Winning Team

At the Game Developers Conference, I had just enough voice to participate in Eric Zimmerman's Game Show at the end of The Social Dimensions of Digital Gaming session, where game developers were coupled with game researchers. For the developers: Matt Adams, Ralph Koster and Heather Kelley. For the Researchers: Thomas Malaby, Suzanne de Castell and Torill Mortensen.

We were first asked a question. All researchers had to say what kind of research we would like to see, all developers were asked what kind of game system they would like to see. Then we were coupled by drawing names out of a hat - which resulted in one male male couple, one female female couple and one male female couple. Work the couples out yourself, I am giving you one hint by posting the picture of me and my partner. If the picture is blurry, blame Justin Hall, who grabbed my camera and took the picture (which was really nice of him).

And this was your winning couple, after the jury (TL Taylor, Beth Kolko and a gentleman whose name I didn't catch) had decided! We won the wonderful prizes of one Scrabble and one eeehhhh - well, it was a weird name and my partner did not have it, so I swapped prizes with him and got the american language scrabble instead. Will come in handy for English language training in long dark Volda winter evenings!

The rest of the day was interesting, but I was too sick to make much of it. What I did not know at the time, sadly, as I would have made the effort to get hold of him, was that at the same time one of the former administrators of Aarinfel was doing a presentation. He now works for Microsoft, and emailed me to ask if we could have coffee. I was already in Los Angeles though. Perhaps I'll have a chance when I go to Washington later this spring.