Upcoming colloquium by the good folks at Washington. From the CFP: Send a brief abstract or rationale (500 words or less) for your presentation to critgame@uw.edu by 5 PM on Friday, April 6, 2012. Colloquium sessions will be roundtable, discussion format organized around short programs (6-8 "lightning" talk presenters) or long programs (1-3 presenters or extended performance or demonstration). Short program presentations should be less than 5 minutes to allow for question and answer and conversation. These should not be conference paper style presentations, but rather provide introductions, provocations, or focused interventions into your work, your project, or your idea.

For more on ten Bosch and Miegakure, see last summer's feature on Kotaku.

Marc ten Bosch's upcoming platform puzzler, Miegakure, will require the player to operate in four dimensions. In this post, he explains the difference between attempting to rotate a 3D object vs. a 4D object. Examples of code included.

Mark Sample writes: "The Jewel of the Valleys, a Civil War-based alternate reality game that will launch in May. Hosted by the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, The Jewel of the Valleys seeks to link history and technology." He's got some good questions at the end of the post. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I'm quickly building up systemic resistance to the word 'gamification'. Nonetheless, this is a quick and interesting postmortem from Danc, who helped turn learning MS Office into a game.

Conference to be held in Athens, Greece, on April 6th-9th 2011. From the call: "Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke "computer games" in general terms. The over-arching theme of the conference is Player Identity. Papers are encouraged to explore one of the following topics and invited speakers will focus on this area. On the other hand, this is not the sole domain the conference will cover and submissions dealing with other relevant aspects of game philosophy are also welcome."