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design from a long time ago

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  1. Sven's avatar
  2. Unknown's avatar

    I’m one of the author’s in the 2022 opdc (didn’t win anything, still trying to bear up under the shame…

  3. Arya's avatar
  4. Max Clark's avatar
  5. Kfix's avatar

    Thank you for this very interesting collection, and for wrestling with the obviously mixed feelings on this anniversary. And thank…

Category: Design Theory

  • Our Man in Havana Returns

    It’s been a long time since I posted – but I have a real excuse, with links to prove it. Aside from Christmas, and an extra week of vacation in Havana I managed to squeeze in as a result of the game being delayed, I’ve been busy as hell meeting with the press and promoting…

  • Festival du Nouveau Cinema Presentation

    So I had the opportunity to give a presentation at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema here in Montreal yesterday. The theme of this years Festival was ‘Immersion’ and much of the Festival was devoted to exploring new techniques in displaying film (360 degree projection, 3d, etc), and as a component of the Festival they did…

  • Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock

    The problem of what the game is about [traduit en francais ici] About a year ago, I praised Ian Bogost's critique of Bully and lamented the unfortunate lack of game criticism, as distinct from game reviews. Roughly speaking, we could say game criticism is for game developers and professionals who want to think about the…

  • Narrative and Flow

    Although I have not seen the presentation myself, nor had the chance to look at the slides and notes, Pat is back from Austin and he’s posted the materials from his talk. By all accounts it went well, hopefully we’ll find an hour when we’re not putting out fires (or starting them) so he can…

  • I’m not in Austin

    But Pat is. Pat is the Narrative Designer on my project, and has been busting his ass for the last 2+ years to do all the nuts and bolts work of making this crazy dynamic interactive narrative we dreamed up for Far Cry 2 actually work. He’ll be sharing some (but nowhere near all) of…

  • On Authorship in Games

    Not that long ago, famed film critic Roger Ebert stated that games are not, and indeed, cannot be, art. Recently, following up on a response made by author/game convergence guy Clive Barker at the Hollywood And Games Summit, Ebert clarified his claims. Ebert’s basic argument is that art requires authorship, and that games abdicate authorship…

  • Hey UNESCO – What About Us?

    I know that it is incredibly old school to read a newspaper while waiting for a BLT in a pub at lunchtime while out shopping, but I was in an old school kinda mood today. Flipping through the weekend ‘Life’ section of the Gazette, I discovered that the City was hosting ‘Design Montreal’s Open House’,…

  • Hollywood’s Bloody Ballet – What Game Design Can Learn From 300

    OrIf We Would Just Kneel – And Why We’d Rather Die For all of the lip service we pay to the notion of convergence, how many of us really understand what it means? Most often in the game industry convergence is used exclusively to refer to the coming together of games and movies. More ideally,…

  • GDC – Part V – Smith and Smith

    So this (late) post will be my last one about GDC. It will briefly cover my impressions of my two favorite sessions which I already acknowledged will probably not be surprising to anyone. Both were design talks, and both tackled specific issues in design that I have thought about often, but have never had the…

  • GDC – Part IV – Second Best

    So for some people, these two talks might come out of the blue. Both of them were in tough slots, and both of them were in small rooms. One was about level design and one was about writing. Two topics that speakers have a hard time impressing me with. But as was the case with…