Click Nothing

design from a long time ago

recent posts

  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: Film

  • Video Games Are Better

    Having read Ian Bogost’s recent piece in The Atlantic several times now, I think I’ve managed to digest what he’s saying and figure out how I feel about it. First off, I feel the piece is trying to do too much. Bogost opens by eulogizing Maxis, and celebrating the studio’s impressive contribution to our medium,…

  • Dynamics: the long and the short versions

    Last night was the opening night of the Art of Games exhibit at the EMP Museum, and along with several other great speakers from local the local industry, Valve co-worker Dave Kircher and I were there to give short talks about programming and design respectively. My talk, titled The Art of Games, Why Are We…

  • [REDACTED] The Dominant Cultural Form of the 21st Century

    Recently I was in an email discussion with some friends and colleagues (who will ironically go unnamed here) about the whole ‘game designers getting their name on the box’ debate. Putting the two related (but different) issues of credit standards and the absurdity of boxes themselves aside for another time, I want to talk about…

  • Didacticism in Game Design

    There is a trend in game development that has been growing a head of steam over the last couple years, and I have some concerns about it. The trend is in support of the notion that game developers need to somehow demonstrate the maturity of their medium and of their own creative capabilities by making…

  • Click Nothing Tour 2009 – Part IV

    Savannah. It's hot here – like 25 degrees and sweltering humid. Didn't expect that as I'd been keeping an eye on the temperature in the weeks before we left, but what can you do. So far, things have been going very well. After GameX, I did three big schools pretty much back-to-back. First was CMU…

  • Live and Let Die

    So, what started as an experiment by Ben over at Sometimes Life Requires Consequence is starting to pick up steam. It's been tagged a couple times now at Game Set Watch and Kieron Gillen over at Rock Paper Shotgun blasted some buckshot his way in today's Sunday Papers. Already at least a couple other players…

  • The Well of Souls

    This is awesome. Somehow, someone dug up and posted the transcript of several days of discussion between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan where they conceived and developed the story for Raiders of the Lost Ark. I won't recap the post from the original blogger – get over there and read it. And then…

  • Escape from City 17

    This is pretty sweet. Tracking down the creators reveals they are David and Ian Purchase – the Purchase Brothers – who seem to be a Toronto-based directing duo. They appear to be represented by Sons and Daughters agency in Toronto. You can see their page on the Sons and Daughters site here, where their other…

  • 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…

  • 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…