Matt Webb's blog is full of great entries, but today's really struck me because it's about Animal Crossing, and because I spent much of the summer and fall of 2004 playing Animal Crossing on our Game Cube. I think I was processing the end of Game Neverending.

We don't have a TV any longer, so we don't play, and I'm quite glad about that, but it was a truly beautiful game, so cute, and Japanese. I can't describe it better than Matt, so go read his post.

Steven Spielberg, at some point in the recent past, pooh-poohed the emotional power of games, as noted on Pat Kane's site The Play Ethic. And in the comments, this from Alexander Kjerulf:

This was great. I'll never forget how, when we shut down the prototype for GNE, people logged in all over the world for what we called The End of the World -- from remote locations and time zones such as Berlin, Australia and the Philippines -- and many people cried. We were really amazed by this, and moved.

It was this quote that inspired us to call a hub in Game Neverending "Merry Gambols" and the book, Homo Ludens, was what inspired us to call the company "Ludicorp". Heather and Derek just gave us a Fetching Tag for Dos Pesos, and I'm asking them to put "Merry Gambols" on it.

Yesterday evening Stewart finally got Cal and Alina and me together for some delicious Pyrennean sheepmilk cheese from Les Amis du Fromage -- we call it "Cheese Friends" -- and a game of Puerto Rico, the latest came we bought by Rio Games, who also makes Princes of Florence. I've played a ton of games since moving to Vancouver. I played a lot of games as a kid, but I've gone through gusts of intense gameplaying followed by years of never playing a single game. I'd played a bit of Dungeons and Dragons when I was a teenager, and had inherited a few Magic decks, but the only complex board games I'd played were Cosmic Encounter, which we played a lot at college, as well as Diplomacy, which I just discovered was created in 1959 (! Is that true? How crazy! I'd thought these games were fairly new). Some other games we have are Settlers of Catan, which is a particularly good one (and we haven't played any of the game board variations yet, just the standard setup) and Quo Vadis, which had an interesting outcome in several games: the winner didn't win by his or her own merits, but instead was chosen by a "King Maker" -- another player who at the end of the game had to decide on a move that would make one or the other player win. The thing that makes these games interesting is watching the dynamics of the rule sets, their sometimes unexpected outcomes, and playing different strategies to see the outcomes.

20-some smart and interesting people were invited to Vancouver this weekend for a Nokia-sponsored symposium on the subject of Play. Some of the people I met there included Elizabeth Goodman, Pat Kane, Eric Paulos and Jessica Hammer -- and I saw many brilliant people I'd met in the past. Lots of lively discussion, dinners at excellent local restaurants, note taking, games of Set and Werewolf, and trips to Halloween parades added up to a great weekend. Similar to Digifoo, the premise was: invite a bunch of smart people with common interests, set up some tables, give them an opportunity to do presentations if they are so inclined, add some dinner and see what happens.

The invitees were nearly half women (9 women and 11 men), something of an achievement in and of itself, if you've been paying attention to who gets invited to these things. And 4 women were invited who couldn't make it, which, had they been able to attend, would have put women in the majority. Imagine that!

We launched Photostreams on Flickr today, a "stream" of all the photos you've uploaded to Flickr. The great thing about Photostreams (and everything else on Flickr) is that you can specify photo-by-photo whether it is public, or is only visible to your contacts or friends -- or just your soulmate. You can also decide whether your profile, groups and commenting are public or private. Check out mine.

If you're anything like me and can't stop playing video games once you start, don't click on this link.

There is an interview with Stewart in Mindjack about GNE, social software, and modding.

(At this moment the Mindjack server is down; it got Slashdotted and apparently Mindjack couldn't handle the traffic...)

We are happy to announce the launch of Ludicorp's latest project, Confab, an ad-hoc conversational space that was opened up for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and will be used as a demonstration for Stewart's presentation.

Confab users can build their own profiles, upload photos, carry on discussions, form groups, and make contacts. A map of the conference has been created and conference attendees and offsite guests can provide commentary and research on the presentations that are taking place, or meet in the "lobby" or "outside" the building. Confab was developed using core pieces of the engine behind Game Neverending, an online social space in the form of a slightly absurd game world. There is a FAQ with more information about its development.

The conference (and Confab) opens at 8:30 AM PST on Wednesday. Go ahead and check out Confab if you like. Please register using your real name, and if you are not a conference attendee, please be polite and stay on-topic when conference-y conversations are taking place.

It is very cool. Once again, I am impressed with what the team has been able to accomplish with its brains and hard work. Ludicorp has the rockingest team.

There is an article mentioning The Game Neverending in Discover Magazine this month, pegging it to the 1991 Mirror Worlds book in which Yale computer scientist Gelernter predicted that technological advances would enable us to create entirely virtual cities. Steve Johnson writes:

See, if I display this on my homepage:

I get $1,000 with which to buy...more blogshares. Blogshares is a 'fantasy stock market for weblogs' in which weblogs are valued by their incoming links. GNE is going to have an economy, and so I want to see how this one works.

On AIM the other day Jessamyn showed me her gang's 1000 Blank White Cards deck, The Seattle Electric Grimmeldeck -- there are some really clever ones in there, as there are a lot of clever people involved. There is a great deck online from Madison and here is the Boston deck appears to be out of order. There are a lot of links to other decks here, but if you know of any other decks out there that haven't been recognized, let me know and I will post a list. The map on the 1KBWC site hasn't been updated since at least June 1, 2002. Yes, I will scan more of our cards in (we have a pretty paltry stack right now, but we're just starting.)

Tonight we (Ben, Eric, Stewart and I) started one of our own out of a pile of defunct business cards, though we were only at it for 10 minutes. Then we played them (Eric drew this card, but managed to wiggle out of any actual rolling of frozen peas).

Out on the beach later on the four of us invented a game called Dos Hockey. First you need a Dos Pesos -- though any energetic dog < 5 lb. will do. Two people stand with their legs about three feet apart and the other two people try to chase Dos Pesos through the goalposts. Huzzah! Spiking the Dos in the end zone is not permitted.

I must confess that I like GNE too.

We launched a new site for The Game Neverending this weekend, which I designed, first site of mine to go live since my little MacPaint nostalgia piece (Man, I gotta get someone to go in there and remove those black background thingies. Throws the balance off). And I've got three more sites coming up; feels like 1999 around here. All the DHTML voodoo on both aforementioned sites is the voodoo that you, Eric Costello, do so well. Yay Eric!

(Also eavesdrop on Eric's wonderful children, who are listening to their new favorite song, Donna Summer's Hot Stuff and having the following conversation:)

The End of the World at the Game Neverending prototype occured at 12:05 AM PST, and it was an amazing event. We were teary-eyed on both coasts, and there was a tremendous amount of feeling on the part of the players. "Wow," Ben said. "That was so real." It was a remarkable feeling. Look to the Light! Find the Bardo! Of course the Bardo has already been established at the Collective Detective GNE chat. And then, a second life In The Real Game.

Thanks to all the players, and to the Team. Thank you especially to Stewart and Eric, who kicked ass, and keep kicking ass again and again. It is a privilege to work with such great developers.