So instead, I’ll hop on the bandwagon and let Twitter summarize our panel instead. Here’s a livestream of selected tweets during the conference when our panel was in session. The tweets should be pretty self-explanatory, but if you need context for the quotes, let me know and I’ll add some commentary later.

couchange Just realized an hour before our #LOGIN China panel that we should probably have some projector visuals. Maybe we’ll just use a title slide. 3:47 PM May 12th

RenZephyr have coffee, at #login session on China companies and the US 5:13 PM May 12th

RenZephyr #login Chinese companies working in the US are neither a huge injection of cash or a cultural take over 5:24 PM May 12th

deantak panel on chinese games is very interesting at login. they agree that the chinese are making good money, but aren’t yet showering it on U.S. 5:26 PM May 12th

RenZephyr #login free-to-play has a bad rep in the US, SOE ‘borrows’ from many Asian models 5:27 PM May 12th

RenZephyr #login look also for non hard core gamers like soccer moms (erm, think this panel needs to meet more soccer moms) 5:29 PM May 12th

RenZephyr #login panel is self organizing due to random curve balls coming our way (nothing to do with the conf organizers btw) 5:30 PM May 12th

RenZephyr #login first Danniel James reference i’ve heard of the day 5:31 PM May 12th

couchange #LOGIN China panel, I’m making a note here, huge success. We don’t need no stinkin’ slides. Good sign when people delay dinner to listen :) 6:34 PM May 12th

So this email news update for our local International Game Developers Association chapter might be syndicated on our blog. I’m just testing to see if we can basically cut and paste our email without having to reformat anything. Looks like yes. Also, I’ve gotten lazy yet again about updating my own blog, so consider this filler content. It does contain a brief mention about the conference I’m speaking at next week though.

Pittsburgh IGDA May News Update

Local Game Industry News

Sim Ops Studios Featured in BusinessWeek
Congratulations to Shanna Tellerman and all the other hardworking people at Sim Ops Studios for being featured in a recent BusinessWeek special report about 3D internet technology. To learn more about Sim Ops’ 3D platform, visit http://www.wildpockets.com. You can take a look at the games that were recently created using Wild Pockets at the San Francisco Bay Area Game Jam and vote for your favorite in the People’s Choice Award competition.

Get In Line Games Launches at CMU Spring Carnival
Last month, Evil Genius Designs, the ETC’s newest spin-off, successfully launched their mobile gaming platform at CMU’s annual Spring Carnival, winning a coveted Thistle. Currently working on winning the Penny Arcade Expo as a client, their technology would help keep lines of over 6000 people entertained for upwards of two hours at the annual conference in September.

Skill-Life Beta in July
Later this summer, Skill-Life, who you might remember from Felix Lloyd’s lightning talk last year, will officially launch their CentsCity Beta. CentsCity is a virtual world developed to teach financial literacy and other valuable life skills.

CivicsLab Wins MacArthur Grant
Local Friendship-based CivicsLab recently won the MacArthur Foundation’s Young Innovator’s Award in the Digital Learning and Media Competition for their “Your Place, USA” project, an online game based on demographic, fiscal and political conditions in southwestern Pennsylvania developed for kids ages 9 - 13.  Your Place teaches sustainable practices by exposing young people to civic decision-making and regional planning.

Local Resources

AlphaLab Application Deadline is May 15
Created by Innovation Works, AlphaLab provides funding, hands-on business assistance, access to a network of entrepreneurs and expert advisors, and free office space as part of an intensive 20-week incubator program in Pittsburgh.

Spark’s Next Deadline is June 5
A new initiative of The Sprout Fund, Spark supports small-scale projects and programs that engage children under the age of eight through the creative use of technology and media. Funded projects propose an innovative solution to a relevant issue or demonstrated need facing children in the city of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the surrounding communities of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Upcoming Conferences

Jesse and Jia speaking at LOGIN next week
At the “Leaders of the Online Game Industry” conference from May 11-14, Jesse Schell will be keynoting with a talk urging people to “Make Games Not War.” Jia Ji will also be speaking on the China panel about his newest startup that provides technology for philanthropy in virtual worlds. If any other Pittsburgh companies are attending/speaking, please let us know. And if you or your friends in Seattle want to attend last minute, you can use the discount code “LOGINBEAT” to save $200 off the online registration price.

CMU ETC’s Game Education Summit June 16 & 17
If you prefer your conferences a little closer to home, the Game Education Summit next month will be hosted right at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. Also, if anyone is willing to host speakers during the conference, please let us know.

Get Involved

Read the PIGDA blog for upcoming events
Stay tuned for many more exciting things from your local IGDA chapter, including official PIGDA t-shirts and more fun summer events! If you have any ideas or feedback about events or anything else, please let us know. Also, if you have any pictures or video from PIGDA events, please remember to tag them “PIGDA” and share them with us.

Please take the PIGDA News Survey
Thanks for reading our first Pittsburgh IGDA News Update, we hope you found it useful. Would you like receiving more updates like this about local industry events and companies in the future? Please let us know what you think by taking a quick survey.

Thanks,
Pittsburgh IGDA Planning Team

At Friday’s YII conference, I was talking with Tracy Brown (who I originally met at the ETC, but never got the pleasure of having a real conversation with until now) about gift economies and gaming startups, when the subject of Whuffie came up. I was a bit surprised that she didn’t already know about this semi-fictional social currency, but in hindsight it’s probably not the best idea to base your cultural references primarily from Cory Doctorow books (but since almost all of them are free to read thanks to Creative Commons, it’s not a terrible idea either). In the future I should probably use all the other words we have to basically describe the same concept, like karma, brownie points, kudos, guanxi, etc…

Perhaps explaining this concept will be easier now that I finally received my Akoha cards in the mail yesterday.

Akoha is also a bit hard to define, but I like Raph’s definition of “a social game for kindness.” If you wanted to be more specific, you might also call it an alternate reality game backed by Québécois social entrepreneurs that tracks and rewards positive behavior. But the best way to understand it is to get involved, which is why I’ll be running a little social experiment over the next few weeks in Pittsburgh using these cards.

Since my local circle of friends primarily work in the gaming, social media, and general tech startup communities, this card game should be a nice way of connecting those networks together. I intend to play as many of the 42 cards I received as possible, doing various random acts of kindness that will hopefully be “played forward” by my friends, encouraging more altruism while tracking the growth of the Pittsburgh gift economy. All I ask is that you try to follow a few simple rules to make this experiment run better:

1. If I give you a card, please register it on Akoha. Unless you use their tracking system, we won’t be able to gather any useful data and interesting stories. Plus, each confirmed card helps pay for a children’s reading room and lets you enter into their private beta for free.

2. Please try to play the card you received and pass it along to someone else (preferably local) as soon as possible. And don’t forget to explain the Akoha concept and how this game works.

3. If the two previous steps seem like too much work, then don’t accept the card. It’s fine, I won’t be offended. If it sounds like fun and you do accept the card, then I recommend that you make sure that whoever you pass it to will actually use it and not just toss it in the trash when you’re not looking.

Simple enough right? So don’t be surprised if next time you hang out with me, I randomly pull a card out of my pocket. So far, I’ve played two cards by going to a show with Carman and surprising Norm with some Chinese medicine, but I’ve accidentally done several card missions since arriving in Pittsburgh without realizing it just by doing normal nice things for my friends. In order to be inclusive, I’m thinking about retroactively playing those cards by either handing you the card next time I see you or emailing you the code if I’m not sure when I’ll see you next.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions or feedback for this little experiment are appreciated.

Since some of the people who still read this semi-abandoned blog (or at least still subscribe to its RSS feed) have sent me emails inquiring “Where the hell are you?” (direct quote from, master of subtlety, Woycheck). FYI, for those of you who are still curious, I’m currently in Chengdu, China, but I’ll be back in Pittsburgh in about a week so I can give a talk at CMU on April 4th. So if anyone wants to meet to catch up around then, send me an email.

For everyone else, here’s some brief paragraphs about various places I’ve been over the last couple of months:

Vancouver, BC, Canada = My uncle and his daughter immigrated to Canada last summer, so I took a trip up north to visit them. My prior knowledge of the area consisted almost entirely of information based from Douglas Coupland novels, so I was expecting a Canadian version of Seattle. My expectations were largely met with the only surprise at how large the local Chinese population was (multiple “China Towns” spread throughout the city).

Whistler, BC, Canada = Also vacationed a few days at the nearby resort town of Whistler, future host of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Of course, since I visited during the summer, I wasn’t able to experience any of the typical alpine related activities Whistler is known for, but I did get a chance to go horseback riding and ziplining. Trip was relatively uneventful except for the fact that a rockslide blocked the “Sea to Sky” highway (main route to Whistler from Vancouver) midway during the vacation. While the detour back to catch my flight tripled the driving time, it was a pretty scenic route.

Venice, Italy = Spent Thanksgiving in Venice, the famous city of canals. Enjoyed the sights and food immensely, but the weather was terrible. Bitterly cold, wet, and generally miserable at night. The day I left the city, the flood of 2008 was starting, the worst in twenty years. Yet again, I narrowly avoid natural disaster by taking the waterbus out (most public transportation in Venice is aquatic naturally) to the train station just as the waters were starting to rise.

Rome, Italy = The weather in the capital was much better, so I was able to spend a good amount of time touring the ancient ruins of the Colosseum, Pantheon, and other historical sites. Since I’m a bit frugal, I decided to visit the Vatican on the last Sunday of the month, when museum tickets are free. However, the lines were ridiculously long, so I wouldn’t recommend this if you want to see the famous sites like the Sistine Chapel. On the plus side, I did get to see the Pope (during his speech from his little apartment window) and attend Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica (first Catholic Mass I’ve ever attend, so if you ever invite me to one, know that I have high expectations).

Pisa, Italy = The Leaning Tower of Pisa was quite a disappointment since it was much smaller than I expected. Instead of boring you with the details, I’ll instead talk about the pizza in Italy, which was amazing. Since I’ve eaten pizza most of my life, I was kinda expecting something similar to the American version, only with fresher ingredients. Instead, I was impressed by the variety of regional specialties. I’d really like a pizza chain in the US to adapt the “deli-style” service of the thick rectangular pizza they serve in some regions, where they seem to have an infinite variety of toppings.

Florence, Italy = Honestly, my memory of Florence is a bit hazy since after a while all those statues and other works of art sort of blend together. I do remember I was visiting around the time of the 2008 US Presidential Election and listening to Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” on my iPhone while walking the city. I highly recommend the book, especially the audiobook version read by Obama himself (perhaps his amazing oratory skills distracted me from the art?).

Northrend, Azeroth = Okay, so this might not be a real world location, but I spent enough time playing the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, I probably remember more about the flying city of Dalaran than Florence. I’m not sure what that says about me as a person, but I heard my friend Norm has finally been lured into Azeroth, so I’m not alone in this (and over 11 million other subscribers agree with us). Like I’ve said before, WoW is the modern-day equivalent of golf for the tech crowd, so let me know if you ever want to network while running an instance in Northrend.

Shanghai, China = We might be in an ongoing global economic recession, but China’s economy is still chugging along, albeit at a slower pace. Most of what I know about Shanghai’s economy comes from my friends at Ubisoft’s local game development studio branch, which seems to be doing pretty well. They’ve basically taken over the Tom Clancy franchises (Splinter Cell and Endwar) and just gotten a new survival horror project. On a much sadder note, my condolences to the friends and family of Erick Wujcik, the former creative head of Ubisoft Shanghai that helped me out on previous visits to the city. Likewise for Randy Pausch, an amazing professor who founded the ETC, who’s now known world-wide for his famous last lecture at CMU (which you should watch immediately if you haven’t before).

Chengdu, China = Finally, the city where I was born, which I like to call the “Pittsburgh of China” (both cities are landlocked, evolving from historically industrial industries to IT, and tend to promote themselves as “most liveable” cities). Despite the devasting earthquake last year, Chengdu is still a great city, so I highly recommend visiting if you’re ever in China. It’s not as touristy as other cities (cheaper too!) despite having tons of landmarks and being where pandas originate from. Plus the food is great (the regional cuisine is called Szechwan in the US since Americans still haven’t updated to the modern spelling of Sichuan). Some people find it a bit too spicy, but there’s enough variety for even people who can’t stomach any spice (and according to Cindy, it looks like we invented Ketchup/Catsup too? I want reparations ASAP, Heinz!)

Okay, this post ended up being much longer than I originally planned, but I guess I’ve done a good deal of traveling in the last few months. So, contrary to what Kownacki says, I can’t teleport, but I do get around a lot. If anyone wants more detail about any of the cities I mentioned, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.

This sort of last-minute announcement is probably better suited for Twitter, but I still have 20 more days until my annual twitter post on the 30th. So hopefully this short blog post will be sufficient to get the masses all atwitter.

At 7:30 PM, I’ll be giving a short talk at DevHouse Pittsburgh on “Developing Commercial Games Using Open Source Code”. Afterwards, I’ll be heading to the ShowClix launch party at Mr. Smalls Theatre. The first event is open to the public, but the second event has a cover charge. But what’s a measly few bucks to attend what some people are calling the party of the year (next to the Strom Heulsman podcast release party, of course).

Hope to see you there!

Tonight, I’ll be at ITPittsburgh’s first Connector event at the Altar Bar at 6 PM, talking about Dancetown. I’ve enjoyed speaking there before as panelist for Jessica Lee’s Entrepreneurial Thursdays. It’s a nice venue in a fun location, so please stop by (and RSVP if you can).

Next week, I’ll be giving a slightly more technical talk at the monthly Dorkbot Pittsburgh gathering at the Brillobox at 7:30 PM. I should also be joined by my friend, Jim Jen, who’s going to be talking about Innovation Works’ exciting new AlphaLab program.

That’s it for the next two weeks. If you’d like me to speak at a bar near you, just leave a message. I’m not booked for Saint Patrick’s Day yet, so you better act fast!

I’ve decided to change to a new blog posting schedule, once per leap year. It’s slightly less often than my one twitter per year policy.

But seriously, I won’t be posting as frequently anymore. I’ve joined a new startup, Dancetown, as their new Director of Product Management, so I’ve been finding it difficult to find time for blogging. In fact, I actually wanted to post about this at the end of last month. And it’s highly likely that I’ll actually only finish writing part of this blog entry on the 29th, but I promise to backdate it when it’s published so no one will notice…

In any case, if you’re interested in seeing what’s new with me on a more frequent basis than my blog updating schedule, I’d advise checking out my Flickr or YouTube accounts. After events nowadays, I’m more likely to drop pictures and videos directly into those accounts rather than posting a writeup here.

I do still plan on posting the occasional event though, such as the future Dancetown related talks I’ll be giving in the Pittsburgh sometime next month. If you want to try to guilt-trip me into writing more frequently, give it your best shot in the comments below.

One common thread that I noticed amongst many of the responses was that several of them were first introduced to gaming by their fathers, which is also true for me. While I’m not sure of the exact game, I know that it was definitely my father who showed me my first DOS-based game shortly after buying our first family PC. I want to say the first game I played was Frogger, but I also have memories of primitive golf games and several variations of Tetris (which my father used to be obsessed with when it first came out). I also have fond memories of the whole family gathered around the PC playing multiplayer Monopoly and being totally unaware that it was based on a board game.

However, from the start of the nineties till just recently, my folks stopped playing computer games altogether (and were barely aware of the rise of console gaming). But just within the last year or so, they’ve gotten back into casual games for the PC and Nintendo consoles.

I’m not sure exactly why this is. Part of it is that game developers are finally addressing some of the needs and interests of a more mature, busier type of gamer with software like Brain Age, Wii Sports, and Wii Fit. At the same time, the demographics of gaming are getting wider with games like Nintendogs (which has universal appeal because who doesn’t love puppies?) and World of Warcraft (which just passed the 10 million subscribers mark), both of which encourage intergenerational play.

However, what about the almost two decades of game development that these casual gamers missed out on? When you jump from 8-bit monochromatic into haptic photorealism are you in for a shock? Or is gaming finally returning back to its roots with easy-to-learn fun and simple gameplay (with Wii Tennis basically being a modern day version of Pong)?

I’d be interested in hearing about others’ experiences with this phenomenon. What types of games do you play? Do you ever play with either older or younger generations? What sorts of games do you think promote intergenerational play?

Besides the standard adoption of their bylaws and other miscellaneous paperwork, we also need to fully convert our rebranding from PAAYPA (Pittsburgh Asian-American Young Professionals Alliance) into NAAAP (National Association of Asian American Professionals) Pittsburgh. So basically switching from one long awkward acronym to another…

As Technical Director, I have to revamp our old site to match the basic guidelines of the national organization (which they seem pretty flexible on except the logo). Since the old site is around five years old now, it’s outdated enough that I’m thinking about just rebuilding it from scratch to fit our group’s needs better.

Like many professional organizations, we tend to be very event focused, spending most of our efforts on organizing, scheduling, and announcing future events or recapping past ones. Because of this, I’m inclined to try a blog-style format, which seems to work well for the Cincinnati chapter. I also serve on another local IGDA board and we’ve had good results using a very simple, events-driven blog format. In fact, I think the IGDA actually sets up Movable Type blogs for most chapters nowadays.

So right now, I’m thinking a simple WordPress blog with calendar and RSVP widgets. This will also let us integrate our group Flickr streams and social network hubs in a more seamless fashion. Plus, by setting up multiple author accounts, event organizers can announce events on the site themselves, rather than having to go through me or wait for the monthly email announcements.

Anyone else have experiences doing rebranding or redesigns for professional organizations? What are your thoughts on the blog format as opposed to the more traditional brochure style some groups still stick to? Feel free to share your success stories (and glorious failures too)!

For 2008, I’ve decided to revamp the look and feel of this blog into something simpler and cleaner.

While I received lots of positive feedback on the original design, it was a bit lacking on the usability side. While some people found the pull down menu to be a clever little gimmick, a few people didn’t even notice you could pull the top menu down, making navigating the site much more difficult for them.

Plus, the previous design wasn’t very widget and add-on compatible, not even supporting basic things like a blogroll (which is why mine is somewhat lacking now) or tags (which should be fine since I habitually tag posts anyway).

So hopefully you’ll like the new look of the site. I’ll slowly be adding more functionality and polish, so feel free to leave feedback and recommendations for widgets to add.

I especially could use some feedback on the new logo. On the left, you should see eight logo mockups I quickly whipped together using some vector art and fonts.

Out of these, which do you think looks best and fits the theme of this blog? You can leave general comments on this post and comments on specific logos on their respective Flickr page.

Finally, since I know several of my readers are skilled artists, feel free to refine one of my designs or create an entirely new, better one (which should be easy since I’m a terrible artist). And if you’re not an artist, just leave some feedback (be gentle please). ]]> http://edeify.com/2008/01/11/new-year-new-look-new-logo/feed/