
Venue: Exertion Games LabRMIT City Campus
Building 9, Level 1, Room 27
Bowen St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000Open Dates: 17-20 November 2011, 10am-5pmLaunch Night: 17 November 2011, 7pm
NOV
Venue: Exertion Games LabRMIT City Campus
Building 9, Level 1, Room 27
Bowen St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000Open Dates: 17-20 November 2011, 10am-5pmLaunch Night: 17 November 2011, 7pm
On Wednesday, 9 Nov 2011, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller from the Exertion Games Lab gave a talk at Melbourne Central as part of Pause Fest on The Future of Games, featuring several of the games coming out of the lab. Through public talks like these, we hope to engage the public into a more informed discussion about the benefits of computer games, increase appreciation of games, and inspire industry.
You can also find recordings of the talk at SoundCloud, and an interview as well.
Click on the thumbnails below for a larger image.
Photos taken by Chad Toprak
On Wednesday, 9 Nov 2011, the Exertion Games Lab joined Pause Fest, Melbourne’s first Digital Festival, exhibiting Bubble Popper and Hanging off a Bar in Melbourne Central, one of Melbourne’s biggest and finest shopping centres in the heart of the city. By exposing our exertion games to the public we hope to gather feedback while also promoting more beneficial uses of computer games to society. We hope we have inspired viewers, given them a different perspective, and also excite them about what the future in games will hold for them.
Click on the thumbnails below for a larger image.
On Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011, the Exertion Games Lab hosted an IGDA (International Game Developers’ Association) Melbourne Exertion Games special, which packed the lab with game developers who enjoyed the dozens of games to play. Engagement like these further our aspirations to inspire industry towards a better use of digital games in modern culture. The Exertion Games Lab is proud to have housed the second year anniversary of IGDA Melbourne.
Click on the thumbnails below for a larger image.
The Exertion Games Lab is featured at Pausefest, Melbourne’s first Digital Festival, and will be showing two of its games, Hanging off a Bar and Bubble Popper. Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will also be giving a talk about the Future of Gaming at 6.30pm.
The Exertion Game Lab will host an International Game Developers’ Association Melbourne (IGDAM) meetup on Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011, 6.30pm onwards, in the lab (9.1.27 at the RMIT city campus) where we will show our research space and the way we work (fail and fail often & show don’t tell) as well as our research games, for example Hanging off a Bar!
Come and drink and chat with us about the future of gaming!
(18+, if you are under 18, you need to contact us)
On 29th September, 2011 the Exertion Games Lab participated in Playday which was co-hosted by Freeplay, Pop Up Playground and the Society of Coney as part of Game/Play in the National Gallery of Victoria Studio, Melbourne, Australia (#ngvstudio on Twitter).
It was a fantastic day filled with fun, physical, and playful games and activities such as Noodle Knights, Lemon Jousting, Checkpoint, Secret Agent Missions, Earpiece and many more! It was great to have people from the public join along in some of the games. In the end everyone had lots of fun and it was a great way to encourage physical participation and engagement. Thanks go out to all organisers, contributors, players and observers.
Photos taken by Chad Toprak.
Date:: Tuesday 11 October
Time:: 12.30 – 1.30pm
Place:: Virtual Reality Lab, Bldg. 91, Ground Floor (NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE DUE TO LIVE DEMO)
Peter Wilson and Jonathan Duckworth will talk about their game for rehabilitation:
Re Spiel for Elements System
Patients with brain injury frequently exhibit impaired upper limb function. The Elements virtual reality system addressed this disability by using an intuitive desktop workspace that affords basic gestural control. The system design provides tactility, texture, and audio visual feedback to entice patients to explore their own movement capabilities in a directed and self directed fashion. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated in several studies.
http://www.zedbuffer.com/project%20elements%2001.htm
The Exertion Games Lab (exertiongameslab.org) in Melbourne, Australia, is seeking exceptional PhD candidates to research the future of exertion games and play.
Using the skills developed in a career as a lead designer at games developers such as Krome Studios Australia, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Kuju Games, London, Harry is now working with the Australian Broadcasting Commission helping them reshape the way they communicate with their audiences and defining the role that games play in this vision.
Time: 12.30pm-1.30 Tuesday – 27th September
Place: Building 14, level 11, Room 37
We are on the Wired website, featuring our very own Eberhard “Uberhard” Graether and his Joggobot first thing!
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/09/exertion-games-lab-where-physical-meets-digital/
Date:: Tuesday 20 September
Time:: 12.30 – 1.30pm
Place:: Building 14, Level 11, Room 37 (Games Studio)
Title: Developing DroneSwarm Command for the iPad
Conor will discuss the challenges of developing a game on your own
and offer tips and tools for small teams. The presentation will also cover
techniques for promoting your game, working with a publisher (in this case
Chillingo) and testing.
Date: Tuesday 13 September
Time: 12.30
Place: RMIT, 14.11.37
Simon Joslin from The Voxel Agents explains the lessons they have
learnt about the business of indie games design.
How they funded their set up, the choices they made and the things that
they may have wished to do differently if they knew then what they know
now.
The Voxel Agents are developers of original hand-crafted games for
“on-the-go” fun times. They are an independent team with five
core members and four part-time helpers. They are one of the most
exciting indie teams in Australia, and are situated in the game
development hub of Melbourne. Creators of the smash hit Train Conductor
series, The Voxel Agents are proud producers of addictive game
substances for millions of players worldwide.
http://www.thevoxelagents.com/
The “official”-looking RMIT Exertion Games Lab site is now live, linking nicely here: http://www.rmit.edu.au/exertiongameslab
Flora Salim from the Spatial Information Architecture Lab at RMIT will talk on Tuesday 30 Aug 2011 at 12.30 in 14.11.37. Talk abstract:
Coding, hacking, and prototyping are fun, as well as playing, interacting, and social gaming! Can we insert the “fun” from gaming experiences into collaborative design projects solving real-world problems? Dr. Flora Salim (http://florasalim.com), a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University, is interested in enabling transdisciplinary design teams to work collaboratively to produce exciting outcomes. With background in Computer Science, she is interested in applying computational approaches, particularly distributed and mobile computing, data analysis, augmented reality, and tangible interactions to architecture and urban design problems. She initiated the development of UbiMash (http://ubimash.com), an open source software platform for designing between physical and digital, enabling data exchange between physical and digital models using game consoles, microelectronics, sensor devices, social networks, and the Web.
Hugh Davies will be in the lab from Monday onwards working on his PhD on the alternate reality game The Darkest Puzzle. Hugh has produced alternate games for the ABC and has extensive international experience in the games research arena from Europe as well. Welcome Hugh!
Wouter Walmink is an amazing designer who has done fascinating exertion systems and games in both Australia (CSIRO) and in the Netherlands, where he co-founded Studio Ludens that attracted prestigious clients such as Philips and TUE. He will be joining the Exertion Games Lab on Monday, working on a distributed exertion game for teenagers. Welcome Wouter!
A word from Wouter
Hi there!
I am super-excited to be part of the Exertion Games Lab as of today (29-8-2011). A quick introduction: I’m an interaction designer with a passion for physical interaction. I love empowering people and helping them discover their own talents. In the past 5 years I have been running my own company studio:ludens with Alexander Rulkens, developing online design tools and products in the emerging market of mass-customization. Last year we created an interactive installation called ‘Flosculus’ with Philips and Little Mountain (watch the video).
Among others we developed a pattern-making tool called Repper. An early online version of this tool generated over 100.000 patterns made by people all over the world, browsable at ColourPatterns.com. Have a go at it yourself with the latest version in the online demo.
In the next months my aim is to develop an exertion game that will knock your socks off. I’ll try and merge new interaction styles into exercise gameplay, mingle new themes with old-school fun and make magic happen.
This project is all about making something amazing —> more brains involved = more amazingness. So if you’re in for a brainstorm session, want to share your wisdom with me or join in, contact me at wouter@walmink.com.
See you at the Exertion Games Lab!
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller’s talk at Freeplay 2011 was audio-recorded and is now online at:
http://soundcloud.com/christydena/freeplay2011-floydmueller (including the introduction by Christy Dena).
Christy Dena’s blogpost about the topic is at: http://www.christydena.com/2011/08/avoiding-crap-game-design-panel-audio/
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will be talking about Exertion Games and give a demo of Hanging off a Bar on Tuesday, 16 Aug 2011, 12.30-1.30pm in the new Exertion Games Lab at RMIT’s 9.1.27. Everyone welcome.