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A little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of fact, a few reminders of the past. Especially the old Kit-Kat wrappers.
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"In the game you are rewarded for keeping your tracks together while navigating through the surreal world of an "architectural" diagram. The camera moves in continuous motion and the object is to finish the course with as many points as possible." Watch the trailer; it's astoundingly pretty. Can't wait for this one!
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"On my todo list still is an evil twin of iamnear, designed to be difficult and disorientating in use, but rewarding in unexpected ways should you persevere with it. As Kevin Slavin recently said in his talk at the BLDGBLOG book launch: “a world and a life in which you are always the centre of the map… fuck that”."
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"I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everyday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books." Bookmarks, dedications, receipts, adverts. Lovely.
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Andrew Plotkin on some of the design of Inform 7, and rule-based programming as it applies to IF. Long story short: everything is exceptional, and designing systems to support the kind of stories IF authors want to tell is hard.
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"Flickcurl is a C library for the Flickr API, handling creating the requests, signing, token management, calling the API, marshalling request parameters and decoding responses. It uses libcurl to call the REST web service and libxml2 to manipulate the XML responses." I did not know about this, but it looks nifty. Now, to compile it on OSX…
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"So to come full circle with the sense of dissatisfaction with open world games: I think the way we experience them, by comparison with linear games, says something about how our gaming imagination functions. We seem to understand that when linear games point us in a certain direction, that’s the way to go. When an open world game appears, its very structure suggests something about how we should behave, or want to behave, and predisposes us to judge on the basis of how it entices us to go somewhere that the game itself hasn’t suggested, and on how it then deals with that action." Jim on open-world gaming.
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"While creepily capitalist in its language, the scholarship within it is sound – echoing theories that Jacobs, Alexander others presented decades ago. What’s more – it contains a lot of the same arguments for iterative design that you see in traditional game design tomes. (For a special treat – try replacing the phrases like “destination” and “retail” with “MMO” and “boxed-game”)"
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"Appfrica Labs is an investment company and software development firm that facilitates and incubates technology entrepreneurs in East Africa. We do this by offering a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that allows entrepreneurs a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals as mentors, outside of school. Entrepreneur projects are refined and prepped to help them secure funding and launch sustainable, profitable businesses." I met Jon who runs Appfrica at TEDGlobal last week; it's a great idea and, by the sounds of things, doing very well.
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"This is why arcades are still important, still relevant and still the most compelling way in which to watch and play videogames. Someone needs to take a stencil and a spray-can to every arcade cabinet they can find and write “Play me, I’m Yours” on its side, lest we forget how to perform." Simon Parkin on games as performance; awesome as ever, and exactly why I love arcades.
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"It is time you took that game you created and publish it. No more homemade board or cards. You have arrived. Now, publish it!" Ooh. Cafepress/Spreadshirt but for boardgames. Nifty – wonder what the quality's like.
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Initial trailer for Tron Legacy (previously, the horrendous TR2N); somewhat excited just to see the lightcycles back in action, and very beautiful to see a trailer with so little overblown music in it. Still, what's the potential for this to go horribly wrong?
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"Is this interview just going to be you hawking your wares for the next 20 minutes?" No, it's going to be better than that. A frank – and hilarious – interview with Mark Rein from Ellie Gibson. He really is like this, you know.
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"During the Develop conference earlier this week, Edge Online editor Alex Wiltshire chaired a panel discussion on the close relationship between architecture and videogames, and here we have a recording of the full session for you to download." I still have to write it up, but it was really, really good. Worth a listen.
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"Still, if I told myself as a child that I’d have a pocket computer powerful enough that it could play games that knocked the Spectrum into the dirt, along with music at the same time, and then look up almost anything from an encyclopedia, almost anywhere in the world, and in only a quarter of a century, I’m not sure I’d have believed it." Strong truth; I marvel at some of the technology I own, and wonder how I could ever have explained it to my eight-year-old self. Not explained the possibility; explained that it was within reach.
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"Accept that everything you say will be forgotten and ignored but write as if you and your words are immortal. Don’t just describe but justify – make sure the reader knows WHY the record exists whether the reasons are righteous or rascally. And always remember you’re not here to give consumer advice or help with people’s filing. You’re here to set people’s heads on fire."
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"In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means." Rands helps you discover what the words actually mean. As usual, he is right.
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A game about protest, conflict, and shades of gray. Worth playing through to the 'end'; certainly made me think, and unlike any game I've played in a while. Not sure how this passed me bay.
Conference time part 2: TEDGlobal 2009
20 July 2009
Back from Develop. It was very good; some good sessions, some great banter, some new friends, and my sessions didn’t go too badly. Winning all round, I think. There were two sessions I want to write some more about on Infovore when I get a chance, and I’ll also upload a tidied version of my talk in the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime: I’m off to another conference on Tuesday morning. I’m going to TEDGlobal in Oxford.
Blimey.
This all came about rather surprisingly and quick; I was invited along by Nokia, one of the sponsors of the event, who are covering my ticket. It’s highly generous of them, and to be honest, I’m not sure what criteria led to my selection.
But it’s not an offer you turn down; just look at the programme! I’d never afford the $4500 (yes, really) myself for a ticket, but it’s also an opportunity I’d never turn down if I got the chance.
So that’s next week, then: off to Oxford with a notebook and a camera, to have my mind filled, and, I hope, a little blown. Exciting times.
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"The weird thing is that you can view these “wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA’s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?" As bad as GTA? Many, many times worse, if this sample is anything to go on.
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This session was genuinely excellent, and I'm probably going to write about it in the near future. In the meantime: bookmarked.
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"Use our tools to author playable tracks. Upload and submit your tracks for review by the Rock Band Creators community. Approved tracks become available in the Rock Band Store and on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace*, and you get a cut of every purchase." Um, as pointed out elsewhere, this is utterly brilliant. Harmonix are smart cookies, and thinks like this remind me why.
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"And so, day one of my Wii Sports Resort visit sees me unceremoniously carried limp and dazed from its courts, now forever slightly gun-shy about losing myself so completely to its instinctively direct-mapped movements, in lieu of remaining hyper-aware of my immediate surroundings: a victim to and of the virtual." Brandon gets a Wii Sports Resort injury, and this tale passes into legend.