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.
'"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" and "New Super Mario Bros. Wii." The two biggest games of the Holiday 2009 Gaming Season. Side-by-side, point-by-point... and they might have more in common than you think!'
"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."
David Perry (born 1967) is an Irish video game developer who has created dozens of computer games, the best known of which include Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah, Wild 9 and Enter the Matrix. He also founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Shiny created games for many internationally known brands and companies, including Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures, and Warner Bros. In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services to computer gaming. (-- Wikipedia)
"Game designer David Perry says tomorrow's videogames will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences -- more involving and meaningful to some than real life."
John Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author. Currently founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, he is also a founder and executive producer of conferences in the media, technology, communications, and entertainment industries as well as "band manager" with BoingBoing.net.
Will Wright has become one of the most successful designers of interactive entertainment in the world. He began working on what would become SimCity—The City Simulator in 1985. Using a complex technique, he found a way to bring realistic simulations to desktop PCs. Previously simulations of this sort were only available to the military, scientists and academicians. However, using an easy to use graphic interface, the world of simulations opened up to consumers.
"Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, the Sims, and now Spore, speaks with pundit John Battelle about the creative process, user-generated content, and much more."
Let's jump in time a bit to present the last TAT lecture; later on we will complete the ones in the middle.
Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.
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 Seven in my series of video "lectures," made in association with James Portnow, game designer and founder of Divide By Zero Games."
It’s not very often that you come across an activist game that skillfully incorporates its message with its gameplay, and rarer that they’re so much fun as Harpooned. Take control of a Japanese research vessel and extinctify some whales in the name of science (and selling cat food.) (-- 1Up)
"So it’s a controversial and emotional issue in Australia, however for the rest of the world it’s not newsworthy and I suppose most people never give it a thought. I decided to make a game about whaling and specifically about Japan’s claim that their whaling is scientific, to draw international attention to the issue. Games have the ability to reach a younger and broader audience than newspapers or television and a game distributed on the Internet can have a truly international impact."
This third design tour published at Wolfire blog, was about Gish by Cryptic Sea.
"I asked Edmund McMillen (co-creator of Gish) what he thought, and he said, “I thought it was a well thought out critique of the things that made Gish an important indie game, and also pointed out its flaws in realistic way. Everything you said is totally what we have been talking about for the past few years, so I think you were spot on.”"
Matt Leacock is a principal designer at Yahoo! Inc. When he's not designing social platforms and products for Yahoo!, he dabbles in board game design.
"In February of 2008, Matt Leacock released Pandemic, a board game where players cooperate to save the world from deadly diseases that threaten to wipe out humanity. The game has been enthusiastically received, with its first printing selling out in less than a month. Matt will discuss how being an interaction designer affected the game design process as well as how cooperative games can point to new models for engagement in online systems."
Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.
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.
"The third entry in my series of video "lectures," made in association with EDGE and game designer James Portnow. Format inspired by Zero Punctuation reviews.
For the first time, NOT made to be presented in a classroom."
Former Game Developer magazine code columnist and 2006 IGF Design Innovation winner Jonathan Blow, has suggested that games are approaching the level of societal influence of other forms of art, such as films and novels. One example that Blow cites is World of Warcraft, which he labels "unethical", stating that such games exploit players by using a simple reward-for-suffering scheme to keep them in front of their computer.
In his view, developers need to think about what reinforcement the games are providing players when they reward them for performing certain actions. He emphasized that there was a need for developers to design inspiring new games using "innovative, ethical and personal art." (--Wikipedia).
"Part of the 2007 Independent Games Summit, held at the Game Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco, March 2007: Indie Prototyping, Braid, & Making Innovative Games (Jonathan Blow, Number None) [...], discusses the deliberate methodology behind his indie game prototyping. He shows how he conceives, develops, and tests out indie concepts in playable form, and discusses how you know when a prototype is working, and where to take it from there, demonstrating multiple in-development prototypes (including Braid) along the way."
Jason Wozencroft is an award-winning art director/creative director with over thirteen years of interactive media experience. His talents include art/creative direction and team management. His collaborative style and ability to motivate teams towards a common goal has led to a legacy of successful large-scale projects. (--twentytwomedia.com)
"Donna Park goes to A2M studios to learn about the design process of game interfaces. We get specifics of the very impressive interfaces from Ironman and the upcoming WET."
Will Wright has become one of the most successful designers of interactive entertainment in the world. He began working on what would become SimCity—The City Simulator in 1985. Using a complex technique, he found a way to bring realistic simulations to desktop PCs. Previously simulations of this sort were only available to the military, scientists and academicians. However, using an easy to use graphic interface, the world of simulations opened up to consumers.
"In this lecture, recorded in November 2003, Wright discusses various aspects of game design, human interfaces, artificial intelligence, metrics, simulation and the future of gaming."
Second video of the Design Tour series, made by the prominent indie team, Wolfire.
"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."
Harry Ravenswood moved to the UK from Australia in 2004, where he had been working at Torus Games. He has worked on 7 published titles on a range of different consoles, and has been working as a designer for over 6 years. He recently worked on The Regiment for Kuju Entertainment, an action title which saw him working closely with current and previous members of the SAS to get it as authentic as possible. (from Videojug).
"Videogames have come an awfully long way since the heady days of Pong and Pac Man all those years ago. If you think gaming is still just a few nerdy kids holed up in their bedrooms needing to get out more, prepare yourself for a shock. The videogame industry is now worth billions. The level of sophistication, both in terms of gameplay and graphics continues to grow at a phenomenal pace, and in many households they've overtaken TV as the entertainment of choice for winding down in the evening. The flipside, of course, is that videogame production is now serious business. While you may think being a videogame designer is just a day-long play-about, the truth is it's a very demanding, albeit very rewarding job..."
Cliff harris is a 38 year old Game Designer and programmer from the UK. In previous lives, he worked as a Boat-Builder (yes really), a guitar teacher and on stock market trading floors, where he got shouted at by city traders. He also worked as a game programmer for Elixir Studios, and then as an AI programmer at Lionhead where he worked on ‘The Movies’. For the last few years, he has worked from home for his own one man company – Positech Games, making quirky and original strategy and simulation games. (--Positech Games)
"Fellow indies dejobaan recently did a video reponse to questions about their game, and I thought this was a great idea and shamelessly copied it replying to all the stuff people ask me by email and on the forums, then spent far too much time today playing with sony vegas movie editor..."
According to Wikipedia, Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and professor of game development and interactive design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has worked in gaming for 26 years, having credits on 22 game titles. Is an active member of the International Game Developers Association. In 2008, she was elected to the IGDA's Board of Directors.
She founded the International Game Developers Sex Special Interest group in 2005. Since working on Playboy, she has studied adult and sexual content in video games and is regularly interviewed about the subject in the media. She has written a book on the subject, Sex in Video Games.
Despite the ridiculous short time they gave to the interview, the awful music, and the bloated video presentation, Brenda Brathwaite was able to say a couple of interesting things about sex in videogames.
"GameZombie.tv presents an exclusive video interview with Brenda Brathwaite, video game designer."
Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.
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 six in my series of video "lectures," with special guest star: Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander!"
I didnt particulary liked this one.
At this point, calling Leight Alexander to oppinionate about the gaming female audience is not only a cliche, but I think is also a mistake. She is not really representative, and also writes very lightly regarding certain topics, while her incitations to debate are usually mass-targeted instead of following a line of maturity and depth.
This episode of German/French documentary series, english title "Into The Night" features the meeting of my two favorite game designers, Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford. Having seen the whole thing I can say that the quality of ideas, the way their conversations are framed, and the humanity between them really brings the whole ivory tower aspects of game design down to earth. If the object of these documentaries is to bridge games as a high to the wider world of New York Times reading film goers, then this is perhaps the most effective. (--PlayThisThing.com)
"French/German TV channel Arte interviews two game designers from different generations on their current projects and the state of the industry today."
Harry Ravenswood moved to the UK from Australia in 2004, where he had been working at Torus Games. He has worked on 7 published titles on a range of different consoles, and has been working as a designer for over 6 years. He recently worked on The Regiment for Kuju Entertainment, an action title which saw him working closely with current and previous members of the SAS to get it as authentic as possible. (from Videojug).
"Videogames have come an awfully long way since the heady days of Pong and Pac Man all those years ago. If you think gaming is still just a few nerdy kids holed up in their bedrooms needing to get out more, prepare yourself for a shock. The videogame industry is now worth billions. The level of sophistication, both in terms of gameplay and graphics continues to grow at a phenomenal pace, and in many households they've overtaken TV as the entertainment of choice for winding down in the evening. The flipside, of course, is that videogame production is now serious business. While you may think being a videogame designer is just a day-long play-about, the truth is it's a very demanding, albeit very rewarding job..."
Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.
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 second lecture of his series, Talking About These.
"A "sequel" presentation made for a Media Theory class at SCAD. Inspired by the style of Zero Punctuation reviews. Based on "Sex in Video Games" by Brenda Brathwaite and writings by James Portnow and Leigh Alexander. Made to be presented in a classroom."
Brenda Laurel is a pioneering writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur in the fields of human-computer interaction, interactive narrative and cultural aspects of technology. (Wikipedia)
"A TED archive gem. At TED in 1998, Brenda Laurel asks: Why are all the top-selling videogames aimed at little boys? She spent two years researching the world of girls (and shares amazing interviews and photos) to create a game that girls would love."
There is something dark and hideous about this one. And no, its not about the apparent main topic, but about the underlying methodology.
They took years for the most exhaustive research possible on the likes of the target audience, and then developed design heuristics in accordance with the results. Finally, they developed products using those patterns.
Where is the creativity? Where is the choice?
"We are not trying to tell them who they have to be, but we are really, really happy about who they are..." Laurel says in the talk. However feels like an enormous contradiction, as the genesis of the games they are delivering is a contundent exposition of who those girls should be, according to their statistically determined archetypes.
And this was more than 10 years ago... Eventually the company got degluted by Mattel, which also has quite an experience in delivering stereotyped messages toys.
Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.
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.
"A presentation for an art history class at SCAD. Done in the style of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation reviews (sort of). I have no idea how he makes one of these every week.
First video of the Design Tour series, made by the prominent indie team, Wolfire.
"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."
Chris Crawford, one of the most influential characters in the history of the industry. He pushed to give identity to game design by introducing his unique view to the media. Among other achievements, he is the father of the GDC, and of course, his name is high among the most important game designers.
"Chris Crawford in 1992, giving the last speech of his career as a "game designer" and his first as a researcher into "interactive storytelling"..."
Jason Rohrer is one of the most radical game designers in the field; he has integrated software development into a way of life that denotes one of the most consequent personalities on this, or any other media.
"...The Game Developers eXchange brings together game developers, educators and students with game development experts who share their behind-the-scenes knowledge of the game industry..."
Posts
