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Vodafone’s receiver #17 is out and it’s another interesting issue with various great contributions. This online-only magazine is a neutral space where pioneer thinkers challenge you to discuss exciting, future-oriented aspects of communications technologies.

This receiver issue is a truly playful one. While the urge to play is a human universal, gaming cultures differ widely across different societies – that goes for the games people enjoy as well as how they enjoy them. You can play with interactive media alone or to socialise, to compete or to relax, at home or in the street. What is play and what’s in a game? Here are nine answers.

It was good to read the contribution of Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, Games in spite of themselves on Tale of Tales, the design studio they run together in Belgium and their latest game concept development The Endless Forest:

Many games that call themselves multiplayer are in fact glorified single player games. Most of the activities (gathering objects and exterminating monsters) are single player activities at their core. Sometimes the designers make the tasks so huge that practical reasons force the players to collaborate, but the tasks and the motivation remain egocentric. The common exception seems to be games in which players directly confront each other. Instead of killing monsters, they kill each other. With The Endless Forest, we try not only to offer players less aggressive activities to engage in, but also non-competitive forms of playing together.

Michael and me have been pioneering together the early days of the internet in Belgium end of ‘94, early ‘95… waw time flies! Michael still kept some traces of that period here and here; for fans, you can check out his impressive entire portfolio. Michael is a truely original and great designer and artist and his work since he met Auriea has been always amazing and inspiring, together they won the Webby Award Prize for Excellence in Online Art in 2000.

This makes me curious about how they would conceptualize a great mobile game, do check them out!