles, and technologies can be utilized for alternative content and context delivery. Our focus is on the next generation Internet. Our approach combines theory and practice, science and art, education and entertainment, to create an environment that supports diverse forms of expression in a wide range of applications."
For more information about Robert's work and the Lab: http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/ - http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/gamelab/

November 12, 2003:
GRAVEL Community Meeting and Discussion
Join us for a general discussion of the GRAVEL project and for a presentation by Baoquan Chen about his project on 3D real-world acquisition and creation of environments. For information about his project:
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~baoquan/scan.html, and
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/news/camera.html.
Come discuss future directions for GRAVEL generally and the ways this project might fit in specifically.

November 18, 2003
NEW MEDIA RESEARCH BREAKFAST
Topic: Advergames
On Tuesday, November 18 from 8:00 – 9:30, School of Journalism and Mass Communication PhD candidate Mira Lee will discuss her research in advergaming. Her focus has been on the placement of brand names within advertising games and the brand recall by players of the game. Join us for a continental breakfast and interesting discussion as part of the New Media Research Breakfast series.


December 10, 2003:
GRAVEL Community Meeting and Discussion
In keeping with GRAVEL’s (Game Research and Virtual Environment Lab) goal of presenting different facets of games and virtual environments December’s community meeting had Omar Abelwahed discussing economic and legal issues raised by game play. Omar is an information architecture at Best Buy and a self-admitted game addict. He discussed the virtual economies developed in game spaces and the spillover into real-world economy through the selling of game assets created by players in games on E-Bay, for example. His insights into how games are becoming an overarching media encompassing music and video underscored the importance and relevance of this new medium as an area of study.