Printed Electronics World describes a series of printed electronic game cards from Prelonic. (source)

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface shows mind-controlled pinball. (source, via, via)

Harcos Laboratory hacks a MindFlex game to deliver electronic shocks whenever your brain activity rises too high (some bleeped out language in the video). (source, via, via)

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Here is the TED talk. Although her research is primarily with WoW and MMORPGs, applicability is general to all games. Epic win.

Jane. World Without Oil. Evoke.

Bonus: A TED video on the importance of play from 2008/9, in case you missed it:

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I’ve already taken a look at PowerMage 54, so you know how I feel about it. So the news that it’s coming to the iPhone is kinda exciting!

Ravenous Games will be developing the app using the open-source Cocos2D engine for the iPhone.

PowerMage 54 is fairly light with some good strategy, and I can see it porting nicely over to the platform.

The more board/card games ported to iPhone/Android, the more exposure the hobby gets.  That’s can’t be a bad thing.

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The South by Southwest festival of music, film, and interactive technology starts this Friday in Austin, Texas. Also in Austin, Steve Jackson Games will welcome SXSW participants in an open house Saturday from 4-9 PM to talk about games, play games, or generally shoot-the-breeze. RSVPs are not required but would be appreciated.

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Mary Couzin is the brains and muscle behind the fastest-growing and perhaps most important game convention in the United States, the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, aka CHI-TAG. There are long-established trade fairs for toys and games, such as the ones in New York or Dallas, as well as player conventions for hobby games, such as Gen-Con and Origins. What there wasn’t, until Mary came along, is an American game fair – classics, mainstream, and hobby – for families, such as the one held yearly in Essen.

Mary started out as a game designer. Through the course of marketing her own games, she met other lone designers who were reinventing the wheel in terms of finding suppliers, dealing with contracts, and trying to market their games, and whose power as individuals was rather weak. She formed Discover Games in 1997 as a cooperative project to collect the wisdom of these designers and to market the group’s games as a group. Rio Grande Games and R&R Games are sample companies that got their start through Discover Games.

Mary drew her inspiration for CHI-TAG from Essen, which she attended in 2000. She spent a few years trying to build up support in the gaming community. Early support came from Rio Grande Games, R&R Games, and Out of the Box Publishing (a Chicago-based company), who formed the core of her first event in 2003.

The 2009 fair had 11,000 visitors, support from major game industry players such as Hasbro, celebrity guests such as Daryl Hannah (pimping her line of board games), and important people you’ve never heard of, such as Reuben Klamer, the inventor of Hasbro’s edition of The Game of Life. The fair also had sit downs with the publishers, toy and game awards, and a whole lot of family-friendly entertainment.

In person, Mary is amazingly sweet and charming. Yet beneath that sweetness and charm lies the determination to forge a national convention out of nothing that now has major entertainment players (yeah, bigger than Hasbro or Mattel) coming to her to find out how they can participate.

She has also founded initiatives for games in education.

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

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Game board – A design patent for a game board from Alcan Global Pharmaceutical Packaging Inc. Sheesh, leave it to a pharmaceutical company to think it needs to patent a game board.

Game of chance and system and method for playing games of chance – Talks about making Bingo to be more like Keno, with multiple winners and different levels of playing, but sounds more like an alternative method of drawing a lottery sweepstakes. By GameLogic.

Method and apparatus for conducting a game of chance – Also by GameLogic, and also about lotteries. Buy a ticket and see if you’ve won online.

21 to the river – By Hands Down Gaming. Casinos and players are resistant to new games, so they offer a game of Blackjack, where your bust card is then used in a game of poker.

Method of conducting a wagering game – A continuation of an abandoned 2003 patent. The patent lists lots of problems with Texas Hold’em (too hard for dealers to recognize the winning hands, too many betting opportunities, etc.) and proposes Texas Hold’em with one less card.

Closable-type game board box for strategic word pattern engagement – The game “Word Battle” by Milner Benedict. It’s a Battleship like word game, of which he cites precedences, but his game is for multiple players.

Game and the method of playing the game – A game called Urban Excursion, by Russell B. Williams. More information here.

Love the vague and uninformed description of prior art:

Various games which relate to learning experiences particularly associated with travel and adapted for educational purposes are well known. By having participants engage in the playing of such games, information regarding a specific geographical area, the particular sights or points of interest located therein, culture and the like can be taught in a pleasureful, interactive and entertaining manner. The prior art known to Applicant in this area includes a game wherein players move along alternate routes and using alternate modes of transportation between cities within the continental United States, a game which simulates the flow of traffic through a community, a game which simulates the movements of trucks across the United States, a game which teaches the players about the world’s geography or geography of a specific region of the world, and the like. Typically such games involve a board game apparatus wherein players move along routes defined on the board and are required to avoid hazards, obey traffic signs and rules, are required to learn about a specific location and then answer questions about the location and the like.

None of the prior art known to Applicant provides a game which may be interactively engaged in by a plurality of players directly within a pre-selected geographic area such as a metropolitan area, by utilizing a board which is representative of a predetermined area, or by utilization of computer-generated graphics as may be desired.

Religious game – This game:

Poker game with dealer disqualifying hand – Dealer gets two hands, and discards the first if it exceeds a specific value.

Hard pass craps wager – A Craps variant, where you win if you roll the same doubles twice before rolling a seven.

Object, image data, image data transmission method, card, game mat, card game system, image analysis device, and image analysis method – By Sony. Looks like Eye of Judgment, and specifies reading 2D codes embedded on cards when placed onto a grid.

Set of seven chess pieces – A design patent:

Method of playing a pursuit board game – A roll-and-move game. Assignee wants to include strategy in the game, rather than produce a game simply relying on luck. So a) the object of player two is to land on player 1 before player 1 reaches the end of the race, and b) each player can decide whether to move forward or backward on each move.

Die-rolling device and game – By Mattel. A continuance of a 2005 patent, which was a continuance of a 2002 patent. A board game with a magic 8-ball device.

Card game with fixed rules – A poker game where the first “decisions” are dictated by rules. In other cases, the player may be given a specific set of advice. It appears to be some kind of simplified version of poker for new players.

Numeric guessing game – A game by Bernard Seal, citing Wits & Wagers, Fast Figure, and Intensity as prior art. The questions are like Wits & Wagers, and players have to have the closest guess.

Method of playing a poker-type bonus – A side poker game triggered by certain events in a Texas Hold’em game.

Travel game – By Mattel. Travel games, such as Othello, in a thermos-shaped mug.

Casino-type wagering game based on card color – Essentially, using cards as roulette.

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K Mart will give you 50% off a Hasbro game if you bring in an old board game (cash for clunkers). (source, via)

Justin Hoeger in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette pimps Small World. (source)

The Galesburg Register Mail pimps Magic the Gathering. (source)

CNN pimps Farmville and Zynga’s other online board and social games. (source)

The Dorset Echo pimps Title Chase, a football management game. (source)

Wired pimps Werewolf and its popularity in Silicon Valley. (source)

Evil Mad Scientist takes the game Blip and physically dissects the innards to see what makes it tick. It was a mechanical marvel. (source)

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Over at the Research and Interaction Lab at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Tangible Interactions is a series of projects on augmented reality, many of which are board games crossed with electronics such as mobile phones.

Games include The Food Fighters, Beat It (use your body to make music), and Kribopolis (find the hidden clues in the city to track down the criminal, the video takes about a minute before it becomes interesting). You can follow the links to the blogs of all the participants.

The next clip, while not game related, is Boing-Boing worthy:

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At Toy Fair, Hidden City Entertainment was previewing a new Bella Sara format for specialty stores. This version of the product would include larger size cards in clear blister packs with two (visible) horse miniatures.

Disclosure: The company gave me one miniature in a sealed pack, which my daughter quickly confiscated.

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One of the most interesting products that I saw at Toy Fair was Flipoutz, a collectible/tradeable/wearable/traceable medallion/jewelry thing. Obviously, I’m having a little difficulty coming up with a succinct name, so let me explain.

Flipoutz are 1 inch metal coins that are worn five-at-at-time in special rubber bracelets. So far, there are about 70 different coin designs with cute pictures and positive slogans aimed at tweens. But here’s the really interesting part… The coins are easily removed and are meant to be traded. Each has a unique serial number on the back. With that serial number, kids can go to the Flipoutz web site, register the coin, and then follow it as its traded around. This adds elements of social networking and exploration, and potentially allows kids to experience relationships between people from different places and backgrounds as the coins travel around.

Of course, this social networking aspect depends a lot on wide distribution. That’s still being worked on. The Flipoutz team is currently running a community design-a-coin contest and developing a treasure hunt game to emphasize the combination of physical trading and virtual networking.

Disclosure: I was so excited by the concept that I registered a few related internet domain names. Maybe a special Flipoutz blog is in the works.

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