On Internet this week:
Okay maybe these guys just specialize in web design and ecommerce now, but we should probably keep a weather eye open.
Hi, this is the first real post on this blog, and it’s a bit silly, and about something that’s been covered by so many people it might die of asphyxiation, so let’s all consider this a warm-up round! I’m trying to get some stuff up here other than disclaimers (ps: ignore that this is a disclaimer), and I haven’t written anything outside of the Telltale forum and blog pages in months, and I actually wrote this entry back before GDC and then forgot about it, so be gentle. Anyway, without further ado… “The Wii is not ridiculous.”
I’m really glad the Wii remote isn’t totally ridiculous, but I wasn’t at first.
I’m sure that I’m like many other people in that, when the Wii remote was first unveiled, my brain was filled with all sorts of crazy and amazing (yet vague and undefined) ideas about how Nintendo’s new controller would let you do all sorts of never-before-seen things with interactive entertainment. Even the name “Revolution” implied that what we knew as games, as game systems, and as gamers would be turned on their head (and/or ear) and what came out the other side would be totally new.
Wizard melting still delayed. Sorry, Marek.
Also, I am slightly shamed.
Delays, delays. There is no wizard melting yet, sorry.
The onslaught of GDC and a bunch of Europeans rampaging through my life, work, and house have put a halt to normal activities. Hopefully GDC will result in my writing up some stuff though, as the show’s been incredibly fun so far, and a few panels have been extremely entertaining, occasionally mind-blowing. In particular is one lecture today by Clint Hocking on the different elements that are explored in video games (both as players and designers), splitting them up into spatial exploration (the game’s environment and world) and systems exploration (discovering a game’s rules, limits, basic mechanics), but going from there to propse how games could (and should) involve self exploration as well.
I’ve so far made Hocking’s talk sound lame and trite, but it was some truly amazing stuff. It immediately triggered mad discussion between Marek, Steve and myself about the talk and its implications, my possibly misguided insisting that Suspension of Disbelief is somehow involved, and other good video-gamey things that I rarely get to talk about despite working every day at a game company. And, it was the only panel to do such a thing at the show so far. So, clearly good stuff.
I’m still processing… and apparently falling asleep… at the moment, but God willing I’ll put up some impressions from the show in the near future.
Almost got this thing ready to go. I’ve got to deal with some dangling bits (like the green down there below the bottom post), and the comments page and subpages, which are hideous. Other than that, though, welcome to my new blog. My Internet home. It’ll be pretty sweet. Or pretty lame!
Howdy. Various people (including myself) have been harassing me for ages to get a blog up and running on the old Internet, so here it is. This is possibly the third attempt in as many years as dropping a WordPress install on this domain to see what happens. Maybe this one will stick.
Also this defaultish theme will hopefully be messed with in the near future.