Launched in October of 2011, PlayStation Home Destinations is a total redesign of the public spaces of PlayStation’s virtual world. Celia Pearce worked as a consultant for Sony developing the basic concept, the genre-themes and components for each area, the hub functionality, the questing concept, and the over-arching refocusing of Home as a community for gamers. She then brought in Friends Jay Fisher and Justin Jorgensen, theme park designers extraordinaire, to art direct their very first video game project. Destinations also includes games from Codename, the indie game label I co-founded with partners from IndieCade and Psychic Bunny. PlayStation Home is also an IndieCade sponsor. Check out the promo video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuOZgndEBRk

Image and Video Copyright 2011 Sony Computer Entertainment

In the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001, I created a conceptual art piece to try and make sense of events. The piece consists of two spreadsheets, each representing one of the two towers, with a field for each individual that died in the attacks. The spreadsheet is formatted such that each spreadsheet can be printed out on an 11×17 sheet of paper and folded into a tower. The idea for the piece was that people could download it, print it out and make their own 9/11 paper monument. Because they are made of paper, the two towers are very fragile and easily knocked over.

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11, a friend suggested I repost the piece for people to download: http://cpandfriends.com/wtc/110-110_wtc_monument.xls

I’m pleased to announce that the first paper has been published about the AbTeC project, which I worked on with Skawennati Fragnito and Jason Lewis. The paper can be found here. (I’m not listed as a co-author which is fine, I was only involved in the initial ideation of the project.)

IndieCade 2010 took place October 8-10 in Downtown Culver City. For more in the festival finalists, awards and other events, visit the IndieCade Website.

I have a talk at ITU Copenhagen while visiting for one month in the Fall of 2010. Click this link to see the video of my talk: Strange Bedfellows: New Discoveries through the Merger of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

For more on my new book, visit www.communitiesofplay.com

IndieCade 2009 in Culver City was a huge success, so much so that I forgot to post about it. You can see a list of Finalists and Awards here.

My students just finished their fabulous games for my class:

• Syllabus
• Course Blog
• Final Projects

IndieCade presents its 3rd Annual Indie Games Showcase @ E3 June 2-4. For more visit www.indiecade.com.

Partner: Creative Media Collaborative
Role: Festival Chair

IndieCade Showcases at E3 Summit (left) and GameCity Nottingham (right).

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