Link Madness, Part 2: Down to Earth
After the hyperbole in my last post, here is a more grounded series of links. First, pieces from three of my favorite game journalists: Clive Thompson, Chris Dahlen and Kieron Gillen.
- I quoted Clive’s piece, Videogames are Post-Turing, in our recent discussion of transparency in the behavior of NPCs. See links to Bart Simon’s paper in that discussion too.
- I hope Chris is right: may YouTube speed the demise of cutscenes in games!
- Kieron Gillen on text in games, past and future.
- The Sims 3 has officially been announced! The Create-A-Sim screenshots look great. I look forward to hearing more detail about the AI.
- Dan Cook of Lost Garden wrote up the brainstorming on interactive story that took place at this year’s Project Horseshoe thinktank. They launched a blog called FabulaRasa, though not much discussion has occurred there yet.
- If this has been linked to in the past from GTxA, I couldn’t find it: IF Arcade. Posted on Kotaku by Ian Bogost, from a tip from Nick.
- Conference talks on interactive story: a GDC talk on story in BioShock; a DICE panel debate on story in games; a GDC panel debate on story in games; and a GDC talk on emergent behavior in a new MMO, APB.
- On the topic of interactive story: the arcade-rollout of Cecropia’s The Act has been cancelled, let’s hope it sees the light of day in some other form or fashion; Borut muses on emergent player character arcs; and design tips from Neil Sorens for making stories emerge from sandbox games.
- Indie game links: a roundup of the experimental gameplay workshop at GDC; the explosion of great indie games makes it hard to choose “best of”; tips on making great indie games; and a postmortem of Play With Fire.
- Game design links: Agency within the narrative of a game is a still a new idea to some; an analysis of how games can stir emotions; on the desire for deeply interactive characters; and the Soul of the Sims.
- Hyper- and cybertext links: Charles Deemer’s video Intro to Hyperdrama; a hypertext writing workshop by Steve Ersinghaus; Susan Gibb’s blog on writing hypertext; and reviving languages with chatbots on WRT.
- Game studies links: top five game romances; Part One of a documentary on video games, Gamer Revolution, that looks as good or better than Rise of the Videogame from last year, which on the whole I found mediocre.
- Cool projects worth a look: a Disney ride incorporating games and interactive animatronics; Endless Ocean (1 2); story-game The Outsider, and Dog’s Life; The Reprover (1 2), a hyperfiction with graphics; and Pigeons in the Park, an animated dialog tree on meaty topics.
That’s all folks!
March 24th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
The “Gamer” Revolution is pretty good, but Playing Columbine is going to be the most diverse as far as what games are capable of. Most of the documentaries I’ve seen have focused too much on the mainstream, a forgivable sin for those who’ve never made a game.