Gamers who want to test their skills at the upcoming Austin Game Developers Conference will be making a charitable donation at the same time.

Twenty buck entry fees for the Level Up Charity Games competition will be donated to the ESA Foundation. Said Marc Mencher, CEO of competition sponsor GameRecruiter:

We have a long-standing commitment to supporting the educational needs of minority and female students who are interested in being part of the video game industry. By providing this support to the ESA Foundation’s Scholarship Program, we hope to allow deserving individuals to further their education and expand workplace diversity within our industry.

The September 17th competition at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin is open to all gamers. Featured titles include:

• Rock Band 2
• Madden 08
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• I-Play Bowling

E For None?

Big Download reports that most video game publishers are taking a pass on the upcoming E For All Expo, scheduled for October 3-5 in Los Angeles:

...less than six weeks before the second edition of the event is supposed to begin, the official E For All web site has listed Microsoft and Electronic Arts as the only major game publishers who will be exhibiting at the show this year. Big Download has learned via their official PR representatives that THQ and Konami, both of whom attended E For All in 2007, have no current plans to attend the 2008 event.

 

...a large number of other major gaming publishers also have no current plans to attend. That list includes Sony, Midway, Atari, Sega, Warner Bros. Interactive, NCsoft, LucasArts, Sony Online, Square Enix, Codemasters, Gamecock, Southpeak, Disney Interactive and Capcom. When contacted, PR reps for Nintendo, 2K Games and Activision did not yet know whether or not their respective companies would be attending...

Big Download cites competition from shows like this week's PAX and October's Tokyo Games Show and Blizzcon as possible reasons for the lack of industry interest in E For All.

With poor publisher support for the second year in a row, the future of the show must be called into question.

As GamePolitics reported last week, an artist's Leipzig Game Conference exhibit which blended the arcade classic Space Invaders with images of the Twin Towers caused no small amout of controversy.

According to Edge Online artist Douglas Edric Stanley has pulled the exhibit, citing the uproar. In his blog, Stanley blames much of the public reaction to what he views as an ill-informed initial report by Kotaku:

I believe that I have at least some responsibility in taking seriously the many comments, especially from those within the gaming community, and obviously over at Kotaku where the response was the most varied and interesting...

 

Sadly, the work has been discussed, largely... based on this early report in which the journalist did not even play the game. For me at least, a video game is at some point always going to be about its gameplay. Ironically, the same journalist finally did play the game, and found some merit in it. But by then, the cat was out of the bag, and we had a media circus on our hands...
 

Stanley adds:

While I take full responsibility for the uncomfortable ambiguity of certain aspects of this work, it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy’s sake, and unfortunately, this is what the piece has now become... The American response to this work has been, frankly, immature, and lacking the sophistication and consideration that other parts of the world have so far shown the work...

 

Contrary to previous reports, I am an American, and it saddens me that we as a people remain so profoundly unable to process this event outside of some obscure, but tacitly understood, criteria of purely anesthetized artistic representation.

In related news, Space Invaders creator TAITO has indicated that it may sue Stanley and the Leipzig show for using the game without authorization.

ECA sister-site GameCulture reports on the controversy sparked by a French artist's exhibit at this week's Leipzig game conference.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders, the Games Convention included "Invaders!"—a work by French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley. The original installation consisted of a Space Invaders machine set amidst a large interactive space. In that installation, the game screen was overlaid on an 8-bit backdrop depicting the two towers of the World Trade Center, which fell in September 2001 after being struck by a pair of hijacked jetliners...

 

The juxtaposition of the terrorist attack and a classic arcade game, coupled with the full-body gestural control scheme, seems as though it could have been an involving, if challenging, experience. Like Danny Ledonne's Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, "Invaders!" pushes back at our tendency to lock horrific events into an untouchable cultural trophy cabinet, forever off limits and sacrosanct...

As GameCulture's Aaron Ruby notes, American gamers initially reacted badly to Stanley's exhibit. After some reflection, however, there seemed to be more acceptance that his point was to make a commentary about America's current war strategy, rather than trivializing the 9/11 attacks.

Full Disclosure Dept: Both GamePolitics and GameCulture are owned by the Entertainment Consumers Association.

The Redmond Digital Arts Festival sounds like a very cool event, but at least one local blogger questions using tax dollars to support an event aimed at the video game development sector.

The Sledgehammer writes:

...the newly created Redmond Digital Arts Festival will be taking place in October, funded partially with city and county public arts funding and partially by a number of sponsors... it almost seems like they’re trying to put together a (very) miniature version of the annual Game Developers Conference right here in Redmond.

 

While I’m sure this might be something that would be interesting to people who develop video games (as well as some people who don’t,) this strikes me as an odd thing for a city government to be getting itself involved with.  Without diving too deep into politics here, my support of funding for public art doesn’t extend much beyond the stuff that goes on the wanted posters on the post office wall, but since there are state and county mandates for public art funding around here that are unlikely to go away anytime soon, it looks like they’re going to have to spend the money on something...

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi is the latest to weigh in on E3's future (or potential lack thereof).

Although of Dean's sources have already been cited here on GamePolitics, he did some quick polling of media and industry types yesterday and found some new voices ready to weigh in:

Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences offered a succinct perspective:

The irony is that we have a cultural revolution, with more people enjoying interactive entertainment than at any other time in our history; the video game industry has never been better. And you would think that we are going out of business here. We’ve lost the opportunity to stand up on our soap boxes and shout, look at me. The one thing the traditional E3 did was light the place up like a roman candle lit at both ends and focus the world’s media attention on us.

ECA boss Hal Halpin suggested combining E for All with E3 in a format more like that of the Tokyo Game Show. Meanwhile, game designer David Perry called the 2008 show an embarrassment and suggested opening it up to all game developers and publishers.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, The Game Reviews has E3 quotes from noted developer Denis Dyack:

I think this has definitely been better for the industry, simply because the amount of cost that was sunk into 2006 was not supportable. It could not have continued much longer. It was funny because I remember 2005 and 2006, and I was talking to people going, "I do not even know why we are doing this stuff anymore, delaying games by like two quarters to do these demos to get "Best in Show for E3" that really does not mean that much." And suddenly it crashed; it was like the Berlin Wall falling in 2006 after they announced it.

I do not really understand at some level why it all needs to be shown all at once. I would rather like to see it more like press junkets when stuff comes out, with a rotation for [press] to cover things in a really thorough and critical way. So I think this is better because it is smaller, but I think it would be better if it was not around at all. Nothing against ESA, but you know, I think, ’Oh well, there is another controversial thing I just said.’

Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

The NLGD Festival of Games opened yesterday with a special Pong match between the game's creator, Ralph Baer, and the mayor of the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Vertical Wire reports that the "heated" match was played on authentic, 1960's-era equipment. After dispatching the mayor 2-nil, Baer gave the keynote address to open the conference, which was designed to promote the Netherlands as a European gaming hub.

Among those presenting at NLGD are serious games guru Ben Sawyer and Spore design team member Chaim Gingold.

UPDATE: A reader, Rob F, writes in to advise that we've got an error in this story regarding the origins of Pong:

[I] just wanted to point out that Ralph Baer did not create Pong, Nolan Bushnell/Al Alcorn did.  Also, Pong was released in the 70s, so I'm unsure what 60s era equipment they were playing on, maybe Baer's Brown Box?  Think was also from the 70s, maybe late 60s.  Bushnell viewed Baer's Table Tennis on the Odyssey (the first home console) and basically ripped Baer off.  I'm not a big fan of wikipedia, but from what I scanned they got it right.

 

Ralph wrote a book a couple years ago, it's really good.  You can view a sample here.

Every gamer's favorite academic, MIT Professor Henry Jenkins, will be among the presenters at the 5th Annual Games for Change Festival which takes place June 2-4 in New York.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will deliver the festival's closing keynote. Other speakers include Ben Sawyer of the Serious Games Initiative, Dr. James Paul Gee of Arizona State University, Prof. Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech and Heather Chaplin, co-author of Smartbomb.

From the GFC press release:

The only festival... will explore real-world impact, the latest games and funding strategies... Expert practitioners -- academics, activists, non-profits, funders -- will be called in to examine the impact of current games, evaluations planned and the ongoing work to build the field.

 

You will have a chance to see a variety of new games in development first-hand, and at the Games Expo sponsored by Microsoft, festival-goers can play the latest state-of-the-art games.