Art game guy Jason Rohrer in Metaplace

 Posted by (Visited 7564 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Aug 182009
 

Jason Rohrer, known for games like Passage, will be on the Metaplace stage this Friday. I am sure that most of the readers of this blog know about him, but I will paste all this info in anyway! I’ll embed the actual event when it happens (and the link to The Stage is on the blog sidebar as well), so you can just come here to attend.

If you know indie game development or art game communities that might be interested, pass this along!

http://www.metaplace.com/calendar/event/4v7f3tndou1tkg18l0kvfsvfmk

Where: TheStage <http://www.metaplace.com/TheStage/play>
When: August 21
Duration: 12:00pm – 1:00pm PDT

Come chat in a Q&A Session with Indie Game Designer and programmer Jason Rohrer!

Please submit any questions ahead of time by sending a Metamail to Cuppycake!

In 2007, Rohrer created the free indie game Passage, which received mainstream media coverage for its depiction of mortality and the tradeoffs of married life in an interactive experience.

Rohrer releases all his software for free download under the GNU GPL or into the public domain and tries to earn his living via donations from the users of his software. However, he does charge for the iPhone ports of his games.

He creates a game a month for The Escapist. His fifth game, Between, is hosted by Esquire Magazine as an adjunct to Rohrer’s profile in the December 2008 issue.

Rohrer’s latest game, Primrose, was released on February 19, 2009. It is a departure from the art-game theme, and is a simple puzzle game. He is currently working on a game for the Nintendo DS to be published by Majesco in 2010. It is a strategy game “about diamond trading in Angola on the eve of the passage of the Kimberly Process.”

Previous Projects:
konspire2b: a pseudonymous channel-based file-distribution system
token word: a Xanadu-style text editing system
tangle: a proxy server which tries to find relationships between websites a user visits.
MUTE: a file sharing network with anonymity in mind.
Monolith: a thought experiment that might be relevant to digital copyright. This has expanded to a computer program implemented on his ideas.
seedBlogs: a modular building block that lets you add PHP and MySQL-backed dynamic content to any website.
silk: a web-based hypertext system to simplify web page linking. Similar to wiki markup.
hyperlit: a literary hypertext authoring system.
subreal: a distributed evolution system.

Read more here:
http://blogs.ign.com/citizenmike/2009/08/10/126533/

http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2008/future-of-video-game-design-1208

Creative Place-Making

 Posted by (Visited 5527 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Aug 182009
 

Via Bernie DeKoven comes this:

What constitutes ‘a ground of play’? What are the universal conditions of a place of play?

From the consilience of these sciences, let me suggest three rules for a healthy ground of play:

1 It must have loose but robust governance

2 It must ensure a surplus of time, space and stuff

3 It must treat failure, risk and mess as necessary for development

via The Play Ethic: The Play Ethic and Creative Place-Making: Doing What Comes Naturally?

Sounds rather “magic circley” but it is a good prescription nonetheless. The article goes on to discuss this as a way of making more playful spaces in general — including workspaces:

But I think a case can be made (which I hope I’ve begun to make tonight) that cultural managers could base their policies on the legitimacy of a play ethic, as the main characterisation of a productive, value-creating life in the 21st century, than a work ethic.

The post author has a book, too.

Video Games Are Dead video, part 2

 Posted by (Visited 5021 times)  Game talk
Aug 172009
 

Video Games Are Dead – Part 2 – Players Only – Digital Trends Videos.

I’m not in this one. 🙂

As losses continue to mount, price cuts remain slow to materialize and more and more blockbuster releases are delayed until 2010, the PC and video game industry finds itself at a crossroads. The big question: Will it power up in time to save itself from going the way of the arcade? With the stakes higher than ever, we ask the field’s best and brightest what’s causing the biz to short circuit, whether the virtual landscape has permanently changed, and how to save interactive entertainment. Join us for the conclusion of our critically-acclaimed season opener as we discover whether or not it’s too late to hit restart.

GDC Austin discount code here

 Posted by (Visited 6077 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Aug 132009
 

I am on the advisory board for GDC Austin. That lets me give you a perk! Because you read this blog, you get 20% off your registration. Click the image above, or this link: http://www.gdcaustin.com/register and use the code GDCAADVISORY in the reg form. if you use it before Early Bird ends, which is well, today, then the 20% applies to the lower rate. Hurry hurry. 🙂

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