I’ve always felt alone in my preference for the music of Super Mario Bros. 2 over the music in any of the other games. I’m glad it turns out that there’s a kindred soul out there:
Archive for the 'Audio/Video' Category
Music from That Other Mario Game
Published by January 24th, 2008 in Audio/Video and Links. 0 CommentsReading and Listening for This Week: Procedural Content Edition
Published by January 23rd, 2008 in Readings, Audio/Video and Links. 0 CommentsAnyone interested in digital game design should probably be somewhat familiar with procedurally generated content. While I think that there will always be a place for a more top-down approach, this type of content creation definitely leads to a really interesting aesthetic, and I don’t just mean the ascii graphics in roguelikes.
Geek Nights interviews Tarn Adams, one of the developers of Dwarf Fortress.
Roguelike developer Andrew Doull has an ongoing series of essays about the death of the level designer. This link comes to us courtesy of my friend and associate, Noah Sasso.
A couple of great things came out of Montreal recently.
The first is a talk by Jonathan Blow, developer of the upcoming XBox Live title Braid, at the Montreal International Games Summit. The talk covers his concerns about the state of game design, its methods and conceits, and different possibilities for maturing the discipline in general. In making his argument he uses the common ‘design bias’ that most people (Ian Bogost being the worst offender) fall into when trying to suggest solutions to this problem, but overall I have to say that I agree with almost everything he says.
Next is the game Passage which was created by Jason Rohrer for the Montreal-based art-game collective Kokoromi’s Gamma 256 show. After playing the game for only a few minutes I knew that it would stick firmly in my heart next to Knytt as a game that invokes enormous emotions considering its scope.
You can download the audio recording of Jonathan Blow’s talk from his blog here and download Jason Rohrer’s game here.
Told You Video Games and Football Have a Lot in Common
Published by November 14th, 2007 in Audio/Video and Links. 0 CommentsAs most of you know, Ed and I presented Casablanca at the IGDA’s Demo Night a few weeks back. Oren organized the night and did a great job. The whole evening had an interesting spread of different types of games with different types of sensibilities. They were recording presentations and have now posted them on YouTube.
You can find all the presentations here.
The Escapist tends to run from fairly interesting to incredibly frustrating. Recently they’ve done a big graphical/interface overhaul, and one of the features that they’ve added is Zero Punctuation. Basically podcast crossed with a flash cartoon (a flashcast?), it’s voiced by a fast talking Brit called Yahtzee. I posted about this one because it perfectly reflects my feelings about BioShock. Hope you all enjoy!
This is kind of the direction that I was hoping to take Casablanca eventually. I especially like that it’s purposefully unbalanced, or at least balanced so that one side almost always wins. The documentary really got to me. I have to admit that it’s kind of the reason I design games.
The Documentary
The Website
Here’s another selection from Gamasutra’s GDC Radio. This time it’s Mark Morris and Tom Arundel talking about the history of their company, Introversion Software. They’ve achieved something that we’ve all thought about from time to time, the creative freedom of running their own development house and being their own publisher. It’s an interesting listen, as well as a cautionary tale.
After the Party: Introversion Software One Year On From IGF 2006
Mackenzie Wark on This Spartan Life
Published by June 24th, 2007 in Readings and Audio/Video. 0 CommentsMackenzie Wark, who teaches at the New School and recently published the analog version of his book Gamer Theory, was recently interviewed on This Spartan Life, a machinima talk show conducted inside various Halo 2 multiplayer maps. Gamer Theory has been around for a while on the internet as an electronic book (I’m not sure that’s the right term). I got about halfway through it and realized that I just wasn’t absorbing anything. Call me old fashioned, but it’s just easier for me to comprehend what I’m reading when it’s on paper.
This Spartan Life with Mackenzie Wark
GAM3R 7H30RY by Mackenzie Wark
Design by committee?
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