Jon Orwant's Ph.D. thesis is quite interesting to skimmed through: EGGG: The Extensible Graphical Game Generator:

This dissertation is part of an ongoing project called EGGG, the Extensible Graphical Game Generator. As its name suggests, EGGG is a system that creates computer games, and the thesis behind the dissertation is that there exist sufficient commonalities between games that such a software system can be constructed. In plain English, the thesis is that games are really a lot more alike than most people imagine, and that these similarities can be used to create a generic game engine: you tell it the rules of your game, and the engine renders it into an actual computer game that everyone can play

Why do I blog this?Even though the game rendering looks quite old for today's bleeding edge computer graphics, there are lots of relevant questions raised in this document. I read some party yesterday after a brief discussion about open source game design (craftware) with some folks. Besides, it's always nice to see what people in companies did/do (Orwant is Director of Research, France Telecom R&D Boston).

Moreover, I found in the Geowanking mailing list that he is also working on location-based projects for France Telecom:

1. I work on location-enabled services for France Telecom, at a new [2003] research lab in Boston. 2. My team has been playing with GPS-enabled Nextel/Motorola phones; we're recording our locations and analyzing the streams -- creating visualizations of motion, identifying patterns, and predicting where people are going to go next [saw this jamie/a> or mauro ?]. 3. I have a daughter whose location has been recorded every two seconds since birth, using a phone clad in drool-proof plastic. Since she's only two weeks old, she doesn't yet have the motor coordination to toss it out the window, much less comprehend the grim Orwellian nature of her early childhood.