January 3, 2006
2005 Detritus, and Love from the Tunnel
Wait, before we say goodbye to 2005, let me quickly throw out a few extra links that shouldn’t be forgotten:
- Innovation pains: a fascinating pair of Gamespot articles discussing the difficulty of innovating in mainstream gaming, including frank quotes from a bemused Tim Schafer and an ever-optimistic Neil Young.
- A holodeck for crickets: very cool.
- A research community within a game: Katherine Isbister and Chelsea Hash’s sim SBRL.
- Making stories meaningful for thousands: A presentation by Mirjam Eladhari, The Holy Grail of MMOG Design.
- Spielberg as unappreciated game designer? A glowing review of The Dig, 1995.
- Everybody clicks in LA: digital art in SoCal.
- EA fishing for AI talent: The Tank Wars competition, but only open to select schools in the North America and the UK. Also see this article.
- “You can’t polish a turd”, and other young turk wisdoms: How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: Tips and Tricks from 4 Grad Students Who Made Over 50 Games in 1 Semester.
And finally, 2005 ends on a nice note for Michael and me, with indie game site Game Tunnel awarding Façade 1st place for Innovative Game of the Year, as well as 4th place for Best Adventure Game, and 4th place for Best Sound. Thanks, Game Tunnel!
January 13th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
The LA Weekly article on the New Media scene in LA linked above started a heated discussion on the iDC mailing list last October
(check out the archives – “interesting article on New Media scene in LA” thread). Started with a tongue-in-cheek post from New York artist Robbin Murphy: “The military/education/entertainment complex that exists in So Cal is where the money is because of the economic trajectory of the Pacific Rim. I’m not sure how much any of this has to do with art but I do find it interesting that they’ve lured so many “new media artists” from New York, just as Cal Arts did with conceptual artists in the ‘eighties. I like to think we sent them the riff-raff.”
January 15th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
I find it slightly strange that someone from New York, the banking/finance capital of the world, would criticize Los Angeles for drawing artists because “that’s where the money is”, even tongue-in-cheek. Does he think the reason there are so many artists in NYC is unrelated to the huge number of wealthy patrons located there?