January 2012
1 post
5 tags
“The elements of what I think is great, inclusive design is [the ability to]...”
– Matt Boch, project director of Dance Central at Harmonix, in an interview at Gamasutra by Leigh Alexander
July 2011
1 post
2 tags
“Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like...”
– Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress, from Jonah Weiner’s feature article “Where do Dwarf-Eating Carp Come From?” from The New York Times Magazine
June 2011
1 post
“In a world like this, if you see another player, you will feel like you want to...”
– Jenova Chen, designer at thatgamecompany, on his latest game, Journey.
(Source: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/climbing-mountains-of-beautiful-sand-in-journey/3316/)
October 2010
1 post
4 tags
Jeremy Parish on the legacy of Super Mario Bros. 3 →
Parish’s Gamespite should be required reading for anyone interesting in learning to appreciate the 8-bit generation from a modern standpoint. His latest article — one so good that he even felt comfortable endorsing it — examines Super Mario Bros. 3 in detail. It’s no coincidence that he chose to run this piece on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the NES.
One choice...
August 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Jesse Schell, author of The Art of Game...
The Gamecrafters Guild →
A podcast for aspiring game developers. I’ll be spending the afternoon catching up on the first two episodes.
(Via Kevin Fanning’s Twitter)
July 2010
3 posts
3 tags
US Government ruling allows video game owners to... →
This was tucked away in the big ruling this morning that made it legal for phone owners to jailbreak their phones. I have to wonder just how broad the interpretations of “investigate” and “correct” are, and just what constitutes a “security flaw.” Given how problematic, if not outright Machiavellian, copy protection software has become on many computer games, I...
June 2010
2 posts
“I’ve made a lot of serious games, and I watch people playing games now,...”
– Warren Spector, creator of Deus Ex, speaking to Joystiq about his latest project, Epic Mickey. I wish we had more games like Mario and fewer like Killzone. They both have a place, but — corny as this sounds — games that make you smile are so few and far between these days.
May 2010
11 posts
The perfect game, and why it doesn't exist
Maybe that title isn’t the best way of phrasing it, seeing as perfection is always subjective and changes with popular opinion. (After all, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly was more or less panned when it first released, and now it’s considered to be one of the best movies ever.)
I guess a better question is: Why do I love games? And why are so few games worth revisiting after...
4 tags
“Q: Why does stepping into water mean instant death in Red Dead Redemption?
A:...”
– from a Buzz (yeah, apparently people use it) conversation I’ve been having about Red Dead Redemption
Apparently I've thought about Rock Band too much
I just put the finishing touches on my article over on Silicon Sasquatch regarding what could be done to revitalize the World Tour mode for Rock Band 3. I think the post speaks for itself, but I just wanted to mention it here because I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I’m confident Harmonix has some great new ideas in store for RB3, but I thought it’d be fun to see how much...
What is an iPhone? A miserable little pile of... →
Glitch -- an open MMO worth watching →
Glitch looks like some sort of hybrid of the tone of a game like LittleBigPlanet with a massive, cohesive game world. And it’s browser-based, too.
If you’re interested, open beta sign-ups are still going on.
6 tags
Oh man.
I’m about an hour into Flash fundamentals on Lynda.com and I am totally on top of this. It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re learning a new toolset of any kind, so I guess I’ll just have to stick to my mantra:
Become the ruling body, dude.
6 tags
The fundamental flaws of Splinter Cell Conviction
What you think of Conviction is going to depend largely on what other games you’ve played. If you take it on its own merits and don’t consider the previous four games in the series, it’s not bad at all. It’s a mixed bag, with solid controls and an interesting cover and light/darkness system that are held back by brain-dead writing and a largely tertiary story. But the most...
Nick Makes Games
So here’s the deal: I recently became unemployed after working six months as a legal assistant in the hopes of kindling a passion for legal work and, eventually, maybe even encouraging myself to apply to law school and make something of myself.
It dawned on me that that’s not the life I want for myself. For better or worse, I’m not happy unless I’m working in some creative...
3 tags
The lifeblood of Dead Rising
I bought Dead Rising on Xbox Live’s Games on Demand yesterday because I felt like I never gave it a fair shake back when I got my 360 in 2006 and borrowed a friend’s copy. Booting it back up for an hour, I was reminded just how transitional of a title it was — the previous-gen and current-gen features are very clearly delineated — but I wasn’t sure it’d have...
6 tags
March 2010
1 post
Just Cause: Why polish isn't everything
It didn’t sound like a good idea on paper: Purchasing a four-year-old port of a last-gen GTA clone that was critically panned at release?
But a friend of mine vouched for it, and what the hell — $7.99 seemed like a fair price.
It’s rough, and it’s unacceptably terrible in its story, but it’s just so much fun that none of that stuff matters.
I realize that, just...