Thanks to everybody who dropped by the Little House this weekend to see my work. I’ll have a gallery with shots of my sculptures & pastels up by the end of the week, so check back soon!
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Tired of this ‘Citizen Kane’ Nonsense
Apr 29, ’10
5:52 PM
There have been many posts written by people searching for the “Citizen Kane” of video games, some masterpiece that will bring artistic acceptance* to the entire medium. There have been many responses, from the knee-jerk to the articulate, but Sean Sands has finally written a response that I can agree with. In So Long Orson Wells, Sands says, “I didn’t really want to play the Mona Lisa anyway. I have a better question – Where is video gaming’s Chess?” (emphasis added)
However engaging a movie or a painting can be, it doesn’t depend on interaction. Though Sands defends himself from accusations of Chess snobbery, it is reasonably accepted that Chess is one of the most perfect games ever invented. A child can learn it, but a lifetime can be spent in search of mastery—no video game is so finely balanced. Chess is the standard to which games should be held, not a narrative, cinematic experience like “Citizen Kane.” I don’t mean to fall into the Narratology vs Ludology war, I just believe we should celebrate games for those elements that make them unique—and which make them last.
The Graveyard
Mar 12, ’10
11:11 PM
They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and I believe the same can be said for game consoles. I own a DS and a PSP, but now that I actually have a daily commute that could finally provide a good outlet for my portable gaming habits, I have found that I rarely game on anything but my iPhone. It doesn’t have the best games and it has significant drawbacks versus dedicated gaming hardware, but it wins out purely because it is the most portable of the portables. I always have my phone on me, and all the games are stored internally—not having to carry around additional game cartridges, however small they have gotten, is a big plus. When the T stops on Longfellow bridge, I don’t think “Oh, I wish I’d brought my DS,” I just fire up Canabalt.
There are a couple of games I have been playing lately that I have particularly reacted to, and as I am currently stuck on a bus in deepest Connecticut I thought I might take a break from replaying Spider to reflect a little on a handful of iPhone ports that have most interested me: Tale of Tales’ The Graveyard, Popcap’s Plants vs Zombies, and Lazy 8 Studios’ Cogs.
RAAJOCBDFOTLSOTS
Feb 21, ’10
11:41 PM
This weekend I participated in another Game Jam, this one organized by Darius Kazemi and Emily Daniels and hosted at the DINO/Sprout space near Davis in Somerville between Saturday morning and Sunday evening evening. I teamed up with Michael Carriere to make a fun little platformer, and to try my hand at some new kinds of pixel art. The game we came up with is called Run around and jump on cars but don’t fall off the left side of the screen!,* created in roughly 36 hour by Michael and myself with some great environment assets contributed by Emily Garfield.
The project is built in a flash framework called Flixel, so you can try RAAJOCBDFOTLSOTS online: just click on the image. As somebody (possibly Darius) put it, Game Jams aren’t the place for win states, so just do as the title tells you and enjoy the game!**
*Our development process, while highly democratic, took a decidedly dictatorial turn when Michael came up with this name. I wasn’t about to argue!
**If there aren’t any cars on the screen, use the arrows to run and jump to the right until they respawn.
Update 2/23/09: Emily Daniels has posted a complete list of the projects created at the Dino jam. Everybody had something awesome to show by the end of the weekend, so check out the rest of the games!
Sequel of the Week: Heligoland
Feb 9, ’10
11:52 AM
This blog was intended to be about games, art and animation, not music, but with no disrespect meant to Bioshock II, Massive Attack’s Heligoland is my most anticipated sequel of the week and I would like to devote a few words to the album.
Introduced to the band through “Dissolved Girl’s” brief appearance in The Matrix, I backtracked from Mezzanine to Blue Lines, eagerly awaited 100th Window in 2003, and somewhere along the way acquired their limited edition Singles ’90/’98 collection. I have gone to see movies purely because this band recorded the score. Nowhere along the way would I have necessarily have claimed they were one of my favorite bands, but I have been a devoted listener for over a decade and I somehow own their complete discography. Suffice it to say that I was pretty excited to hear they had a new album coming out, especially after seven years of silence.
The Goose Provides
Feb 2, ’10
2:55 PM
My good friend and erstwhile employer, Goose Rock Design, has rolled out a Goose-themed URL shortener service: goos.es
You can now find this blog at http://goos.es/kaw. It doesn’t actually shorten it much, only about 4 characters, but I needed something to test their (very slick) interface.
Game Jam 2010 Complete: Quest for Stick!
Jan 31, ’10
9:06 PM
Pretty worn out from the Global Game Jam this weekend, but I couldn’t have spent the past couple days with better people—or doing cooler things. It is not the most up-to-date build so there will still be quirks, but our game Quest for Stick is now available at the Global Game Jam 2010 Website!
http://globalgamejam.com/2010/quest-stick
Edit, February 1: Jeff has released the most up-to-date build as a .msi installer, which automatically pulls in the required dependencies. If you were having trouble running the game, try the alternative download link on our Game Jam homepage.
The Global Game Jam
Jan 26, ’10
7:05 AM
As I mentioned before, I will be participating in this weekend’s Global Game Jam. Essentially the video game development community’s answer to the 48 hour film project, the Game Jam is a collaborative game-making effort that will run from 5pm on Friday the 29th through the afternoon of Sunday the 31st, at which point we will have made a video game or died trying. The design constraints and theme of the jam will be announced on Friday, so until we form a team that afternoon I cannot anticipate who I will be working with or what kind of game we will make. That said, I will be jamming with the other folks at the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, and they have a hell of a lineup of participants this year—very excited for the weekend. I will be contributing my 2D and 3D skills and limited scripting, as well as taking a first stab at music production and sound design.
One More Time
Jan 11, ’10
11:44 PM
2009 was a good year. I landed a decent job, my freelance work really began to take off, I moved to a much better apartment, and I made some good friends in my new neighborhood. It really struck me how well things have been going on New Year’s Eve in New York, when I was asked what my New Year’s resolutions were going to be, and the only one I could think of was to make more art.
