Screw Guitar Hero!

Taking back the game space invasion of the Kingdoms of Rock, here's a guy who had the brain wave of strapping his WiiMote to his axe. Now we just need a 'mote on a violin bow, and the Nintendo age Zeppelin can be born.

IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Just recieved this call for papers.
IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Since the dawn of computing, games have posed
fascinating challenges for AI and machine learning research.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in this
field, both in traditional games such as Go, and also in
video games, where more convincing AI is a priority for
next generation games. As the physics models in games
become ever more realistic, they also offer a convenient
testing ground for many types of robotics research.

This increased interest is reflected by the new conferences
in the area (e.g. IEEE CIG, and AIIDE), together with
workshops, special sessions and tutorials at major neural
network and machine learning conferences (e.g. NIPS, ICML, WCCI, PPSN).

There is now an important new journal to provide a focus for
archival quality research in the area:

IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
http://ieee-cis.org/pubs/tciaig/

The journal is now open for submissions, with the first issue
due to be published in March 2009.

Brain-waves controlled games - I could be wrong

It seems that I have to take brain controlled games more seriously. Square Enix are experimenting with a game using one sensor that can be used to find out if a player is concentrating or relaxed presumably so the game can know when to go BOO!! and scare the player at just the right moment.

Article here.

Negative myths about games debunked

This is an excellent article from (Henry Jenkins - MIT) - even if I only say that because it supports my own experience and instinct (plus bias!). Games do not (by-in-large) cause violent behaviour (except in play), I don't have to be a young male to play them, and they don't desensitise me.
So, I'm off home to not kick the dog and listen to my wife's woes as I play WoW as my ususual female wood-elf (like) character and I try to exterminate tons of wild animals (online of course).

Got any great self-portraits?

If you want your ugly mug published in a games book, that is. Jesper Juul is looking for a few good gamers to feature in his book.
Knowing there are amateur photographers and ardent gamers on this blog, it's worth a post.

http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=479