By the way, project Ebi has a name now and it is PLAY Pilots. The site is still cloaked but the process blog – where you can find many wonderful weeknotes by FourceLabs and Zesbaans as well as ourselves – is public. We’re also on Twitter and Facebook. Keep tabs on those channels to get early access to the BETA…

On tuesday I headed to Amsterdam for a taste of Stumptown’s coffee – something Alper had been bugging me about for ages – and a trip to Pristine for some accessories for my new bike. I spent the rest of the day at Alper’s studio reviewing one of my students graduation thesis. She’s designed a point-and-click adventure game with an intersex protagonist, an attempt to critique gender conventions through gameplay. Interesting stuff.

On wednesday I continued work on Ebi with the team. It was Bernard’s last day before his vacation so we wrapped up an important part of the copy. In the afternoon I headed to the Nederlands Film Festival’s office to kick off the second pilot that is part of Ebi, which will be created by the awesome crew at Zesbaans. They have posted their first weeknote over at the project blog.

Thursday, I met up with a few of my students. Some still require help, but a few others are at the point that they looked apologetic when I asked when they would like to meet again. They’re in the final phase of their work, and I’ve done what I can. We’ll see each other at the finals, which will be in august.

A first for Hubbub, I had a chat with an possible intern on thursday too. I’m still not sure if we’ve reached the point where we can offer a good environment for interns (I take the educational responsibility we would have quite serious) so we’ll have to see if we take one on board.

On friday, I was back at the soon-to-be new Dutch Game Garden on the Neude square – we’re moving next week – to work with the Ebi team. Alper was mostly hacking away at sign-in stuff for Twitter and also the new version of the game engine. Simon made good progress with the designs for the game interface and I was surfing for fun customizable gadget to hand out to our players during the first festival we’ll appear at; Stekker Fest 2010. Would you fancy an eighties style suncap?

Also, a few of our FourceLabs friends dropped by to discuss technical matters dealing with how we’d integrate the web game we’re building with the physical one they’re doing for Stekker Fest. They also showed some awesome mockups of the whole setup made with LEGO. They’ve also been playing around with high speed cameras, yielding awesome footage. I’m sure they’ll share more details in their next post.

In between writing this, me and Bernard are playing with the prototype, as Alper is hacking away at it. Meanwhile Simon (back from a vacation to Austria, his fatherland) is back in Rotterdam polishing some of the new screens we’ve identified after settling on a ruleset.

Aside from this I’ve spent some time again at the HKU talking to students. This included a live demo of a game a few of them are working on that involves brain control. They’ve gotten their hands on an Emotiv BCI and are figuring out ways to make mastering thought patterns as a player actually doable. Students have all the fun these days.

This week has been mainly about project Ebi. We kicked off a second iteration, after wrapping up basic functionality in iteration 0, this one is about adding the game specific stuff. Most of our energies so far have gone into designing a good ruleset. We had a breakthrough on wednesday and reconvened today to formalize those ideas, and fill in the blanks. We now have enough material to push forward on design, copy and engineering. It’s that stage of that project where the shape of things starts to become clear and you can’t wait for it to materialize so that you can touch it, use it, play with it.

In a short while I’ll be strolling through the centre of Utrecht to the current and soon to be old Dutch Game Garden, for a farewell party. We’ve had plenty of good times in Drieharingstraat 6, let’s give the old building one more bash.

The former has come to an end with the delivery of a video sketch yesterday. Leading up to that on monday we tested several paper prototypes of games for people and pigs with farmers. The response we got from them was encouraging. Having processed this feedback we settled on one concept that would be developed further into a video sketch. After this we developed a scenario, sketched a rough storyboard and divided up tasks. I hacked together a software prototype of one half of the thing, which is aimed at people (using Processing and the LiveView screencaster) while Irene built a to scale physical model of the installation for pigs. I can’t share the video just yet but I’m sure it won’t be long before I can.

Ebi’s first iteration has come to a close today and I am happy to see we have working software with pretty pictures and nice words, all thanks to the hard work of the team (hello, Alper, Bernard and Simon). I was mostly making sure these guys could do their jobs, as well as organizing work that will need to be done by others in future. Next week, after iteration two, I think we will have a thing we can show you. Can’t wait for that.

And now, it’s time to close this damn laptop and prepare for the afternoon’s game. I’m not a big fan of football but Netherlands – Brazil is not to be missed.

These past two weeks I have been pushing to get a new project, codenamed Ebi, off the ground. It is the next step in my involvement with the PLAY project in Utrecht. I’ve put together a team consisting of Alper, Bernard and Simon to build a game that will tie together several other playful things that will take place over the coming months at several Utrecht events. We’ve had our kick-off and are now in the midst of the first sprint, with delivery of a first rough system by the end of next week. Copy is being written, software is being developed and designs are being made. It’s a pleasure to see this ad-hoc team coming together so fast and getting down to business. That takes real skill, in addition to the craftsmanship each brings to the table.

Other than that, project Buta (another codename) started this week, which is a research thing at the new Design for Playful Impact group at the HKU. We’ve been doing field research and have been sketching and prototyping initial ideas. The subject matter is kind of controversial, so I can’t share too much about it, other than that it involves pigs. Yes, pigs.

In between, I dropped by the presentation of the U-turm project, a student project where I acted as advisor on. The demo worked nicely. With some additional work on the game design I am sure it will be a hit in Dortmund. I also attended Layar’s one-year anniversary event, where several things were unveiled that I had some part in, such as the all-new floaticons.

Looking ahead, I’ll be busy with Ebi for the next month or two and will also have to take some time to move into a new studio, that I will be sharing with FourceLabs in the new Dutch Game Garden on the Neude. Ace location, nice space, can’t wait for that to happen.