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“…words are a critically important driver in the success of the end user experience, and therefore a writer is a critically important player in the beginning. Period.” Spot on stuff here – makes me feel guilty for being lax on copy on some recent work.
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Moving away from modelling and into vast-scale collection; back to the ways of natural philosophy. Only this time: we really can collect enough *stuff*.
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Thayer uploaded her creature directly to Youtube from Spore Creature Creator. *That*’s the kind of integration I’m talking about. How hard can it be?
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This isn’t helping my suspicions that Melodyne is some kind of dark magic. Incredible.
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These are useful.
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“it’s a shame that a book as significant and thorough as [this] isn’t better than it is, a victim of poor editing, poor organization, and a frustrating inconsistency, as the book veers from true history to trite encyclopedia…”
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“the nintendo ds is an excellent platform for homebrew audio software – here’s an (incomplete) list of some of the excellent sound toys that are available for the platform.” Awesome. More listed in the comments, too.
NLGD wrap-up
29 June 2008
As mentioned earlier, I spoke at the NLGD Festival of Games conference in Utrecht a few weeks ago; it’s only now that I’ve got time to write it up.
I had a lot of fun: I got to meet a lot of smart people and as well as seeing some excellent presentations, on everything from interaction design to data visualisation, from storytelling to mobile play. I also got to participate in one of the best beer tracks I’ve seen in recent years, and met lots of lovely, smart, switched-on people and talk to (and at) them at length. I’ve got reams of notes to condense at some point, and lots of happy memories; in my books, that’s a success. Many thanks to the organisers, and to everybody who made me feel so welcome and who engaged me in chat.
I’d love to put the talk online, but you’ll have to wait a few more weeks; I’m going to be presenting a slightly tweaked version of the talk at the Develop conference in Brighton (as part of its Online track). Have no fear, though: once I’m done in Brighton, the slides and notes will all be online.
In the meantime, you might be interested in a brief interview I did with Gamasutra, which is now online, and which touches on some of the topics both of my own session and the rest of the conference.
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“sometimes we geeks forget about all the delightful and beautiful things we can build. The things that aren’t necessarily useful or purposeful, but pointless, silly and wonderful.” Tom on fire with lots of lovely examples.
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More Ferry Halim, and it’s a wonderful little one-button game. Also, the music is as good as ever, except it’s cheery rather than heartbreaking, which helps.
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“The city goes dark. The tolling gets louder. In all the region’s cemeteries, the soil starts to quake.” Oh god yes. Lovely article about earthquake dampers and giant clocks.
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“I believe there’s a much larger story about how our whole civilisation is based to some extent on our desire for booze – one that goes back even further than human civilisation itself.” James on fine form at Interesting.
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“…making that context a part of your marketing is going to be much more relevant to customers than being dismissive of your competitors could ever be.” Alex on marketing and copywriting, again. Good stuff (and: good snacks!)
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“Pizza Party is a free text based software package for ordering pizza, or for throwing pizza parties.” This is awesome.
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Man page for pizza_party: “pizza_party -pmx 2 medium regular \ Orders 2 medium regular crust pizzas with pepperoni, mushrooms, and extra-cheese.” This is just pure awesome.
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More on Jumpstyle – although I’m really digging the progression into Shuffle highlighted here. I love this stuff. Also, I’m a sucker for choreography.
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There’s a link at the end of this thread to a patched OSX version of Cave Story. Excellent!
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“Do you enjoy classic 2D platformers? Then boy, are you in luck!” Massive MeFi post collecting a whole bunch of indie platform games.
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GPS for cycling with time-attack and training modes; lets you race against yourself (or virtual competitors) over time, and track progress on the PC-based training application.
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“What that means, though, is that when you’re looking at game writing in that way, you’re trying to fix a busted carburetor with an oil gauge and a cheese grater.” Some sensible analysis; such a shame we need to write things like this.
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“…visiting [Lego’s] secret vault guarding almost every Lego set ever manufactured—touched me in a way I didn’t expect. This wasn’t amazement or simple awe… these were tickets to ride a time portal to emotions and simpler days long forgotten.”
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Lovely article on the localisation work for Etrian Odyssey on the DS. Tight memory restrictions leads to translators having to be smart; Atlus’ team appear to be that.
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“A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the “directional markings” on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.” And so forth. Very funny reviews for a somewhat overpriced product.
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“A couple years ago, it occurred to me that learning some basic finance/investing (which sadly, isn’t really taught at all anywhere in the school system) might not be a bad idea.” Leonard Lin shares his investment spreadsheet.
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“[Sony]… lost USD 2.16 billion on PS3 in 2007, and a further USD 1.16 billion this year… the company has warned investors that … ‘the large-scale investment…may not be fully recovered'” This isn’t sustainable, guys.
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“WE MAKE GOOD TEAM”. Lovely.
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Some good stuff and choice quotes about the background to the Big Picture, a truly wonderful blog of the stories hidden inside wire photojournalism.
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Awesome. Server set up to play karaoke; players mix appalling singing with a bit of the old ultraviolence. I miss PC gamers.
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Wonderful, wonderful, one-button game that looks like those cave-surfing games but isn’t. Gorgeous.
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“It’s time for direct action against bad game-related degrees.” Yes, yes, yes. A thoughtful, sensible article… and one that applies to many other fields, too. Such a waste.
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A good article, until the last sentence which made me VERY ANGRY.
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“There’s a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It’s the single most expensive way there is to get the work done.” Yes, yes, yes; a great article, with lots of good references.
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” He came from the hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song. He had all of America rapping this summer. If that ain’t Hip Hop then what is?” 21st Century beefs, with Kanye weighing in. Great.
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“Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.” Iain Tait with some DFW. Sharp stuff.