5 February 2001: Cross-Cultural Perspective

Announcements

* Reading for Thursday.

- Livin Large manual (see video for demo of game).

---- What is a person? (chapters 2 & 3)

---- What is happiness (chapter 4) -- Sims' free will and the "Happyscape."

---- What is a relationship? (chapter 5)

- "World According to Will" and "Simply Divine."

- "Semiotics of Sim City"

Guest -- Luc Barthelet

Luc Barthelet
Chief Technical Officer, Maxis/Electronic Arts & General Manager, Maxis Studios

Background in multimedia and programming.

. He has an engineering degree in Mechanics and Electricity from E.S.T.P in Paris, where he studied while developing his first commercial software. Luc's software startup was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1988, and he has worked for EA ever since, first leading the development of Paint products, then the internal development of games as CTO and then managing the Entertainment Studio in San Mateo. Luc Barthelet became General Manager of Maxis when Electronic Arts acquired the successful publisher of SimCity in July 1997, where he is in charge of some of the most historically important games in the industry, like SimCity and The Sims. He is, I suspect, an avid player, as well: You can find Luc almost everyday in the chat rooms in the SimCity communities, and I noticed his name in the credits for Red Alert 2.

Note that I have linked to demonstration and talk about The Sims by Luc, Xerox PARC, 1999.

Note that we talk about Sims on Thursday. Luc will take questions on that?