Gamification and Urban Spaces in Turin.


The conference "Mettiamo in Gioco la Città - Gamification Urbana e Cittadini Giocatori" was held in Turin the 7th of May, and was quite a success.
You can find here some preview photos, for all the materials (videos, slides, book of abstracts and photos) see: http://giochiurbani.blogspot.it/

 

Professor Peppino Ortoleva the inventor of the term "Homo Ludicos".

Some of our public.

 The round table with Professor Guido Ferraro (president of the Italian Association for Semiotic Studies), Fabio Viola (international expert of gamification), Marco Mazzaglia (from Ovosonico), Agata Meneghelli (game semiotician and researcher) and Riccardo Fassone (from dotventi).

 ...and myself! =)

Gamification and Urban Spaces: only a week to go before the Workshop in Turin.

"Mettiamo in Gioco la Città - Gamification Urbana e Cittadini Giocatori"*is the title of a (kind of semionerd) Workshop to be held in Turin the 7th of May.

As the head of the organizing committee i couldn't be prouder: thanks to a grant from the Fondazione Fondo Ricerca e Talenti we have been able to invite many awesome speakers and the number of registered participants is higher than expected!

 Here you can check the Facebook page of the event! The program will be the following:

09:00 Opening remarks by Ugo Volli.
09:30 Peppino Ortoleva: “Esperienza urbana e ludicità contemporanea”.
10:15 Atelier. Participants: Eleonora Chiais, Alessandra Chiàppori, Vincenzo Idone Cassone, Gabriele Marino, Marta Milia, Elsa Soro, Simona Stano, Mattia Thibault, Federica Turco.
13:00 Lunch break.
14:00 Gabriele Ferri: "Playmakers. Finzione, interazione e gioco di ruolo nella costruzione di spazi pubblici".
14:45 Agata Meneghelli: "Percorsi aumentati: il ruolo della narrazione nelle app ludiche geolocalizzate".
15:30 Fabio Viola: "Playable city: il gioco come strumento di cambiamento".
16:15 Coffee break.
16:30 Mauro Salvador: "Dotventi e Media mutations 7: il design partecipativo di un conference game".
17:15 Round table. Chair: Fabio Viola. Participants: Riccardo Fassone, Guido Ferraro, Marco Mazzaglia e Agata Meneghelli.
18:30 Conclusions by Massimo Leone.

Needless to say, some of these names belong to the most important game scholars in Italy!

The workshop will be also availabe in streaming here, and the video will then go on the youtube channel of Lexia (international semiotic journal).

We are also planning to publish the proceedings...

I'll keep you updated here on the blog!

 

*Translated: "Let's bring the city into play - Urban gamification and player-citizens"

Conspiracy Theories and Semiotics of the Web.

This year's "Meetings on Meaning", the semiotic conferences organized by the CIRCe (Interdepartmental Center of Research on Communication) and held at the University of Turin, are dedicated to conspiracy theories.

The meaning of #Conspiracy. Plot and Mystery in Communication.

 [Click here for the program]

The record of all the meetings already held are available (in HD!) on the Lexia (International Journal of Semiotics) channel on youtube. Most of them are in Italian, but there is some in English too, so it's worth to check...

In any case, here you can find my lecture, dedicated to conspiracy theories in the periphery of the semiosphere of the web (i.e. all those sites like 4chan and 8chan) and a case study on the GamerGate controversy. I hope you enjoy it!

Turin Semiotic Atelier on Games is now on line!

The 18-19th nober of E|C, the journal of the Italian Association for Semiotic Studies is now available on line!

Atelier #2, Estetiche del Quotidiano, supervised by Prof. Massimo Leone is all dedicated to how games are changing our everyday life. Unfortunately it is only in Italian, but an English Book of Abstracts is also available.

The atelier's articles are:

Eleonora Chiais: I-dress e giochi del vestire. Appunti semiotici sulla ludicizzazione della moda 3.0.
Alessandra Chiappori: Romanzi cinguettati e contraintes virtuali. Come Twitter gioca e fa giocare con l’arte del narrare.
Elsa Soro: Mapping in love. Forme del desiderio e forme dell’incontro nelle dating app.
Simona Stano: Edo ergo ludo, ludo ergo edo. Forme di vita ed estetiche del quotidiano tra universo alimentare e dimensione ludica.
Mattia Thibault: Gioco e spazialità digitale. Percorsi ludici tra avenue digitali e realtà alternata.
Federica Turco: Io ballo sola. Dalla piazza alla casa, come cambiano le performance nei giochi per console e smartphone.

How to write a Ludography.

Some days ago I had to write a ludography (which is the list of games taken into consideration, the lusory version of bibliographies and filmographies) for a chapter I'm co-authoring. As almost all the ludographies that I ever had read had different formats, and there is not a single, clear definition on how to write it I had to be somewhat creative, and create my own way of referencing based on Harvard Referencing (see here).

Note: even if some indication to how reference video games and computer programs do exist, I haven't found anything on analogue games.

The basic schema for referencing games is:

Authorship/developers (year)[eventual year of first publication] game title (version)[kind of game][support][platform] Distributor/publisher.

Here some examples:

Epic Games and Digital Extremes (2000)[1999] Unreal Tournament (GOTY edition)[videogame][CD-ROM][Microsoft Windows] Redversiongamer.

ArenaNet (2012) Guildwars 2 ("Point of no return" release, season 2)[videogame][download][Microsoft Windows] NCsoft.

Garfield, R. (2005)[1993] Magic The Gathering (Ninth edition)[trading card game] Wizards of the Coast.

Cook, M., Tweet J. and S. Williams (2003)[1974], Dungeons and Dragons: Player's Handbook (3.5 edition)[Role-playing game rulebook] Wizards of the Coast.

Perudo (2011)[traditional dice game] Giochi Uniti.

Darrow, C. and E. Magie (2008)[1903] Monopoly [Montcuq edition][Boardgame] Hasbro.

For any question, advice or feedback, contact me!

Like our Forefathers Played:
Traditional Play & Toy's Substance of Expression.

The talk I presented to the annual meeting of the Italian Association of Semiotic Studies is now available on-line!
Another step toward a semiotic theory of toys... ;)

Annual Conference of AISS.

The annual meeting of the Italian Association of Semiotic Studies has just been held in Teramo (near Rome).

We had three days of conferences about Nature and Authenticity with the participation of many important scholars among which Umberto Eco himself!

In the congress I had the chance to meet two of my favorite academic authors: Patrick John Coppock and Paolo Bertetti.

Coppock is a very prolific philosopher and semiotician, you can check this paper too see from yourself how interesting is the stuff he writes!

Bertetti wrote a book on the intertextual and transmedia character Conan the Barbarian. This work will be one of the pillar upon which I'm struggling to build my PhD thesis!

I myself have presented a paper on the materiality of toys (soon on #SemioNerd) as part of University of Turin's Atelier. As always working in close contact with them has been informative and engaging!

Here a picture of some of the members of the Atelier from Turin.