The recent release of Nicholas Werner's Potentior sparked an interesting debate around the very notion of machinima. Point your browsers to the Internet Archive to read the ongoing discussion (Thanks, Henry).

Here's a passage:

Doug Wilson of the How They Got Game group is speaking today at the "Thinking Through New Media" graduate student conference at Duke.

UC Berkeley's Center for New Media is organizing a conference about Serious Games. Participants will help define stakes in serious games, share serious game design advice, and develop playtests for learning, all in one day: June 6 2006, aka 060606.

Here's the Call for Partecipation:

Nick Werner's new machinima piece, "Potentior," is now the featured pick at the Machinima Archive.

Nicholas Werner's machinima, Potentior, will be officially screened on Wednesday, May 24, 8:00 pm, in Roble Parlor, Stanford University.

Please excuse the shameless self promotion, but in case you're interested, I will be talking about the aesthetics of FPS this Friday between 9:00 am and 11:00 am in the Wallenberg Hall, 4th floor, as part of the critical media studies ongoing workshop.

The title of my presentation is "From GunPlay to GunPorn. A televisual history of FPS". It will last about 20 minutes and it will be followed by a brief conversation. Key words: game studies, film studies, cultural studies.

When Product Placement meets Machinima. Activision and Chrysler have announced the winners of the The Virtual Film Festival competition at E3.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, will give a talk @ Stanford University on May 17 2006

...and you wanted to dig into game culture in 2006? Where would you start? That for instance MMORPGs are a strong sign of our times is becoming clearer day by day yet we may leave future archeologists no soil do dig in. That is at least until now...

Tonight Rooster Teeth, the makers of Red vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicls and The Strangerhood, will have a special showing of their work, followed by Q&A with some cast members, tonight. This will take place at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto, starting at 6.45pm.

You can read a full description of the event, which has the endearing title, "Cock Byte: Masters of Machinima." At least you now know where the name Rooster Teeth came from.