In the 2021-2022 academic year, the Game Lab set out to expand its Library collection of Tabletop Roleplaying Games (RPGs). We acquired 88 RPGs, including game systems, standalone games, zine compilations, and modules or adventure books. Additionally, we acquired 11 Cyberpunk roleplaying games after interest from the Cyberpunk and Discontents seminar; 9 solo roleplaying games, […]

In 2020, we began to host remote RPG game sessions at the game lab. In both a few sessions of Jason Tocci’s one page Dark Souls inspired RPG, Exhumed, and a long running campaign of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics[DCC]—run in a way that anyone could join in each week and continue an ongoing exploration […]

Angela Washko, artist and Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University—and a longtime friend of the UCLA Game Lab—will join us as a Research Fellow this spring quarter (May 17-June 9). Washko will be working in the UCLA Game Lab and is scheduled to give a talk at UCLA on May 18. She also […]

For our fourth RPG session at the lab, we got back in person to play Munkao and Zedeck Siew’s A Thousand Thousand Islands[ATTI], specifically their introductory adventure module, Quiet Lake, a preview for their forthcoming book Reach of the Roach God. ATTI is a Fantasy world-building project that draws on visual and textual research into […]

For our second RPG Play Session, we played Ech0; a Gamemaster-less map drawing and storytelling game. In Ech0, one player [me in this case] takes on the role of a fallen mech pilot from a war that ended many years ago, their mind saved in a small harddrive called an Ech0 drive. The other players […]

For the first of many biweekly RPG Play Sessions at the Game lab, we played the hexcrawl, Beyond the Borderlands with the free-form fantasy game, Tunnel Goons. Beyond the Borderlands is an on-going Zine project by Brazilian illustrator and gamemaker Alex Damaceno (@gnarledmonster) to re-imagine the beginner Dungeons & Dragons adventure Keep on the Borderlands. Tunnel […]

The UCLA Game Lab is excited to announce our 2018-2019 Fellows!

About The UCLA GAME LAB Eddo Stern (ES) interviewed by David O’Grady (DO) Eddo Stern is the founder and director of the UCLA GAME LAB, and Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA. David O’Grady is a Visiting Lecturer at California State University – Long Beach and a PhD Candidate in Cinema Media Studies at […]

Today we interview Lee Tusman about his thesis project Mess.life, a digital tool and artspace designed for online collaboration in three-dimensions and inspired by warehouse artist culture and DIY. Lee Tusman is a new media artist and curator interested in the application of the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of, […]

Let’s play! The UCLA Game Art Festival is returning for its fifth gaming extravaganza at the Hammer Museum for one night only, 7-10:00 p.m., Tuesday, November 14. Join us for an exciting and eclectic evening of new games and game art, live performance, music, and much more! Stay tuned to the UCLA Game Lab on […]

Today we interview Amanda Stojanov, media artist, designer and recent MFA graduate of Design | Media Arts about her thesis exhibit work in Delete Me. Stojanov’s work is centered around creating interactive video/animation, sculpture, and narratives that interrogate gender identity, agency / body politics, and visibility in virtual spaces. The subjects of her work focus […]

Over the past few weeks we’ve been interviewing UCLA’s Design | Media Arts Department grads about their thesis work in the exhibition Delete Me at The New Wight Gallery. Many of these works are not explicitly games but use game engines, feature game art or installation, or in other ways are engaging with the vocabulary […]

This week we interview Design | Media Arts alums Alex Rickett and Theo Triantafyllidis, who recently completed their online multiplayer game Gecko Ridemption now presented online for Adult Swim. The world of Gecko Ridemption feels rich. It has its own vocabulary: Sport Balls, Puke Force and Layzer Juice. Why did you choose geckos? What is […]

Today we interview Rui Hu, artist and recent MFA graduate of Design | Media Arts about his thesis exhibit work in Delete Me. Rui Hu is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily with digitally mediated images and objects. His work often grows out of dissecting certain systems or categories, and often invites and engages with […]

Last week the UCLA GameLab and UCLA Design | Media Arts was pleased to welcome Ju Row Farr from Blast Theory for 2 days of talks and workshop. Blast Theory is a UK-based art group that creates work combining interactive media, digital broadcast and live performance. Their singular works are based around audience participation and […]

Bravo Drive is an installation by Miller Klitsner currently on view in the exhibition Machinic Unconscious. We interviewed him about his installation. GameLab: As I played Bravo Drive, I was struck by the slow unfolding of the world and of the way that the music was so tightly integrated. In fact the physical car radio […]

In December, UCLA GameLab was pleased to welcome Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey to the lab for a workshop in constructing augmented reality projects and performance. Jeremy is a Toronto-based artist that has been creating experimental performances online for a decade. He is known for his web-based performances on YouTube. Like many others using this […]

We recently interviewed Lilyan Kris and Sara Haas to talk about their new project, Phantasm Atlas. What was the original impetus for making a wearable fantastical game about the body? We’re both obsessed with the strangeness of our bodies, of the way that we simultaneously ignore and are hyper-aware of our physical forms. We’re both interested […]

Artist Isla Hansen strives to create interactive media works that are as inviting as possible—even irresistible, as one of her pieces at November’s UCLA Game Art Festival proved. Titled Long Reliever, the sculpture uses a Nintendo Wiimote affixed to a moving armature that replicates the rudimentary motions of an endless game of Wii baseball. Essentially, […]

Northern Spark, an annual, all-night art festival in Minneapolis, reignites June 13 for its fifth anniversary, featuring more than 80 projects exhibited throughout the city. The UCLA Game Lab is excited to participate in the festival again this year as both partner and exhibitor, with dozens of game art projects presented for play. Please join […]

Join the UCLA Game Lab at the annual Transforming Hollywood conference this Friday (5/8) at UCLA.

Game designer and industry veteran Gregg Tavares is our newest UCLA Game Lab artist in residence. Tavares has worked on some of the most popular videogames ever made, including Centipede, Crash Team Racing, Jak and Daxter, LocoRoco, Afro Samurai, as well as the cult favorite, M.C. Kids. Tavares left the game industry for a stint […]

Ralph H. Baer, inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home videogame system, died December 6. Although Baer didn’t create the first videogame, he invented something more important: videogaming as a mainstream medium. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, with the personal computer bringing games and other amusements from the research lab into the home office and living room by […]

The UCLA Game Lab is profiled in the latest issue of Mediascape.

Lea Schönfelder talks about her game Ute, where a woman shakes up gender roles.

Our director Eddo Stern shares his thoughts on the renaissance in games.

What is a Hackathon? LA Hacks is a student competition to build the most exciting technology products within 36 hours. Products are then judged by professionals in the tech industry. Check out this blog post by hackathon guru Dave Fontenot to learn more. Who can attend? LA Hacks focuses primarily on undergraduate students but accepts high school […]

Video game professor and interactive fiction writer Nick Montfort of MIT will discuss “Ten Cases of Computational Poetics” this Friday, January 17, from 12-2p, in the YRL “Digital Hub” (first floor past the lobby and back behind the pods at the north end of the library). The talk is presented by M/ELT. With reference to […]

I’ve been endlessly driving through the streets of Los Santos née Los Angeles, trying to complete the main storyline of Grand Theft Auto V, the latest title in the “let’s print money” franchise by Rockstar Games (to the tune of a billion Washingtons in just three days after release). Players, too, can make it rain (virtually) at […]

When: This Friday October 25th, 10:00am-6:00pm Where: Young Research Library, UCLA What: A colloquium about Games and Gamification, featuring Edward Castranova, Eddo Stern, Susan Lohman and more.

Please join Incendiary Traces as we tour, draw, and otherwise trace (literally and metaphorically) the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). A post-tour discussion will follow. Friday, November. 1, 2013 1:00-6:00pm Established in 1999, the USC ICT is a University Affiliated Research Center working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. It specializes in […]

A free workshop in hosted by my Friends at Somewhere Something. Its a great warehouse space divided into units located near Silverlake. 18 seats available  based on the space that we have available –  contact Jose Sanchez <jomasan@gmail.com> to rsvp The workshop will cover introduction to Unity3D – a gaming platform, and how to create in-game objects […]

Interference is an immersive interactive game installation by architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer Eric Zimmerman. Combining strategic and social elements, the game is played by stealing from other players. Five suspended, super-thin steel walls dotted with organic patterns resembling cell tissues act as vertical game boards. The twist is that each turn you must steal a […]

The UCLA GameLab is pleased to announce a workshop series on Religion Design conducted by Adam Rafinski, open for all UCLA students. The Church of Play (CoP) is an experiment in establishing a spiritual community of players and game designers that investigate the relationship between spirituality and play. This reality game offers you the possibility […]

C. Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley University) and Jonathan Gingerich will be delivering a talk on the aesthetics of board games and video games titled “The Aesthetics of Games and the Pleasure of Governance.” The talk will be today (June 7) at 3:00 in the UCLA Department of Philosophy, Dodd Hall 399, and they would welcome […]

Mainstream videogames often shy away from interpretative ambiguity, finding commercial safety—and ludic economy—in well-worn generic personas and dramatic milieus. Terrorists, monsters, aliens, Nazis—these are the culturally uncomplicated enemies who, in stereotypical scenarios and archetypal narrative arcs, must be slain by the solitary hero (i.e., the player) on a quest to save the princess/community/world. But what […]

As residents of the Game Lab, we were honored when swissnex SF invited us to display our work in the Game Gazer exhibition. We spent a wonderful week in San Francisco and got to meet a variety of talented Swiss students exploring the games medium in interesting ways. The exhibit coincided with GDC and featured […]

Start: 21 Feb 2013 7:00 pm Dog Nose Knows is a board game designed by Game Lab resident Adeline Ducker, exploring the scents of view. Come test this new game and learn about the canine sensory experience! LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) are monthly evening salons showcasing movers and shakers in art and science. […]

“Haunted” interfaces, sensor tricking, and cell trances are just a few of the gadget-enabled gestures cataloged in the fascinating online publication Curious Rituals: Gestural Interaction in the Digital Everyday. Produced by researchers working last summer at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA—Nicolas Nova, Katherine Miyake, Nancy Kwon, and Walton Chiu, along with […]

Aliah Magdalena Darke was interviewed today in the Daily Bruin on her game “Objectif”. The card game “Objectif” is less about entertainment and more about creating a space to discuss racial biases, conceptions of beauty and objectification. Check it out here: http://dailybruin.com/2013/02/15/game-challenges-ideals-of-beauty/

A recent article in The Atlantic documents what may be the earliest-known example of computer-generated art. Likely inspired by the image of a calendar pin-up “girl,” a technician working with the military in the 1950s used punch cards to program a vector-traced outline of a semi-naked woman

In conjunction with Game Room, the Hammer will be presenting a talk with Jonathan Blow and Heather Chaplin on February 6 2013, 07:30pm in the Billy Wilder Theater. This event is free and open to the public (parking $3) More info can be found here: http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs/detail/program_id/1585

If you’ve taken a look at the games section of our site you may have seen some really cool table games and wondered how you could play them. Well today is your lucky day because the DMA Undergraduate Exhibition has several of those games on display and ready to play. There are also a number […]

Theres a write up on the current Hammer show Game Room on the Daily Bruin: http://www.dailybruin.com/article/2012/12/game-room-exhibit-at-hammer-museum-encourages-interaction

Eddo Stern and Noa Kaplan exhibiting in Game Room show the Hammer Museum: GAME ROOM December 1, 2012 – February 17, 2013 Hammer Museum   The Hammer Museum’s lobby gallery will be transformed into Game Room from December 1, 2012 through February 17, 2013. The structure and aesthetics of games have long captured the imaginations of artists, inspiring works by […]

Tony Huang has a nice write up on the Call of Duty tournament that we had with USC last Saturday. You can check it out here: http://www.dailybruin.com/article/2012/11/ucla-competes-against-usc-in-call-of-duty-tournament They also have a video up here: http://www.dailybruin.com/multimedia/52532

Peter Lu and Lea Schönfelder are collaborating on a new kinect questionare / adventure game, here’s a video of work in progress:

NVIDIA was nice enough to send us a care pacage in preparation with our upcoming competition with USC

The UCLA Game Lab has been invited to participate in the first ever NVIDIA GeForce GTX Call of Duty Black Ops II Rivalries competition.

I created and graduated with an Independent Major called “Game Design and Development” from the Arts and Architecture department. My goal in creating the major was to learn as much as I could about the various facets of game development — from the design and art to the more technical aspects of programming. While the […]

This summer the Daily Bruin did an interview on Garrett Johnson to find out more about his independent major in game design. You can read about it here: Fourth-year Garrett Johnson will graduate with an independent degree in game design and development If you’re interested in doing something like this Garrett has done a write […]

I just got back from a lunch time field trip to Chung King Restaurant with eleven of my fellow Game Lab people. It’s quite a trek from UCLA all the way out to San Gabriel but if you like Schezwan food it’s worth it. Most recommended dishes: Kung Pow Shrimp Mapo Tofu Special Flavored Porkchop

Aaaah! MTPL:D2 or, Melrose Trading Post Larp: Day 2 was a smashing success! We changed up the story a bit and introduced our newest member, Terrence. Terrence is an orphaned red monkey who was born without bones. But what he lacks skeletally, he makes up for cardiacally! Which is to say, he’s got a lot […]

We made it through our first day at the Melrose Trading Post. We’ve learned a few things from it and plan to make improvements based on what we have learned for next Sunday. Our boot was looking pretty sweet but it was missing some much needed signage. I think we just barely made the bar […]

Here’s some pics of our Arcade Backpack at Indiecade this past weekend…

IndieCade //Form + Code: Games Edition Using last year’s successful IndieCade panel “Form + Code” as a springboard, Andy Nealen convenes a group of developers from the world of artgames to talk about projects where code and form are inextricably linked. Join us for a richly interactive session of audience questions and comments, and a […]

If you’re on UCLA Campus October 8, 2012, 6:00 pm and want to learn how to build sensor based Android and apps using processing be sure to check out this workshop: Creative Coding for Mobile Devices Workshop with Daniel Sauter Build Sensor Based Android and Apps Using Processing From the event page: This workshop is […]

A smashing success with much progress made and loads of fun had by all.

Here’s some in progress pics of our new LARP. We still don’t know what it’s about because we’re waiting for our LARP workshop to decide that part. For now we’re just making crazy costumes and pom poms. I’m sure they’ll be useful somehow. 🙂

We’ve got a ton of events coming up in the beginning of the Fall quarter. Here’s a summary of it all!

In preparation for our upcoming LARP workshop, we took a field trip out to the reDiscover Center in Culver City. The director Mary Beth Trautwein met us there to show us around. reDiscover takes discarded materials donated by businesses and reuses them for art and education. What this means is that they have a warehouse […]

Game Lab researchers David O’Grady and Harrison Gish, both PhD students dissertating on video games in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA, are published in the new Encyclopedia of Video Games (2012, ABC-CLIO). O’Grady and Gish contributed about a half-dozen entries on a variety of video game subjects, from interfaces to key faces in the […]

Here’s a couple of shots of Mark and Garrett testing out the SLAB. Read more about it here: The SLAB

If you’re working on a card game and would like to get some professional looking results give printerstudio a try. They can do custom printed playing cards on demand, which means a minimum order of one deck. The prices are very affordable (starting at $7.99 per deck) and turn around time is as fast as […]

Mr. Hiroshi Yagi, Mr. Yasuhiro Kondo, and Mr. Mori Akihiro from SEGA Japan’s R&D department stopped by the UCLA Game Lab for a vist and a little show and tell. The Daily Bruin has a little write up with more details: http://www.dailybruin.com/blog/spotlight/2012/08/sega-japan-and-ucla-game-lab-convene-to-share-innovations-in-video-game-technology

Ever dream of getting rich on the App store? The Random Mechanic Mixer by Al Sweigart may give you a little boost towards making that dream a reality. Now all you need to do is find a way to automate the implementation and submission of apps and you’ll be well on your way to sumitting […]

http://handeyesociety.com/event/toronto-after-darkcade-call-for-entries/ Toronto After Dark: Horror, Sci-Fi, Action & Cult Film Festival is thrilled to announce its very first Call for VIDEO GAME Entries! The selected games will feature at the 7th Annual Toronto After Dark, this October 18-26, 2012 in the Darkcade, an exciting new addition to the festival, co-presented by videogame arts organization Hand Eye Society. […]

Here’s some pictures from the show we participated in at the Skirball Cultural Center. We had a lot of fun showing off student made games and telling people about the Game Lab. There was a ton of stuff to do and some really excellent music. Also, our Arcade Backpack was a smash hit!

Come out to the Skirball Cultural Center tonight and play some UCLA Game Lab games: Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist by Messhof Burn and Turn, Roulette, and Snake Trix by Robot Bear Cryptiod Blues by Nautilus People Gold Station by Eddo Stern Ascension by Garrett Johnson plus a custom UCLA Game Lab mod of an unreleased […]

Check out our new levitation suits. Pretty revolutionary:

We were invited to show off our Arcade Backpack at Home Room’s latest show, SUPER TETRICIDE. Here’s the description from their event page: a new generation of gamers embracing games and interactive media as an art form moving beyond a commercial product. The influence of video games is branching out, prompting individuals to work in […]

First off, congratulations our UCLA Community High School intern, Jonathan Bae, for getting into UCLA this fall. We’re all really proud of him and he deserves it for all his hard work and effort. Looks like we’re going to have to upgrade him from lowly intern to full-time Game Lab resident 🙂 Secondly, here’s a […]

Here’s a pic of Game Lab worker Steven Amrhein schlepping the Arcade Backpack at E3. Those of you lucky enough to spot him there had the chance to play Flywrench by Messhof or Cyptoid Blues by Nautilus People

The World is Down Ten Works by Eddo Stern Opening Thursday, June 14, 7-10:00 pm @Pacific Design Center (Second Fl #B230) 8687 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90069 323-377-1102 youngprojectsgallery.com At the heart of Stern’s practice is a crucial engagement with today’s digital culture and an astute eye for formal experimentation. His large-scale installations, sculptures, […]

Check out a nice write up on Eddo Sterns work in the LA Weekly: “Eddo Stern’s Experimental Video Games Merge Art With Online Role-Playing and Virtual Reality” http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2012/06/eddo_stern_best_flame_war_ever.php

Judy Lin has a write up on the UCLA Game Art Festival at UCLA Today. Check it out here: http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/game-art-festival-2012-234035.aspx

Lenika Cruz has a write up of the 2012 UCLA Game Art Festival in L.A. Weekly’s Art & Technology blog. Check it out here: http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2012/05/caines_arcade_ucla_video_game_art.php

Matthew Overstreet has a preview of our upcoming Game Art Festival. Be sure to come down to the Hammer tonight and read the story here: http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/05/game_art_festival_features_experimental_video_games_art_components

Colin Reid has a write up on our work in progress, Flatland ARG!!! Read the story here: http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/05/geometrybased_game_039flatland_arg039_shapes_up_for_game_art_festival_debut

Colin Reid has an article in the Daily Bruin on our upcoming Chiptune concert. Read it here: http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/04/bit_by_bit_ucla_game_lab_to_host_concert_featuring_chiptune_music

Intern Joshua Cho from UCLA-CS here! This week was spent applying some of what I’ve learned on digital-tutors about Unity. I spent some time working on building some “architecture” using primitive shapes on Unity. I applied knowledge of navigating the UI and incorporating use of some hotkeys in order to move shapes, rotate them, duplicate […]

Bouncy Animals is a new game in progress involving the use of large bouncy balls covered by fabric animal skins and textures. The current direction that the Game Lab is leaning towards is that of a Mario Cart-Wii combination-esque game where the bouncy balls act as the “joystick” critical to maneuverance and mobility. On a […]

Interns Jonathan and Joshua return once more with some random game testing. Last week, we forgot to mention that we were able to play-test Mark Essen’s prototype Pachinko game. In the current state of the game, it’s very generic aesthetically, but the systems involved that make the game what it is work perfectly fine. Much […]

In the past few days, we’ve spent time observing scripts in C# and JavaScript, learning about some of the basic albeit keystone terminology utilized in scripting languages. Below are a few of the terms covered for the week. Int; short for integer. Float; a non-whole number, a decimal. String; an object, may contain characters. Var; […]

Game Lab interns Joshua and Jonathan back for week 2 with a confirmed concept to work with. The basic idea is to create a functional game that primarily utilizes physics due to its simplicity of implementation. Included in this post is an array of image references and a rough demonstrative model.

March 13, 2012 at 6pm UCLA Broad Art Center EDA Paolo Pedercini will present Molleindustria, a project exploring the intersection of ideology and electronic entertainment. Since 2003 Molleindustria released experimental video games dealing with unusual themes such as sex, religion, labor and ecology. Sponsored by the UCLA Game Lab Parking directions: http://dma.ucla.edu/information/directions/

Game Lab interns Jonathan and Joshua here this week, and a couple things have changed since the previous year. We’ll begin with a little new and re-introduction. Jonathan: I’m a returning Game Lab intern for round two, and this time I’m looking forward to working on something, anything that would be a step up from the […]

Join us on Thursday, where Jonathan Cecil will lead a workshop on creating meshes in Unity. 12pm, snacks and learning! The Unity Mesh Creator is a tool that allows you to easily and automatically convert 2D images into 3D models. Super Simple Super Awesome! More info on the Unity Mesh Creator can be found here: http://games.ucla.edu/resources/unity-mesh-creator/

The Game Lab hosted a playtest last Thursday (2/2) for David O’Grady’s card/die-game prototype of Foursquare (the popular children’s playground game, not the social media app). Playtesters Chris Reilly, Aliah Darke, Sean Soria and Jennifer Porst graciously volunteered their time to throw down slammies, warheads, and other trick shots in an effort to knock various classmate-avatars out of the game–and earn the most bragging rights in the third-grade class!

Submit Your Game & Spread the Word! Independent developers of interactive games from around the world are invited to submit games of all types, from tabletop to text-based, alternate reality to action-adventure, roguelike to real-time strategy, to genres not yet explored!

If you’re around the Game Lab tomorrow at noon be sure to stop by and help us play test David O’Grady’s card game and have some pizza! David O’Grady would like to playtest a card-game protoype of Foursquare (the playground game, not the social media application). To do so, he is looking for four playtesters […]

Jeffrey Scudder at Yale University recently developed a fantasy game played exclusively via e-mail. He is looking for people outside of his school community who would be interested in participating. Want to try it out? Visit a.dventur.es to play the game.

This is a brief interview from May 19, 2010 with Professor Eddo Stern, conducted by Vanessa Goh, a UCLA student. Eddo Stern is a professor of Design | Media Arts at UCLA who specializes in gaming and is the director of the UCLA Game Lab. * * * * * What first inspired you to […]

Hey, This is the intern duo Justin and Jonathan here for one last blog post. As you may or may not remember or know, we are seniors hailing from your friendly neighborhood UCLA Community Schools, built upon what used to be the Ambassador Hotel in Koreatown, Los Angeles. We are here for a recap of […]

Hey everyone, this is Jonathan and I’m going to go over the events that took place in the Unity Workshop. I had also participated in the workshop, although it was unfortunate that Justin was unable to attend the event. My version of the Angry Turds 3 template can be found at the end of the post as an […]

CALL FOR ENTRIES: LGRU Networked Graphics DEMOPARTY & CONTEST call for original visual browser-based artworks that make creative use of canvas / WebGL / HTML5 geekery! This Saturday WORM is hosting the ‘LGRU Networked Graphics DEMOPARTY’, an event in the context of the ‘Libre Graphics Research Unit’; a traveling lab where new ideas for creative […]

For those who are interested in the Unity Workshop tomorrow, Peter Lu will be leading the Unity Workshop from 12-5 PM, and within those hours participants can expect to create their own game similar to the iPhone applications. For example, Lu’s ‘Angry Turds 3’ test project is a 3D descendent of the popular Angry Birds […]

Friday, December 9, 5:30pm – ? Broad 4230 Get a crash course in Game Maker, a simple game design engine perfect for beginners yet able to produce more complex games as well. Make a game without writing a line of code. Led by Mark Essen.

The GameLab of the Institute for Postdigitale Narrative of the University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe invites you to: Mary Flanagan, media artist and game studies scholar, is holding a talk on November 30th, 8:00 pm at the University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe (Germany). Subject of her talk: “Playful Systems” The talk will be […]

Hey everybody, remember our fancy arcade cabinet from the first annual game carnival? We were running Mark Essen’s The Thrill of Combat, Peter Lu’s Roulette, and a few other games. This year we’ve decided to update the cabinet with some new features. We installed fans in the front and back compartments of the cabinet and […]

Friday, December 2, 12pm-5pm Broad 4230 Get a crash course in Unity, the popular game design engine! Designed for those with OR without experience – come build your skills from the ground up, or tackle more difficult problems and meet other designers. Or even make a completely new game in five hours! Led by Peter […]

Earlier today, interns Jonathan and Justin interviewed Game Lab members Peter Lu and Mark Essen. Below are the questions and answers of the interview.

Burn & Turn by Robot Bear is officially released. Do check out our intern’s thorough review of the game http://blog.games.ucla.edu/?p=560 Burn & Turn is an arcade action game that is a the classic knight in shining armor saving damsel in distress turned on its head. In Burn & Turn you play the dragon and capture the […]

UPDATE (11.16.11) Messoff’s Dog Fights game expanded to a multiplayer game so now it you can have dog fights between you and your friends, so as long as you can hook up (an) additional keyboard(s) to your computer.  The game seems to run faster and smoother. Jonathan and myself spent a good twenty minutes blowing […]

NONDESCRIPT SWORD-FIGHTING GAME Recommended Number of Players: 4+ Design by Jonathan H. Bae A work in progress…   Table of Contents 1. Abstract 2. The Grid 3. Players and Spectators (NYI) 4. Game Objectives and Modes I. Deathmatch II. Capture the Flag III. Command and Conquer 5. Game Mechanics (WIP) I. Rounds IA. Preparation Phase […]

STOPPHONE (Not final name) By Justin Rabanales   Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Materials III. How to Play/Rules IV. Points V. What are points for?   1. Introduction In this game of Stoplight and Telephone, One can use their drawing, communication and charade skills to try to deliver a given message to their team mates. […]

Hey everyone, this is the intern-duo from UCLA Community Schools once again and for this week, we have been asked to come up with a simple concept of a game and to expand on that idea. One of the games is a mix of Stoplight and telephone and the other involves the use of ‘sticks’ […]

Hello, this is Justin Rabanales and Jonathan Bae and we are interns at the UCLA Game Lab. We both come from the UCLA Community Schools located at the RFK ambassador site and have been interested in the Game Lab due to our love for games. The both of us have been leading a gaming career […]

Please join Howard Marks, well known entrepreneur, investor and visionary at an exclusive event at Melnitz Hall 1422 on October 4th at 6:15P. Howard was the co-founder of Activision, founder of Acclaim Games and most recently Gamzee. (Recent interview about Gamzee: http://www.socaltech.com/interview_with_howard_marks_gamzee/s-0036630.html) He will be talking about his new rapid incubator built to help UCLA […]

Adam Rafinski from Game Lab Karlsruhe and ZKM will be giving a talk and showing work from Germany TOMORROW – Tuesday September 27, 2011 at  5:00pm @ UCLA Game Lab on the 3rd floor The GameLab Karlsruhe is a label for media art dealing with the medium of digital games and contemporary play culture. Based at the Institut for […]

Eddo Stern presents “Wizard Takes All” a game/theater/rockshow commissioned by the Aurora Picture Show for the Media Archeology Festival IN HOUSTON TEXAS (with live game soundtrax by Eric “The Apprentice” Parren “) Saturday September 17, 8-10PM AT The Orange Show for Visionary Art, 2402 Munger Street, Houston, TX http://aurorapictureshow.org/calendar.asp?pageid=83&calid=680  

Each June and July, the D|MA Summer Institute brings high school students to the UCLA campus to take classes in a variety of design-related fields. The Institute’s game design course is sponsored by the Game Lab and taught by Game Lab members. In the span of one short week, students discuss good game design principles, […]

Rob Manual has written a short article on Indiecade’s game jam that happened a few weeks back. Note the photos of game lab member Peter Lu (choking down on some Gamer Grub no less) as well as David Leonard in the included photographs. Several interesting projects including Miikl made by members of the game lab […]

Check out this video of the games made by the high school students in the second week of the DMA Summer Institute’s Game Design class, sponsored by the Game Lab. The same as last week, in only one week students both learned the Unity engine and created their games. Did you miss the games from […]

Check out this video of the games made by the high school students in the D|MA Summer Institute’s Game Design class, sponsored by the Game Lab. Students learned the Unity engine then designed and produced these games all in the span of one short week. Check back later for the games produced in Week B.

This dance group decided to implement classical sorting algorithms through Hungarian Folk Dance (incredibly inefficient and their particular implementation only has 8 bytes of memory but entertaining nonetheless) for your general edification. They’ve implemented classics like merge-sort, quick-sort and shell sort (a turtle free version of the favourite bubble sort). Check them out here. Of […]

  Fantasic Arcade games festival taking place in Austin this summer September 22-29 is accepting submissions – submit your game here! Fantastic Arcade is looking specifically for games that will fit in to the larger context of the FantasticFest matrix of Genres – sci-fi, fantasy, heist, spy, western, horror, and monster !! Link to arcade page and […]

Eddo Stern will be speaking tomorrow at the TEDxUCLA conference. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where […]

On March 3, our artist in residence spoke about his work and the work of his collective. You can watch video of his talk here.

(This article was originally written for www.HardyDev.com in November 2009 and has been edited for this version. The game in the article, Boryokudan Rue, has since been renamed to Gemini Rue, Visit www.geminirue.com.) There are few things more enlightening about what is really wrong with a game than play-testing, and if you’re lucky, physical play-testing […]

See our first reel of UCLA game work! And don’t forget about the Intermural Game Carnival on May 19th at UCLA! Featured work (click for more information): Tube Monkey (Monica Harvancik, Peter Lu, Max Chang) Battle (David Elliott) Pipedreamz (Mark Essen) Blinky-Chanty Box (Richard Caceres, Madeline Gallagher) Steampunk Hangman (Adeline Ducker) Material Girl (Abraham Roh, […]

Come one, come all, to the first annual Intermural Game Carnival! Presented by the UCLA Game Lab, this year’s event showcases student game projects from several southern California schools – UCLA, USC, and UCI – with plans to expand in coming years. A night of fun, food, games, and art, this event is a great […]

Jonatan Söderström, an award-winning game designer better known as Cactus of cactusquid.com, is known for his frenetic working style – he tends to work very intensely on one project for a relatively short time before moving on to the next. His method usually results in short and very unpredictable games, combining throwback 8-bit style and […]

Scott Stoddard is a game designer with several Flash titles to his name, but he was propelled to popularity with his Robot Unicorn Attack, which boasts an incredible number of plays and a devoted fan community. Before his lecture and workshop at UCLA on February 17 and 18, Scott tells us about Robot Unicorn‘s development […]

When drawing your first walking animation, it’s easy to be intimidated by the frequent use of Eadweard Muybridge’s photo montages in many animation books. Getting a believable looking walking animation for a game character is pretty simple though, especially at low resolution. Mario’s walk cycle from the original Super Mario Bros., for example, was only […]

Did you miss Scott Stoddard’s lecture on February 17 about his use of flow theory in the development of his incredibly popular game, Robot Unicorn Attack? Never fear: you can watch the video of his presentation here.

The IGF award nominee Gemini Rue has finally been published by Wadjet Eye Games and is available for purchase. Azriel Odin, ex-assassin, arrives on the rain-drenched planet of Barracus to find someone. When things go horribly wrong, he can only seek help from the very criminals he used to work for. Meanwhile, across the galaxy, […]

Game Lab artist-in-residence Mark Essen’s game Nidhogg, nominated for several awards at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, won this year’s Nuovo Award, given for “abstract, short-form, and unconventional game development.” See more of Mark’s work here.

  http://www.indiecade.com/index.php/submissions/index_2011/   //IndieCade 2011 Submissions Now Open IndieCade was established to create vibrant festivals and showcases dedicated to independent games and open to the public. It is our goal to showcase exciting and innovative new work, host productive networking environments, hold important discussions, and have a lot of fun. IndieCade invites independent game artists […]

Since Walter’s lecture where he talked about the Wi-Fi hacking workshops that he runs in Europe, we had a huge demand for one here. We’re real excited to announce that Walter will be running his notorious Why-Fi workshop before he leaves his residency here. Workshop is TOMORROW, get more info here.

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for agile software development. Clinton Keith combines his experience as both video game developer and Agile practitioner to apply Scrum philosophy to the unique challenges of video game development. Blizzard, Lucas Arts, Apple, and EA, are just some of his myriad well known clients. From Wikipedia: Scrum is a […]

Walter Langelaar is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Rotterdam and Berlin. Currently working in the field of post-interactive sculpture, he deploys dedicated machines into a variety of gallery, festival and party circuits. His working interested include open source game engines, bot AI and neural networks, and “strange loops” through virtual and physical […]

Nidhogg, a game by Game Lab artist-in-residence Mark Essen, has been nominated for the Excellence in Design, Nuovo, and Grand Prize awards at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Are you going to be in San Francisco for the conference? Be sure to make it to the Nidhogg tournament and afterparty on March 2.

Come help us kick off our game movie series with Double Dragon, the under-appreciated 1994 film adaptation of the classic game. Snacks! Fun! Roundhouse kicks! Monday, February 28, 5 PM Broad Art Center – EDA Free!

The Game Lab lecture and workshop with Scott Stoddard were featured in the Daily Bruin. Check out the full story.

Visit the Game Lab site to read an interview with Cactus, prolific designer of games dabbling in the bizarre, the absurd, the experimental, the amazing.

Tonight at 6 is Coordinate Quest, a game by Tom Sennet whom you might remember as the quirky developer behind games like Tom Sennet, Procrastinator and the perhaps slightly more interesting but no less ridiculous RunMan: Race Around the World. The goal is to assemble a team and coordinate together to find all the MACGUFFIN […]

After two days, Global Game Jam is over! Some guys you might recognize organized “So Many Rooms” as part of the Global Game Jam. The premise is to implement their flash api (templates interfacing this api with flashpunk and flixel were also provided) and create a one room game. When the game ends, it automatically […]

Wiki calls for papers is a searchable directory of open calls for paper. There’s a fairly large “Game” category on the site as well so if you have a paper on games you want to submit, mosey on over to see if one of the calls fits your paper. http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/call?conference=games

Cube 3 is a mobile puzzle game made as a collaboration by several members of the Game Lab. Cube 3 is a competitive puzzle game reminiscent of tic-tac-toe. The game is played on a 3×3 cube and the winning conditions of the game are the same as tic tac toe.  The trick is that while […]

On Tuesday, November 30, the Game Lab is partnering with the International Game Developers Association to host a lecture by Mark Cerny. Mark Cerny is an important figure in the American video game industry, having worked on classic titles like Marble Madness and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and now owning Cerny Games and working as […]

On November 12-14, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is holding a symposium entitled “Reimagining the Archive: Remapping and Remixing Traditional Modes in the Digital Era.” We’re especially interested in the panel “Saving the Game: New Approaches to Preserving Videogame Culture.” This panel includes scholars from Stanford, UT Austin, the University of Arizona, and Arizona […]

Assuming you did not just come from the Game Lab site, CLICK HERE to check it out. Coinciding with Indiecade, we are happy to announce that the UCLA Game Lab site as well as the blog are now officially public.  We’re working hard on producing and adding content on the main site and keeping this […]

This weekend LOVE by Eskil Steenberg is free to download and play. We’re very excited to give this game a try.  LOVE is the devoted work of one person, and in this MMO the motive is to collaborate with other players against a common enemy. The game has a vast manipulatable landscape to build structures […]

Every year, the UCLA department of Design|Media Arts hosts several one week summer camp sessions – in the fields of graphic design, web, video, and of course, gaming – for older high school students. In past years, gaming has been taught by David Elliot, our current Game Lab manager, but this year gaming is being […]

This is a brief interview with professor Eddo Stern, conducted by Vanessa Goh, a UCLA student. Eddo Stern is a professor of Design|Media Arts at UCLA who specializes in gaming and is the director of the new UCLA Game Lab.