I just wanted to explain the recent inactivity here. Just as soon as I can finish the semester I will continue to spout information like the expert I am. No worries. First on the list, I will tell you all about why virtual worlds != MMORPGs, or even, as I like to call them, PMOGs. Second I will reveal the secrets of Hogan Hot Dogs and the Australian Incident (Shhh!).

But in the mean time, tide yourself over with these links and behold the wonder of mutation, evolution, and Internet memes!

1. Venom Can Drive
2. Watch Venom Drive
3. Venoms G/F Can Drive

And now that you’re hooked, read all about it here: Internet Phenomena, Memes, and Storytelling in the Information Age

Since I’ve been thinking about short form games lately, I found the following bit of text interesting from The Media Equation by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass. The authors were testing the effects of interruptions in media experiences.
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It is now spring break, and my team for TK11D has been meeting up every day at Mike and Charlie’s apartment. We’ve left our computers setup in the living room and have been working for several hours a day on fairly individual tasks. I love working in the same space for the open communication it provides, and the almost immediate response you get when you need someone to do or change something they’ve been working on in order to better fit together or work at all with something new that’s come up. For instance, if I am putting a level together and notice a problem with a rounded doorway, I can simply walk into the next room and ask Mike what he thinks, and then have a new rectangular doorway at my disposal before I know it. This level of connection between the various aspects of game development, I feel, dramatically improves productivity within the project as a whole, and helps maintain a high level of continuity for the game.

But the main thing I wanted to note here relates to my last post a bit. As we work in this less interrupted fashion afforded to us by spring break, I’ve noticed that I haven’t played any games at all! This reminds me of a session about student independent games that I attended at the GDC. Kim Swift from Valve noted that one advantage of student game developers is that they are likely more in touch with games, having more free time to play them. It does seem slightly deranged that the more involved with game development one gets, the less in touch with games they are, and I can only imagine how even the slightest trickle of family life could drive the final nail in the coffin of a game developer’s game playing career. A solemn prospect!

However, this theme in turn reminds me of another talk from the GDC. Warren Spector discussed the problem of requiring 40 hours to finish a game in his talk about the future of story in games, and proposed an interesting if not obvious solution: the short-form game. How does a video game work as a short story? This is a topic I am very interested in and will explore more in a later post.

Welcome to my new personal website. This is not the first endeavor of its kind for me, but rather the latest iteration in a series that seems to continually pronounce itself forcefully before gradually fading from existence. It is interesting how opposed digital and physical existences seem (for me), and how observing them graphed over a large enough period of time reveals such an undulating pattern of tall crests and sunken troughs, rather than some sort of linear balance. While this current installment has been artificially inserted in the depths of such a trough, I will hopefully see through with its realization.