I was finally able to do a pretty in-depth story that’s been important to me for some time. The subject is my friend, Ian Bogost, and the two major projects he’s worked on in the last year or so. At a glance those projects are diametric opposites; perhaps if you read the story you’ll be able to find some commonalities that might have even escaped their creator.
I’ve been getting excellent feedback from you guys via social media since this article ran at the beginning of the week — thanks to those who’ve spent time with the story and if you haven’t, please do. And for follow-up, you can check out a blog post by Frank Lantz, who’s also featured in the piece.
One of Bogost’s colleagues is Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini, of whom I’m a big fan. Something interesting happened when he released a mobile game that was critical of the mobile hardware industry on iOS, and I interviewed him about that here.
I like standing up for what you believe in. As long as you’re being rational about it. As you may or may not know, I’ve been doing a monthly column in Edge’s print magazine for the past few months, and it looks like they’ve begun to make their way online. Check out the debut piece!
When people care about complex issues, discussion is challenging. Read about how MIT’s GAMBIT team tackled the difficulty in making an RPG about LGBTQ identity issues in a community context, and check out Auntie Pixelante’s scathing response.
Other things: I checked out Mindbloom and Glitch, and I spoke to former AAA execs Ben Cousins and Senta Jakobsen about Ngmoco’s innovative new Stockholm office. Spending a lot of time getting ready for GDC Online — not only have we Gamasutras got a lot of coverage to do, but I’m giving a microtalk on the critics’ panel at the Game Narrative Summit. If you’ll be at GDC Online next week, come say hi to us!
Sigh. It’s a lot of stuff. Sometimes I feel I’ll never be able to get it together.