I just posted a new blog post on Gamasutra; in response to Roger Ebert’s latest statement in the “games as art” debate, I tackle a question implied by his definition of Great Art. Essentially: can games create empathy by communicating something real about personal experience?
You can find the full article here.
My assertion is that games [...]
Some people don’t realize that I’m not only a programmer and a designer, but a fantastic artist to boot.
To prove my incredible skills in this arena, I thought I’d share some concept art that I just whipped together for one of Deep Plaid Games’ upcoming titles.
Believe it or not, I managed to put this [...]
Miles: “All right… Richard… I kinda hate to point this out, but uh… rent was due yesterday.”
Richard: “Rent? What is that? Some sort of tribute to the mystical forces that control The Apartment?”
Miles: “Ummm… no. It’s money. Money to keep living here. We all have to pay it, remember?”
Richard: “Oh right right, money. Well… I’m [...]
I posted a new game design-related post on my Gamasutra blog a couple of days ago, titled “In Defense of Major Setbacks.”
I actually intended for this article to be larger in scope and talk about failure in general; but I thought that the article was getting too long and decided to leave it as ruminations [...]
Although I’ve mostly been using this blog as an outlet for game design ideas, I consider myself a programmer/designer, and this seems like the best place to put up some programming notes as well.
Since I first learned Actionscript 3, I’ve been frustrated that when you try to run code like the following inside a class [...]
Apparently there’s some sort of issue with PNG transparency on Internet Explorer browser pre-IE6. There’s a workaround for it; but that workaround does not work on Facebook pages. Web developers are unhappy about this.
http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=1799
There seem to be a lot of Facebook developers who don’t speak English well. Like, the majority of the posts on the [...]
I drew this up last week and have had it sitting in a Notepad window for a couple of weeks. Thought it was time to share it, if only to be able to close that window.
Here are the games that constitute my “personal gaming canon.” Perhaps the term I should use is “ludologic canon”? That [...]
I’ve decided that whenever I come up with a game design that I know there’s no chance in hell will ever get made, I’ll throw that idea up here, in order to prove how awesome I am.
In this case I also get to prove what I’ve long complained about: I come up with every good [...]
I just discovered “Google Reader Play.” It looks to be an interesting way of taking your Google Reader behavior and “game-ifying it”, i.e. using the reward structures and idioms of gaming to make an activity more fun and encourage certain types of behavior.
Note to self: if you ever want techies to fall all over you helping you, have your forum avatar depict you as a female who is slightly hot.
Caveat: every thread will inevitably degenerate into ridiculous, shameless flirting attempts. Especially if you encourage it.