Talking About These: Video Games and Moral Choices

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on the industry and design.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"Episode Eight in my series of video "lectures," co-written with game designer James Portnow. It's time for another Game Design Corner episode, where we look specifically at elements of game design."

Via Talking About These

Please Finish Your Game

Chris [Hecker] focuses on solving hard problems at the intersection of gameplay, aesthetics, and technology. He is an outspoken advocate for pushing the current boundaries of design and interactivity, in the hope that games will eventually achieve their full potential as a medium. (--chrishecker.com)

"My rant at the 2010 Game Developers Conference was entitled Please Finish Your Game. A gentleman in the audience was nice enough to video it for me: [...]
My rant is about how I'm worried about the fixation on development time these days, both in the indie community, and in corporate games."

Via Chris Hecker's Website

Jesse Schell: "Design Outside the Box"

Jesse Schell currently holds the title of Professor of Entertainment Technology (specializing in Game Design) at Carnegie Mellon University. Before that, he was Creative Director at the Walt Disney Imagineering VR Studio, where he worked for seven years as designer, programmer, and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest (Disney's chain of VR entertainment centers). He has been lead designer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer's Gold, a virtual reality attraction at the DisneyQuest interactive theme park in Orlando, Florida, which won a Thea from the Themed Entertainment Association. (--MobyGames)

'Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular "Facebook Games" era.'

For the record, I am convinced that he is *not* really excited about it (as the general buzz over the net seemed to understand), but quite the opposite, he is throwing a fist of alert at the chin of the current generation of game designers and developers.

Via G4.

Peter Molyneux on God-Games [extract]

Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987. Molyneux provided the original concept for Populous, the first god game for the personal computer. Released in 1989, Populous was a major success for Bullfrog and went on to sell over 4 million copies.

Electronic Arts, Bullfrog's publisher, acquired the studio in January 1995. Molyneux had become an Electronic Arts vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA purchased a significant share of Bullfrog. Molyneux's last project at Bullfrog was Dungeon Keeper, which was released in July 1997 to high critical praise.

Molyneux left Bullfrog in August 1997 to found Lionhead Studios. (--Wikipedia)

"Peter Molyneux is one of the best-known names in the international world of computer games. In this lecture on God-games he stressed the importance of belief and peoples need to believe. As designers, particularly with regards to visualisation, the more real a representation does not necessarily mean it is more believable. This is otherwise known as the 'canny valley'. Whats more important then is 'fanning the fires of belief' and creating an unforgettable experience."

The audio is awful and the cut is really short, but he manages to say a couple of interesting things.


And here is another cut of the same lecture, a bit overlapped with the previous, but quickly advances to new parts.



Via Design London

Talking About These: Video Games and Choice

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on the industry and design.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"This is the fifth entry in my series of video "lectures," made in association with Gamasutra and James Portnow, game designer and founder of Divide By Zero Games."

Via Talking About These

Game OverThinker: Ep. 32 "I Heart Bayonetta"

Little does the world realize that The Game OverThinker is actually a mild-mannered film and video game geek named Bob, who creates longform rants on the minutia of game culture when he ought to be working and makes videos out of them in order to ignore his crippling writer's block.

In this video, he speaks of a character about which tons of words have been said, but nothing beyond the wall of triviality of the mass media, and much less about the underlying design of the character.

Via The Game OverThinker

Louis Castle on Rapid Prototyping

In 1985, Louis Castle and Brett Sperry set to work in a garage in Las Vegas. From those humble beginnings came Westwood Studios, one of the most successful entertainment software companies in the history of the industry. (-- MobyGames)

"The Global Game Jam present's Louis Castle on Rapid Prototyping to help you get ready for GGJ2010."

Via GarageGames