Annual MIT Mystery Hunt
Jennifer Braun
Fri Jan 16, Sat Jan 17, Sun Jan 18, 12pm-??:00am, Lobby 7
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Join us for the 2009 Mystery Hunt, the annual MIT puzzle and sleep-deprivation competition. Get together with friends to solve puzzles that will lead you to a coin hidden somewhere on campus. The hunt starts Friday at noon and ends when the coin is found, some days later.
Please sign up at the website. Lone hunters looking for a team can sign up as unattached hunters. New hunters always welcome. It is strongly encouraged that teams register for hunt by December 17th but we will happily accept submissions after this date.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/
Contact: Jennifer Braun, puzzle@mit.edu
Sponsor: Mystery Hunt
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Bridge Tournament
Richard Stanley, Tom Leighton
Fri Jan 30, 12-06:00pm, 2-290
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
The Mathematics Department challenges all MIT bridge players to a team-of-four tournament. Those without a full team can still come and hope to find teammates. Refreshments offered, prizes awarded. Come and have a good time.
Contact: Richard Stanley, 2-375, x3-7930, rstan@math.mit.edu
Sponsor: Mathematics
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GAMBIT: Videogame Company Tours
Philip Tan
Fri Jan 9, 12-04:00pm, NE25-LOBBY, Tour of Linden Lab
Fri Jan 16, 12-04:00pm, NE25-LOUNGE, Tour of Fable Vision
Fri Jan 23, 12-04:00pm, NE25-LOUNGE, Tour of 38 Studios
Enrollment limited: first come, first served
Repeating event. Participants welcome at any session
GAMBIT, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. Philip Tan,the executive director of US operations for GAMBIT will be leading tours of local video game companies to help you understand the day to day goings on of the rapidly growing video game industry.
Contact: Philip Tan, NE25-381, (617) 324-9129, philip@MIT.EDU
Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies
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Integration Bee
Todd Kemp
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
See individual session descriptions below.
Contact: Todd Kemp, 2-175, x3-4384, tkemp@math.mit.edu
Sponsor: Mathematics
Integration Bee Qualifying Testing
Todd Kemp
Stop by at any point during the session, for a quick test of your single variable integration skills. Top scorers qualify for the Integration Bee. No knowledge beyond 18.01 necessary.
Fri Jan 23, 01-03:00pm, 4-163
Integration Bee
Todd Kemp
No enrollment limit. No advance sign up (but contestants must qualify, see Friday, Jan. 23rd). Single session event. Come watch your fellow students match wits and single variable integration skills for prizes and the title of "Grand Integrator."
Wed Jan 28, 07-09:00pm, 54-100
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Intro to Shogi (Japanese Chess)
Shinya Umeno
Fri Jan 23, 06-07:00pm, 1-150
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
This is an introductory class to Shogi (Japanese Chess). Shogi is similar to chess, but has additional twists. For example, when a piece is captured, it becomes a piece for the capturing side, and can be dropped back onto the board! We will go over the basic rules, do some demos, and you will be able to play a game of your own at the end of the session. The rule is very simple. Bring your friends along and join us playing this fun game!
Web: http://web.mit.edu/~jam/www/
Contact: Shinya Umeno, nihonjinkai-request@mit.edu
Sponsor: Japanese Association of MIT
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Introduction to Contract Bridge
Gloria Tsoi, Brian Duran
Mon, Thu, Jan 5, 8, 12, 15, 22, 26, 29, 07-09:30pm, 4-149
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants requested to attend all sessions (non-series)
Come and discover the fun and intellectual challenge associated with contract bridge! In this course, we explore the fundamentals of the game, including bidding, declarer play, and defense. The lessons are based on The Club Series by Audrey Grant, as published by the American Contract Bridge League.
Each session will consist of a lecture, several examples, and supervised play. By the end of this eight-session course, the student will have learned enough to play bridge socially, and start exploring the exciting world of duplicate bridge. There will also be an individual tournament at the end of the course, with prizes for the winners.
Please bring $10 for a book deposit on the first day of class. We will return your $10 at the end of IAP and you get to keep the book.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/mitdlbc/www/index.html#IAPBridge
Contact: Gloria Tsoi, iapbridge@mit.edu
Sponsor: Mathematics
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Learn to play Diplomacy
Peter McNamara
Thu Jan 29, 06:30-10:30pm, 2-131
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
This is a beginner-friendly introduction to the game of Diplomacy - a seven player strategic game where negotiation and skill guide the outcome of the game through a unique mechanism of simultaneous movement devoid of the random chance of dice or cards. We will teach the rules of the game, and then run a short game for you to play in.
All skill/experience levels are welcome.
For those intending to come, a short email indicating intention would be nice to get some indication of numbers, but is by no means a prerequisite for attendance.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/pjmcn/www/diplomacy.html
Contact: Peter McNamara, 2-314, x4-1459, pjmcn@mit.edu
Sponsor: Peter J McNamara, 550 MEMORIAL DR APT 5E-4, 617 225-1150, pjmcn@mit.edu
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Lecture: Professor Chris Swain: The Future of Games
Doris Rusch
Tue Jan 27, 07-09:00pm, 6-120
Enrollment limited: first come, first served
Single session event
This talk will focus on the current trends in digital games - what is happening now and why - and points toward the future of the medium. The talk will include perspective on the influence of academic programs on the medium as well as perspective from an industry point of view. Trends are grounded in business and technical realities and supported with both social science research and market research. The always-on culture of the
internet, mobile phones, and connected consoles continues to gain prominence in today's world. As that happens more and more applications rely on game structures to entertain
us, inform us, strengthen our communities, organize us around social causes, and make us more productive.
Contact: Doris Rusch, NE25-379, x8-8532, dcrusch@MIT.EDU
Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies
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Mahjong Tournament
Ana Chen
Sun Feb 1, 07-11:00pm, McCormick Dining
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Join us for ATS's annual mahjong tournament, our first IAP event of the year! The teaching session starts at 7, and the tournament starts at 8. We'll have prizes for first, second, third, fourth places (gift certificates from Boston Tea Stop, JP Licks, Galleria, Boston Common Loew's) and best newbie (a mahjong set)!
Contact: Ana Chen, agchen@mit.edu
Sponsor: Association of Taiwanese Students
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Making Deep Games: An inspirational workshop about harnessing the power of metaphors for experience design
Doris Rusch, Joshua Diaz
Thu Jan 8, 10am-06:00pm, NE25-373
Enrollment limited: first come, first served
Single session event
In this workshop, attendees will learn how to become more conscious about the mechanisms of complex abstract concepts, to pin down their evasive elements, to translate them into concrete rule sets and to make them tangible via procedural metaphors. This workshop aims at demystifying complex abstract ideas such as HONOR, REGRET, LOYALTY or JUSTICE by teaching a methodology to analyse and dissect them. It is a step-by-step tutorial to foster awareness, reflection, inspiration and a systematic approach to the purposeful design of deep games.
Contact: Doris Rusch, NE25-383, (617) 258-8532, dcrusch@MIT.EDU
Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies
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Math Contest in Modeling Training Session
M. Bazant
Tue Jan 20, 01-02:30pm, 2-143
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Training and team selection for the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling, Feb 5-9, 2009. http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/
Teams of up to three students will work together to solve a real-world problem in applied mathematics. For more information, contact Prof. Bazant (bazant@mit.edu).
Web: http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm
Contact: M. Bazant, 66-552, x8-7039, bazant@mit.edu
Sponsor: Mathematics
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Math and Games
Melissa Gymrek
Fri Jan 23, 07-09:00pm, 24-619
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Come challenge your friends in popular games and then learn the math behind them. We'll have card games, computer games, board games, and some interesting math toys.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/esg
Contact: Melissa Gymrek, 24-612, mgymrek@mit.edu
Sponsor: Experimental Study Group
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Set Game Theory
Tanya Khovanova
Tue Jan 20, 06-08:00pm, 2-146
Enrollment limited: advance sign up required (see contact below)
Limited to 30 participants.
Single session event
It is not set theory. It is not game theory. It is the theory of the game of set. I will teach you how to play the game, show some theory and some bonus activities.
I have only four sets of the game of set. If you have it, please, bring some extra sets of the game.
Contact: Tanya Khovanova, tanya@math.mit.edu
Sponsor: Mathematics
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The GAMBIT Video Game Adaptation Workshop
Matthew Weise, Geoffrey Long
Thu Jan 15, 09am-05:00pm, NE25-373
Enrollment limited: advance sign up required (see contact below)
Single session event
This is a single, day-long workshop run by members of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. In it participants will create a game based on movie, book, or comic title of their choosing.
The workshop will begin in the morning with a short lecture on methods of transmedia adaptation, the process by which media artifacts (such as Star Wars, Watchmen, Hamlet, etc.) are transferred from one medium to another, in this case
video games. Afterward, the group will divide into small teams, each of whom will decide upon their own media property to adapt into a video game. Final choices will be discussed among the larger group.
Contact: Matthew Weise, NE25-365, x4-9113, sajon@mit.edu
Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies
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Thebes
Thebes GMs
Fri Jan 23 thru Sun Feb 1, 12pm-12:00am
Enrollment limited: advance sign up required (see contact below)
Signup by: 14-Jan-2009
Limited to 40 participants.
Participants requested to attend all sessions (non-series)
A 10-day-long live-action role-playing game (LARP) run by the MIT Assassins' Guild and set in Ancient Egypt. In order to play, you must send an application to the GMs and get cast in a part. Contact thebes-gms@mit.edu for more information.
Contact: Thebes GMs, thebes-gms@mit.edu
Sponsor: Assassins Guild
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