GDC? Ha! This weekend, Bard College hosted a games conference of its own, the itsy-bitsy “Games–Simulation–Conflict.” Day 1 featured the Buckminster Fuller World Game (go North America) and 8-bit artist Bit Shifter. Day 2 was more academic-like, with talks by Alex Galloway, McKenzie Wark, and Kathleen Ruiz.

Scott and I also gave presentations. As the only suckers who stuck to the topic of “conflict,” we covered “conflict in game design” and “sex as conflict in games” respectively. You can find the Powerpoint for my presentation, which looks at the lack of tension/goals in sex games and calls for more conflict as a way to raise sexiness, here. Unfortunately, the pdf doesn’t include my notes, so for the moment you’ll have to content yourself with a few suggestive phrases and a lot of nudie pictures.

In the overall, I think the even went mostly well. Personally, I’m much more used to writing than actually paying attention to the words coming out of my mouth. Also, I definitely got heckled by Eddo Stern. Ah, the world of gaming…