February 2008
23 posts
It's so Goo-d!
I pre-ordered World of Goo, a game co-created by an alumn from the ETC, and with it came a preview of the first chapter of the game. It’s really good; it kind of proves how a team of a couple of talented guys can beat a team of fifty people without a solid direction by making a game that is cheaper (only $20!) and whole lot of fun.
Retro Sabotage - Compromise →
Control two boards of Alexey Pajitnov’s classic game at the same time!
The Escapist: Game Rules as Art →
How did I miss this article?
Back from GDC 2008
It feels a little weird being bac; I was just in San Francisco yesterday and I took the red-eye back to Pittsburgh. It feels like it’s 9:00 AM, but it’s actually 2:30 PM. There were a lot of things I thought about while I was there, including the project, jobs, and what people had to say about the game industry. This year I had the strange feeling that I didn’t belong anywhere,...
IndieGames.com - The Weblog - Announcement: IGF... →
World of Goo, Skyrates, and Polarity were all made (or started) a the Entertainment Technology Center.
PlayFirst Signs Acclaimed Developer Wadjet Eye... →
Wadjet Eye Games is the company owned by my friend, Dave Gilbert. He makes all the games on his own using Aventure Game Studio with outside contractors working on music, voice acting, and art for him. Last year, he was nominated for best new studio at the Game Developers’ Choice awards as well.
Blu-Ray Wins HD Disc Format Battle; Will Lose War... →
From the 20th century: Discs
If we live in a world of downloadable and portable media formats (as in, it works everywhere), then why is the biggest segment of the video games industry focused on selling games on discs (eww) that only work on specific platforms?
Level Up : The Problem (and the Danger) of the... →
Level Up : The Problem (and the Danger) of the... →
“The situations and conflicts expressed in games don’t relate to most...”
– Fullbright: Wager
Gleemax at the Independent Games Festival →
Three of the games nominated for this award were made at my current program, the ETC (Skrates, Polarity, and World of Goo, although Tower of Goo, the original game, was the one made there).
Kloonigames ยป Grammar Nazi →
Grammar Nazi is very interesting/experimental/avant-garde short game, and yet so full of action at the same time! I really expected slow and boring since it’s based on words, but it definitely gets away from that and combines a boss battle with a spelling game. I also seem to project the first thing that comes to my head when I’m playing, and I really hope nobody sees what I’m...
Disney wants your child online: MMOs for tweens... →
ars technica goes over the stuff that the place I worked at last summer is up to, and what some of Disney’s plans are.
GDC Game: An idea just popped into my head.
I continue to be exhausted, but I took a nap sometime in the afternoon which gave me enough strength to think about my pre-GDC game. I e-mailed Petri Purho (from Kloonigames) earlier this morning because I was curious to see his approach on making his many games. He was nice enough to get back a few hours later and told me that he just worked whenever he could, very sporadically. Since I...
GDC Game: Exhausted
I continue to be exhausted. There are many questions popping into my head: Where should I work? Where should I live? Why do I feel so braindead? Designing my GDC game isn’t going as well as I hoped. With my brain falling apart by the end of the day, I just want to sit down and relax. I’m going to sleep.
“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal...”
– David Drummond, Senior Vice President of Google, on Microsoft Buying Yahoo!
2-Week Game Design Challenge
There are two weeks left until I fly to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. I have decided that a for a couple of hours every day until Sunday, the 17th, I will sit down and design a new game. Depending on how it goes, I might even start implementing. I’m not as fast as some of the guys out there so I’m scoping to be slow, but hopefully I can get more than I think I can...