Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Special effects, animated actors, entire sets and spaces that weren’t physically present during filming: these aquamarine-colored surfaces are almost conjuring windows through which other environments can be optically inserted into filmed representations of the present moment.
These sorts of walls and surfaces are not architecture, we might say, but pure spatial effects, a kind of representational sleight of hand through which the boundaries and contents of a location can be infinitely expanded. There is no “building,” then, to put this in Matrix-speak; there are only spatial implications. Green screen architecture, here, would simply be a visual space-holder through which to substitute other environments entirely: a kind of permanent, physically real special effect that, in the end, is just a coat of paint.
- The Fifth Wall, BLDGBLOG
Monday, November 12, 2012
I saw the demons. They were there, I’m certain. But my friend says he didn’t see anything. If that’s true, does that mean what I saw was an illusion? But whether that demon who hates human beings was real, or whether it was just some kind of hallucination that my mind dreamed up… one thing I know for sure is that I’m beyond all hope.
I presented this last weekend at a conference here in Vancouver. It was 9 am and raining, so not really that well attended, but I got a generally good response from the audience. I wrote it specifically for people who weren’t necessarily familiar with the theory or game, so it should be readable to a lay audience.
I’ve been trying to write more criticism that can be used directly to improve people’s game designs. Extra Credits is a nice show, but they work in far too general frameworks to really be useful as a way to think about games in the specific, in the way that authors trained in criticism might consider certain branches of criticism when writing. Ditto a lot of criticism, which to this point has been mostly works which try to define how video games work. There’s precious little decent criticism on specific games that is geared towards actually figuring out the implications of design decisions as they are made in a production environment – probably because few academics know much about development (academics in the general – the most I’ve seen at conferences is ‘my son plays Xbox’) and few developers really care that much about critical theory. Here, I’m trying to apply Bogost’s theories of how games work to Prince of Persia, and trying to tease out the implications of design decisions beyond the fun factor.
This definitely doesn’t go as far as it could, and by no means is my argument perfect. I don’t pretend to out-academic anyone, much less people like Bogost and James Portnow. I’m going to try to expand this for my MA project, so comments and criticism are expressly welcomed.
(Continued)
I’ve started a new semester of graduate school. Last semester was pretty much hell, as evidenced by my last post here being more than a month ago. I’m still around, though. I’ll be back.
Watch this space.
(NB. This is excerpted from an email I sent to Ben Paddon.)
The basic problem, as I see it, is that we have many game developers who are interested in telling a good story but rarely have experience in what that means. I have a degree in writing (for whatever’s that worth) and I’ve been doing it in various capacities for the last ten years as well as teaching for the last two. The problems that we see with game writing? Absolutely freshman year creative writing class problems. There’s a reason why people shudder when we say stuff like ‘where’s the Citizen Kane/Watchmen/emotionally wrought game that will make me cry of our medium?”
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
One of the few downsides of attending GDC was not getting to see all the talks I wanted to – some had already happened by the time I arrived, some conflicted with other talks I did attend, etc. There are a lot of people I know who didn’t get the chance to go, as well, which is fair considering the price.
Happily, not an hour ago GDC posted a smorgasboard of free content on the GDC Vault. In video form there’s comparatively few lectures to the premium content; however, many of the talks’ slides have been posted under the free section as well. Some highlights:
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Here’s my silly influence map. Click through for a giant picture of my heroes.
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
It’s been almost two weeks, and I’m still not entirely sure how to process the con. It’s a blur of business cards, good conversation, game design, and arguing about Metagame cards. I spent most of the week with Chris Wright or Jack Monahan, esteemed gentlemen and cool people extraordinaire. Jack listened patiently to the current design for Solitary and completely dodged talking about his own project. Chris and I caught up with mutual friends and traded experiences of the con at the end of the day. Overall, a great experience, and I’ll be sure to attend next year.
The following is with the caveat that I’m a student, and though I call myself an indie game designer I haven’t shipped anything, so I’m not speaking from authority. When I say ‘you’, I mean ‘I’.
The insights I took from GDC:
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“We had no idea what we were doing, none whatsoever, and I think that’s an important lesson, because sometimes you just need to do things, and sometimes thinking too much and knowing too much can hurt more than it can help.”
-Ron Gilbert, in his postmortem of Maniac Mansion