Here’s a worthy read: The constantly-excellent and terrifyingly smart Jenn Frank recently wrote about her appreciation for horror films, as part of a larger discussion about how we can — and should — still enjoy “problematic” media, and that the subject, imagery and themes of what we like are not always as relevant as the why of our enjoyment.

It’s a topic that really resonates with me. I was recently talking video game stories with a friend (many games have good premises, but few have good stories). My favorite game story is a horror, is as follows:

Continue reading →

I’ve actually written prose fiction theorizing, melodramatically, about the end of the console generation and the decline of the American suburban ideal. I enjoy fiction as editorial probably more than I have a right to, and I think I might try it again!

In plainer language, here is an article about E3, in which I spoke to the ESA’s Rich Taylor on the role of the show at the beginning of a new gen. There was talk of “barometers of taste,” naturally.

David Gallant (you may remember him from I Get This Call Every Day, a game he made about his crummy day job that got him fired) wrote an interesting post at Gamasutra where he shares some of the alienation he’s experienced as he tries to join what he hoped would be a creative, inclusive game development scene.

As a “white male who was given many opportunities by other white males,” he’s been increasingly saddened by a status quo that sees vastly different rules of behavior and participation for women in his space. It’s very heartening to me whenever a person who’s been themselves generally insulated from prejudice observes and speaks out against harm being done to others.

Tonight I’m speaking at BAFTA’s Games Journalism Debate with Jon Hicks, Guy Cocker and the great Kieron Gillen. If you’re in the area, come on by if you can — we’ll also be announcing the winners of the Games Journalism Prizes, which I helped judge, in spite of the fact I have some conflicting feelings about prizes. Exciting experiment, at least, and sure to be an interesting discussion.

Tomorrow I’m off to Nottingham for the opening event for the GameCity programme, whereby a series of exciting Nights events will culminate in the annual festival. Come to that too! Let’s hang out all week! If you see me, say hello. I’m new around here.

And listen to my new mixtape! For some reason I made it using my housemate’s Spotify, don’t think he made it, it was totally me

Microsoft is launching a new gaming console Brand Presence for your living room. It is a family entertainment center where you can pretend you are a football player or a gun man with more lifelike detail than ever before. Innovation! Read my editorial.

This blogger is quite correct in that I’m not the target market. Yet I’m usually the one with the “yes, but it isn’t for you” retort. Not this time: Perhaps it’s the “content whale” they describe, yes — but I think that’s actually a much narrower slice of America (because a lot of the content and services described so far are unlikely to be available so robustly elsewhere) than people think.

Whether or not it’s for me, I just don’t think a device for the home tech-curious with plenty of money to burn is a sustainable gaming platform. They will buy the top five, or the top ten biggest console franchises, maybe, but indie games? Anything whatsoever outside the risk-averse mainstream that the top-tier AAA publishers produce?

The cost of game development isn’t decreasing — companies like Microsoft and Sony see to that when they present Eyeball Physics and Forearm Hairs as the admirable future of play. This mainstream target audience thinks better graphics mean better games. That means risk-taking and creative maturation will take place on more open, less-expensive platforms — and the built-in audience for, say, PC, browser, tablet, mobile, anything else — is already there and has nothing to prove.

Any developer outside the corporate infrastructure is more interested in Steam and Android and things like that than a console. Developers are growing up, too. Microsoft is asking them to go once more unto the breach and spend 65 hour weeks on Franchise Sequel 7 in the hopes the gadget consumer, fundamentally more interested in flashy accessories than in the games themselves, will make their work profitable. I’d bet fewer professionals than ever are interested in that working proposition, when they have so many other options that didn’t exist even at the beginning of this generation.

The Wii exploded into mainstream homes across America, but we quickly learned they bought Nintendo games and little else — even music and fitness software proved to be a fad that ebbed.

And Nintendo is absolutely struggling to upgrade its Wii audience into a Wii U audience, even with a meaningful evolution on the control system that seemed pretty smart and logical to lots of people, myself included. I am incredibly skeptical that Microsoft can upgrade its Xbox 360 audience into an Xbox One audience just because it has premium viewing features the prior console doesn’t.

So,  fine. The Xbox One may continue the console market. It just won’t be as relevant or diverse or interesting as the console market once was. And, I’m betting, unlikely to be as profitable, but we’ll see.

“Twenty years of playing a pair of arms,” a friend mused bleakly as we watched the presentation.

There is, hopefully, an entire Xbox Live presentation to be seen at E3. I’m looking forward to that, since a more accessible, healthier, indie-friendly online infrastructure with a good and flexible pricing model could make all the difference here.

Anyway, if you missed the presentation, you can just check out this highlight reel. Our friend Matt Lees takes on the event in this video, which is so good that I’ve watched it like four times now (Matt also pulls off a dress incredibly well and teaches you how to make scones in this ‘unusual’ board game review).

Also Spoiler got married to Spoilerette. Latest Game of Thrones recap is up! Thanks as always to the excellent commenters for a rad discussion.

Hi from London! My first great act was to join a Eurovision party, and here’s my comprehensive wrap-up of the strange, glorious song contest that most Americans don’t understand, featuring my friends Ste Curran on how the event is “the single high point” in these performers’ career, and Laurie Penny on “the British allergy to taking anything at all seriously.”

You’ve just got to check it out. One of the contestants is basically a Castlevania character. As a contrast to my sentimental Eurovision writeup, have Warren Ellis’ snarky tweets. I can’t say I didn’t laugh a little.

The Setup is a really cool site that profiles individuals who depend on technology and tools to do their work, and examines their relationship to the stuff they use. I was interviewed recently there, and I talked about my lightweight setup (you might be surprised), my preference for impermanent tools, and my nostalgia for heavy old physical tech.

In my newest Gamasutra editorial, my imagination was piqued by Valve’s detailed Steam Trading Cards, achievements system that has not only the expected digital cheerleading — but collecting, crafting, trading, leveling and social status elements. It’s practically a whole other game unto itself. Is that a good thing, do you think?

London’s lovely so far. I’ve been playing board games with my housemates and our friends (last night was a police game involving donut tokens). Near us is a McDonalds that currently has some kind of “Tastes of America” promotional period where each couple weeks there is a burger themed around a different region of the States.

The “Taste of Arizona” burger had nacho chips and pepperoni on it. You know, just like Arizona traditionally does. Hee hee.

Sorry for the little radio silence here, but I’m in the midst of packing for a big move — I’m leaving tomorrow to spend the next six months or so in London, and I’m really excited to get to know the games development community in the UK.

I really love the New York scene. There’s the forward-thinking veterans of design and academia and their brilliant students at NYU’s Game Center — I was lucky enough to get to meet some of Eric Zimmerman’s MFA students and see their projects when I guest-taught a class on how indie developers can work with the games press. I recently interviewed Eric and his fellow local colleague Naomi Clark on the relaunch of iconic Sissyfight 2000, and there’s a lot on the community, heritage and ethos of New York in games dev in Sissyfight‘s history.

And we have an incredible indie scene here thanks to our students along with superstars like Zach Gage and Andy Nealen, and to Babycastles, the DIY collective that’s focused on bringing innovative indies from around the world to handmade arcade cabinets here in the city. I had the great privilege of curating a Babycastles exhibit myself a few years back.

There are also great design conferences here, from PRACTICE (check out a little of my past PRACTICE coverage here) to visits from guest lecturers like Tim Schafer and Richard Lemarchand, and we just recently played host to Different Games, for what I hope will be the first of many years.

I’ll be back in the city in June to give a keynote at Games For Change, along with Ian Bogost, Robin Hunicke, Brenda Romero and Jesse Schell, which is fantastic company to be in.

But as much as I love it here, I’m curious about other scenes. If you work in games in the UK, please get in touch — I’d love to meet you and see what you’re working on. My usual output might be somewhat diminished until I get properly settled, so please bear with me!

One of the exciting things about such a big move is that I can really only keep what fits in one big suitcase. Quite cleansing, really! But I happen to own a plush Companion Cube, from that first official run Valve produced around the time Portal fever first hit. I can’t fit it in my suitcase, but I can’t bear to throw it away, either.

The result was me clutching the little thing, hovering anxiously between my full suitcase and an open trash bin, trying to find some other way to solve the puzzle besides to dispose of it. Felt familiar, if you get my drift. I still haven’t been able to consign it to death.

Right now I’m enjoying reading more than opining, so rather than ‘weigh in,’ I’m going to share some links that I think make for essential reading in the ongoing dialogue on personal games, games as self-expression, and cultural participation.

There are a variety of different perspectives expressed here, and even those in agreement express nuances particular to their own experiences. There are also some related posts making the rounds that I haven’t gathered here — these are just the ones I’ve been reading myself lately. If you’re like me, you’re watching the conversation emerge and thinking about how you yourself feel.

Darius Kazemi’s “Fuck Videogames”
Ian Bogost’s “Doing Things Is Okay”
Liz Ryerson’s “an in-depth response to ['Fuck Videogames']”
Porpentine’s “7 Thoughts On Women In Games”
Raph Koster’s “On Personal Games”
Emily Short’s “A View from a Different Rock”

These conversations are currently much more interesting to me than, say, what console specs are going to get unveiled at E3 or whatever. My newest Edge column to come online asks the commercial next-gen to prove its relevance to mature, empathetic adults.

Also here’s a design analysis of Candy Box, because why not. And apropos of nothing, my newest Game of Thrones recap is also up.

One of the ways I best understand games is by trying to think about what it is about who we are that makes us want to play and to make them. Why did this particular medium choose us, and why did we choose it?

I still think all the time of this Turbo Grafx-16 game I liked as a child: A young man beams into town on a rainbow against the backdrop of a red sky. Accompanied by a surreal, plinky tune he receives inscrutable advice from salespeople, is a bright cutout of turquoise and white as lucky cats tumble endlessly through the air, whistling when they drop coins.

Continue reading →

“A lot of the perceived rewards of expressing something as a game are extrinsic rewards from the culture that’s sprung up around gaming, and rather than chase those rewards in all cases, it’s better/more rewarding to pursue the intrinsic reward of successfully expressing something on a case-by-case basis, in whatever medium fits that idea best. [...] Buying into the idea that validation can/should/will come from a given culture is way more nourishing to that culture than it is to you.”

– Rob Dubbin, via Darius Kazemi’s “Fuck Videogames“

Yesterday I published a piece about Twitter that’s proving somewhat controversial. Good; it was intended as a provocation.

I have an enormously fraught relationship with Twitter, and it fascinates me. I use it to broadcast my work, to socialize with friends and colleagues, and sometimes to solicit feedback, ideas and a relationship with my readership. Obviously when you solicit responses, you’re expected to be responsible for that reaction. And if you’re on the service to begin with, you’ve signed a contract with what my friend Helena describes as the essential creepiness of inviting strangers to “follow” you in an ecosystem of voyeurism. Even the word “follow” is kind of unnerving in context, she suggests.

But I’m disconcerted often by the idea that there is ‘no etiquette’ for Twitter, no obligation on the part of the audience — and sometimes I’m an audience too, to others — to consider the recipient of their attention as a human being, and I think it’s rational for me to be a little unsettled that people actually take offense at the suggestion they should consider how they use the access they have to other people.

Continue reading →

This past weekend, I went to the Different Games conference was at NYU Polytechnic here in Brooklyn, and a lot of great speakers came to town! Courtney Stanton and Merritt Kopas held a workshop on Twine games — I’m a huge fan of Merritt’s, so it was kind of embarrassing when she asked Sarah and I what we were working on, and we had to explain that in fact we were making an interactive story about the fictional Jersey moms that Sarah and I often pretend we are.

Merritt was very kind. If you’ve not played her games, please do — there is a candor and intimacy to her work that really impresses me. Courtney’s also been doing interesting things with Twine. At Different Games, she showcased the result of an experiment that saw her making a small Twine game every day. It’s like an interactive diary. She told me she feels that no individual game in the set is remarkable alone, but taken collectively there’s a texture to the entire work, and a growth arc in her relationship to the tool that can be perceived.

At the end of the Twine workshop, everyone played Porpentine’s Cry$tal Warrior Ke$ha out loud. You should probably once in your life get a roomful of people to play Crystal Warrior Ke$ha out loud, cheering out the choices they want you to make. It will undoubtedly inject you with some amount of zeal for life.

At the conference, Mary Flanagan talked about the way games can embody and communicate values. She shared some of her work designing physical games that explore and challenge prejudice, or that exemplify the powerful impact a theme or an idea can have on an audience’s willingness to engage with a system. Truly awesome stuff, and importantly, helps show that games that teach and communicate don’t have to be serious or preachy.

I moderated a panel with Robert Yang, Anna Anthropy, Mattie Brice and Haitham Ennasr, where each shared their perspectives on the weight and purpose of individuals making voiced, deeply-personal games. I also wrote an article about the panel while moderating it. I guess I thought I’d just take notes on the presentations so I could ask them good questions, but  it ended up kind of being complete thoughts.

There’s video of the panel embedded in my article, too, and it’s smart, inspiring stuff. A friend and I were talking about games writing today. She asked me if I liked games, and I said it was a complicated question. I don’t always like the game industry, or “gamer culture,” nor many aspects of traditional development culture. The state of commercial games today often makes me wonder why I bother working in games at all.

But when people talk about what the act of creation has meant to them as individuals, and the power games can have to confront and provoke and to sow empathy, I remember why I fundamentally love the medium of games and want to see it nurtured.

My latest Creator’s Project column catches up with Austin Wintory and his compositions for Monaco, and why you ought to love games if you want to make music for them.

Finally, how great was that last episode of Game of Thrones? My latest recap and discussion is live at Boing Boing, where I actually find myself looking forward to reading and engaging with the comments on something I’ve written for the first time I can remember.