ALT-CTRL deadline

I should probably mention, in relation to my upcoming political game, that today is the deadline for ALT+CTRL submissions. This is an event to be held at the Beall Center for Art and Technology at the University of California Irvine.
It looks like an all-star jury. Given my batting record for the year I’m not setting my hopes too high, especially since my game is pretty much an alpha version.

Political Icon 2004

I am working on an alpha version of my Flash game, Political Icon 2004, which should appear here shortly.
My game works a little differently than other “political campaign” games I know of. And those I know of are:

If I’ve missed any let me know so I can make a complete list.

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An Economy of Rules (part 6)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Games and form. What is the form of a computer game? Should the form be restricted by certain requirements, so that one form of computer games requires a “PC” system with a certain level of video and audio support, and a certain operating system? That would make things easy in many ways, so that “computer game” would be shorthand for a PC-based game with certain requirements. Normally the PC part is referred to as a platform, so you have the PC platform, the Mac platform, the Gameboy platform, and many others.
Some computer games exist on multiple platforms. Are they the same games? Sometimes. Are they the same form? No, I think they are different forms. The title, or brand, of a game may be the same, but the PC version of Diablo is different from the Playstation version of Diablo.

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Notes from Self-Organizing Systems

Self-Organizing Systems: rEvolutionary Art, Science, and Literature was held on April 30, 2004 at UCLA.
First, some contrast with last week’s UCLA conference, also organized in part by Katherine Hayles. This was a much larger crowd, helped no doubt by the association with the Electonic Literature Organization. The audience at Narr@tive consisted almost entirely of panelists.
An audience of 100-120 endured four sessions in the UCLA Design | Media Arts department’s EDA space. I don’t know why, but they configured the space so that the entrance was stage left of the projection screen, which discourages people from wandering in and out of a presentation in progress.
Despite being held in the Design | Media Arts space, there was a notable lack of DMA faculty in both the audience and on the panels. Well, nothing to be too concerned about.

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