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spw_twiki.gif fnc_spw.jpg   "If computing technology is woven into the fabric of everyday life whilst games are turning pervasive, then almost all of our everyday experiences in space-time could become intrinsically motivating, right?"

Steffen P. Walz, M.A. Social Anthropology, Rhetoric




Steffen P. Walz (M.A.) earned his M.A. degree in social anthropology, rhetoric, and political science at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is a fellow of the ACTlab at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Within the ETH Zurich's CAAD group, he is employed as a research associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) and works on his Ph.D. entitled "Playcemaking: A Game Design Framework for Ubicomp Spaces".
Walz is a co-founder of the B.A. Game Design study program at the University for Applied Sciences Zurich, School for Art and Design (HGKZ), and a price winner of the International Bauhaus Award 2002 for his pioneering serious pervasive game "M.A.D. Countdown".
He lectures about and publishes on topics such as serious & pervasive game design, the relationship of space-time leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
  & games, convergent entertainment, the history of entertainment architecture, media rhetoric, as well as surveillance & games.
Since 2000, his firm playbe has been consulting for design agencies (e.g. Pixelpark, 21Torr), Fortune 500 enterprises, and institutions concerning convergent and cross media entertainment concepts, and business endeavours. With his other company, playbe records, Walz has been experimenting with alternative music distribution games, landing a massive Internet hit in Germany in the summer of 2005.
Before his entry into the IT realm, Walz used to serve as a TV format developer, producer, and a satire journalist for major TV stations such as PRO7, arte, and RBB (then: ORB).

Contact
ETH Zurich, Faculty of Architecture (D-ARCH)
Chair for Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD)
ETH Hoenggerberg, HIL E15.1, CH-8093 Zurich
phone: +41 44 633 - 4025 | fax: - 1050
email: walz_at_arch.ethz.ch

Complete overview of design works
playbe's playce (as in play-meets-place)

Detailed CV
Last updated 02/21/07, PDF


TEACHING | PROJECTS | PUBLICATIONS | PRESENTATIONS | ORGANIZATION | EXHIBITIONS | HONORS | LINKS

Research foci

My Ph.D. thesis supervisors are Prof. Dr. Ludger Hovestadt from the ETH Zurich and Prof. Dr. Drew Davidson, director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. My research is partially funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) MICS - Mobile Information & Communication Systems.


Current and latest teaching


Assorted projects


Publications

Books

2007

Borries, Friedrich von, Walz, Steffen P. and Matthias Böttger (eds.) (2007): Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Basel / Boston / Berlin: Birkhäuser Publishing.

Book chapters and journals

2007

Walz, Steffen P. (2007): „Pervasive Persuasive Play: Rhetorical Game Design for the Ubicomp World.“ In: Fogg, BJ and Dean Eckles (ed.): Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Captology Media.

Walz, Steffen P. (2007): „Enterveillance? Surveiltainment! Imagining the game generation world.“ In: Davidson, Drew (ed.): Cross-Media Communications: An Introduction to the Creation of Integrated Media Experiences. Thompson New Media. [accepted]

Ballagas, Rafael and Steffen P. Walz (2007): „REXplorer: Using player-centered iterative design techniques for pervasive game development.“ In: Magerkurth, Carsten (ed.): Pervasive Games: Applications. Aachen, Shaker Verlag. [in press]

2006

Walz, Steffen P. and Odilo Schoch (2006): „Pervasive Game Design as an Architectural Teaching and Research Method.“ In: Gibson, David, Aldrich, Clark, and Marc Prensky (eds.): Games and Simulations in Online Learning: Research and Development Frameworks. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.

von Borries, Friedrich, Böttger, Matthias, and Steffen P. Walz (2006): „Ausweitung der Schiesszone. Computerspiele und ihr Einfluss auf die Stadtplanung.“ In: archithese. Zeitschrift und Schriftenreihe für Architektur, Issue "CAAD" / 4.2006.

2005

Walz, Steffen P. (2005): „Delightful Identification & Persuasion: Towards an Analytical and Applied Rhetoric of Digital Games." In: McAllister, Ken and Ryan Moeller (eds.): Works and Days. Capitalizing on Play: The Politics of Computer Gaming. Vol 22, Nr. 43/44. Indiana, PA: Indiana University of Pennsylvania. pp. 185-200. Available Online at http://www.playbe.com/stuff/games_rhetoric.htm

Walz, Steffen P. (2005): „Extreme Game Design: Spielrhetorische Ueberlegungen zur Methodik des Grauens.“ In: Nohr, Rolf F., Bopp, Matthias, and Britta Neitzel (Eds.): "See? I'm Real..." Multidisziplinäre Zugänge zum Computerspiel am Beispiel von 'Silent Hill'. Münster: LIT. pp. 145-156.

Walz, Steffen P. (2005): „Constituents of Hybrid Reality: Cultural Anthropological Elaborations and a Serious Game Design Experiment merging Mobility, Media, and Computing.” In: Buurman, Gerhard M. (Ed.): Total Interaction. Theory and Practice of a New Paradigm for the Design Disciplines. Basel: Birkhäuser. pp. 122-141.

2002

Walz, Steffen P. (2002): „Public Class In The State Of Mobility.” In: Gerritzen, Mieke and Geert Lovink (Eds.): Mobile Minded. Amsterdam and San Francisco: BIS / Ginkgo Press. pp. 126-127.

Walz, Steffen P. (2002): „On the Move: Challenges and Chances of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction” In: Petric, Mirko and Inga Tomic-Koludrovic (Eds.): DESIGN Education: A Dialogue across Cultures. Split: Arts Academy Press. p. 26.

2001

Walz, Steffen P. (2001): „Symbiotic Interaction a Go Go! Mobility, Interface, (Wo)Man.” In: Teknokultura 1 Vol. 1. August. Published Online by the University of Puerto Rico at http://teknokultura.rrp.upr.edu/teknosphera/simbiotic_interaction.htm

Walz, Steffen P. and Isabel Zundel (2001): „Madness & Virtuality – An Approximation.” In: Riegler, Alexander et al. (Eds.): Virtual Reality. Cognitive Foundations, Technological Issues & Philosophical Implications. Frankfurt/Main: Lang. pp. 63-74.

Schulze-Döbold, Jürgen, Wössner, Uwe, Walz, Steffen P., and Uli Lang (2001): „Volume Rendering in a Virtual Environment.” In: Fröhlich, B., Deisinger, J., Bullinger, H.-J. (Eds.): Immersive Projection Technology and Virtual Environments. Vienna and New York: Springer. Available Online at: http://www.hlrs.de/people/schulze/publications/Schulze01a.pdf

2000

Walz, Steffen P. (2000): “Symbiotic interface contingency: The reciprocal emergence of use and abuse.” In: Sudweeks, Fay and Charles Ess (Eds.): Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication. Perth: Murdoch University Press. pp. 125-144.

1998

Staudenmaier, Ellen and Steffen P. Walz (1998): „Körper, Kids und Kreativität.“ In: Bechdolf, Ute et al. (Hrsg.): Tanzlust. Empirische Untersuchungen zu Formen alltäglichen Tanzvergnügens. Tübingen: TVV Verlag.

Conference papers

2007

Walz, Steffen P. and Rafael Ballagas (2007): „Pervasive Persuasive: A Rhetorical Design Approach to a Location-Based Spell-Casting Game for Tourists." In: DiGRA 2007 - Situated Play. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of the Digital Games Research Association, Tokyo, September 24-28, 2007. pp. 489-497.

Ballagas, Rafael, Walz, Steffen P., Kratz, Sven, Fuhr, Claudia, Yu, Eugen, Tann, Martin, Borchers, Jan and Ludger Hovestadt: „REXplorer: A Mobile, Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists." In: CHI '07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, San Jose, CA, USA, 2007. ACM Press.

2006

Walz, Steffen P., Ballagas, Rafael, Borchers, Jan, Mendoza, Joel, Kratz, Sven, Wartmann, Christoph, Hameed, Bilal, and Laszlo Bardos: „Cell Spell-Casting: Designing a Locative Gesture Recognition Smartphone Game for Tourists." In: Proceedings of PerGames 2006, held in conjunction with the 4th Intl. Conference on Pervasive Computing, Dublin, 7 May 06. Springer LNCS.

Ballagas, Rafael, Walz, Steffen P., and Jan Borchers (2006): „REXplorer: A Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists as Social Software." Position paper submitted to the CHI 2006 Workshop on Mobile Social Software, Montréal, Canada, April. Available Online at http://media.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/materials/publications/ballagas2006a.pdf.

Walz, Steffen P. (2006): „A Spatio-Ludic Rhetoric: Serious Pervasive Game Design for Sentient Architectures". In: Proceedings of game set and match II. International Conference 2006 on Computer Games, Advanced Geometries and Digital Technologies, TU Delft.

Brezinka, Veronika and Steffen P. Walz (2006): „Computerspiele in der Psychotherapie - den Teufel mit dem Beelzebub austreiben?" Proceedings of the 16. Kongress für Klinische Psychologie, Psychotherapie und Beratung, 3.-7. März 2006, Berlin.

2005

Walz, Steffen P., Schoch, Odilo, Ochsendorf, Mathias, and Torsten Spindler (2005): „Serious Fun. Pervasive Game Design as a CAAD Teaching and Research Method." In: Proceedings of eCAADe 2005 - Conference on education and research in computer aided architectural design in Europe, September 21-24, 2005, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. pp. 279-286.

2004

Walz, Steffen P., Buurman, Gerhard M., Wartmann, Christoph, Schirm, Simon, Moravanszky, Adam, and Ronald Vuillemin (2004): "Carplication - A Rhetorical Study Information Racer." In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology ACE 2004. New York: ACM Press.

2003

Walz, Steffen P. (2003): „Delightful Identification & Persuasion: Towards an Analytical and Applied Rhetoric of Digital Games." In: Copier, Marinka and Jost Raessens (Eds.): Level Up. Proceedings of the 1st International Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht: University of Utrecht Press. pp. 194-207. Available Online at http://www.playbe.com/stuff/games_rhetoric.htm

2002

Walz, Steffen P., Poultney, Chris, and Tobias Wörner (2002): „Container Love: Preforming the Body Electric.” In: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Computational Semiotics for Games and New Media (COSIGN 2002). Augsburg: Universität Augsburg. 90-95. Available for download Online at http://cosignconference.org/cosign2002/papers/Walz.pdf

Wössner, Uwe, Schulze, Jürgen P., Walz, Steffen P., and Uli Lang (2002): „Evaluation of a Collaborative Volume Rendering Application in a Distributed Virtual Environment.” In: Proceedings of Eigth Eurographics Workshop on Virtual Environments (EGVE), May 2002. New York: ACM Press. pp. 113-122. Available Online at: http://www.hlrs.de/people/schulze/publications/Woessner02.pdf

2001

Walz, Steffen P. and Isabel Zundel (2001): „Introducing Interrelations of Madness & Virtuality.” In: Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Semiotics for Games and New Media. Amsterdam: CWI Press. pp. 100-107.

Posters

2005

Walz, Steffen P., Schoch, Odilo, Schaerer, Philipp, Gmelin, Sebastian, Bonwetsch, Tobias, Hillner, Bergit, Schmidt, Rafael Georg, Mermans, Bart, Przerwa, Jan, and Arno Schlueter (2005): „Serious Bioplay: A Computer Integrated Building Service Game applying Psychophysiological Input." (poster) In: Extended Proceedings of UbiComp 2005 - The 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Tokyo, Japan.

Brezinka, Veronika and Steffen P. Walz (2005): „Computerspiele in der Psychotherapie von Kindern und Jugendlichen." (poster) In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie, 4. Fachtagung der Fachgruppe Medienpsychologie, Schwerpunkt-Thema "Kinder und Medien", September 7-9, Universität Erfurt. Cf. http://www.uni-erfurt.de/LLBZ/fgt2005/

Walz, Steffen P. and Ludger Hovestadt (2005): „Serious Pervasive Game Design for Sentient Architectures." (poster) In: Online Proceedings of the MICS Scientific Conference 2005, Loewenberg, Switzerland, September 21-32. Available here

2002

Zundel, Isabel, Steffen P. Walz, and Stephan Miller (2002): „Pitch-Bend: A Collaborative Sound and Space Composition World for Immersive Virtual Environments.” (Poster) In: CD-ROM Proceedings of the World Congress of Architecture’s Poster Exhibition. Available through http://www.uia-berlin2002.com

Abstracts

2005

Walz, Steffen P. (2005): „Research Issues in ArchITectural Game Design“ (Symposium statement). Proceedings of the 2nd International Digital Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA 2005). Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

Varia (project proposals, feasibility studies, reports, etc.)

Hartkopf, Volker, Walz, Steffen P., Davidson, Drew, Klug, Chris (2005): „The Energy Game: Towards deep learning of effective energy production, distribution, and consumption with serious interactive entertainment". Joint Research Proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy, October.

Walz, Steffen P. Hovestadt, Ludger (2005): „Serious Game Applications for Sensor and Computer Integrated Buildings and Building Complexes". Research Proposal for NCCR MICS2 submitted to the SNF Panel Review, EPF Lausanne, March. (internal)

Walz, Steffen P. and Gerhard M. Buurman (2003): gamehouse. Machbarkeitsstudie zur Einrichtung eines pionierhaften Studienganges Digital Game Design (B.A.). Beauftragt vom Bundesamt für Berufsbildung und Technologie (BBT), Bern, und herausgegeben von der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich.

Walz, Steffen P. (2002): On the Move between Proximate Distance and Distant Proximity. Study published Online by Department of Mobile Application Design, University for Art, Media and Design Zurich (HGKZ), Switzerland at http://www.madcountdown.de [=Master’s thesis at the University of Tübingen]

Journalism

Götz, Ulrich and Walz, Steffen P. (2004). "Level-Design - eine Nische für Architekten?". Email-Interview mit Ulrich Götz und Steffen P. Walz nach Fragen von Friedrich v. Borries und Ulrich Brinkmann. In: Bauwelt. 95. Jg., Nr. 30 (06.08.04). pp. 26-27.

Walz, Steffen P. (2004): "Experimental Games. An Interview with Jonathan Blow. co-organizer of the Game Developers Conference 2004 / Experimental Gameplay Workshop". In: Game Face. Kulturelles Computer- und Videospielmagazin. Mai/Juni 2004. Vol 2. 40-41.

Walz, Steffen P. (2003): „Quo Vadis Mobile Entertainment? Ein Aufruf zu glokalem und konvergentem Mobile Game Design” In: Game Face. Kulturelles Computer- und Videospielemagazin. August/September 2003. Vol. 1. pp. 16-18.

Walz, Steffen P. (2003): „Paradigame: Computerspiele als wissenschaftliches Paradigma. Ein Kommentar zur Level Up-Konferenz.” In: Game Face. Kulturelles Computer- und Videospielemagazin. Dezember/Januar 2003/04. Vol. 1/2.


Scholarly and misc. presentations


Organization | Committees | Expertises


Exhibitions


Awards | Honors | Grants


Downloads


Links

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