Caffeinating at Georgia Tech
There are many good things about Georgia Tech, but coffee is not one of them. On campus, after 3pm, it’s almost impossible to find coffee. I find this utterly baffling. My seminar this term meets 2-5pm Wednesdays. We take a break around 3:30. The coffee stand in the student center closes at 4, so this hasn’t been a problem before.… read more
My GDC 2010 Microtalk
What follows is my short talk from the microtalks session at last week’s Game Developers Conference. The format was a modified pecha kucha, with 20 slides advancing automatically every 16 seconds. The theme provided by organizer Rich Lemarchand was simply, “Play with Us.” I chose to explore the relationship between developers and their audiences. This is a very famous… read more
GDC continues, and I owe this site updates. For now, a small one. I gave a short talk about A Slow Year at the Nuovo Sessions today, in which I revealed the cover and label art for the game. I thought I’d post those here for the rest of you, because it is awesome. The illustrator is the incredibly talented… read more
My VCS Goes to GDC
As you may remember, I brought my Atari out to GDC for the Independent Game Festival. It’s been having an unusual time indeed during its travels, and I believe it hasn’t seen this much excitement in some 33 years. Here are some highlights: In the Delta SkyClub Stowed under the seat in front of me At the baggage carousel In… read more
My 2010 Game Developers Conference schedule
This week is the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. For those of you who want to catch up with me there, here’s my speaking schedule for the week: Tuesday and Wednesday I’m co-hosting the Serious Games Summit (with Ben Sawyer and Jane McGonigal). I’ll be moderating two panels there, as follows: Wednesday 3:00- 4:00 Room 133, North Hall, Seriously,… read more
Thoughts from an Atari 1978 Board and ROM
In anticipation of the Independent Game Festival next week, today I constructed the first two cartridges of A Slow Year. More on that soon, but for now I wanted to share the object below, residue from the construction. It’s a board holding a 2k mask ROM for an Atari game. The photo probably stands alone as far as a blog… read more
Winner, Weirdest Use of a Combine Metaphor
From Moral Leadership in a Postmodern Age, by Ron Hill: If modernity acted like a combine harvester, sweeping away the old crop and transforming it into uniformly square bales, postmodernity allows some of the crops to survive and even to be replanted amidst the bales. It’s sort of awesome. Maybe just because I love combine harvesters.
On the achievementalization of the world. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
In a widely disseminated talk at DICE last month, Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center professor Jesse Schell made a provocation: can game-like external rewards make people lead better lives? To answer the question, Schell explored hypothetical scenarios that might combine awards of XBox Achievements-like scrip with emerging sensor networks that would track our everyday behaviors. Teeth brushing might earn… read more
Also, win a copy of a book I haven't yet written
Sometimes serious ideas emerge from the strangest places. Last week Harman tossed an offhand question onto his blog: Who is the most overrated philosopher?. It sparked quite serious discussion all over. So serious that before long, Harman found himself wondering if an anthology of opinions on “overrated philosophers” could indeed become a serious work of philosophy. I now find myself… read more
The Urinal Sublime
I’m still working my way through Heavy Rain, and I’ll save my comments about the game until I finish. For now, I broke it in an interesting way that’s worth sharing. When you are playing as Norman Jayden in the police headquarters, it is possible to go into the men’s room. One plot element requires this, but later you can… read more