June 16, 2006

Games in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

by Andrew Stern · , 1:02 am

Chris Crawford’s at it again, stirring up trouble with more over-the-top invective for the game industry — and, of course, an offer of salvation, Storytronics. Actually, I saw him speak at the Northwest Games Festival a couple of weeks ago, and he did a good job proselytizing his mission, attempting to make converts among us in the audience. (This is getting a little too L. Ron Hubbard…) More on that when the festival gets written up by organizer Beth A. Dillon. Till then, read reactions from Design Synthesis, The Ludologist, Joystiq, Gamer Junk. And as a general palliative, check out this essay on fanaticism among game opinionators at Only a Game.

Just when you thought it was safe to turn to page 49, Choose Your Own Adventure books are back! (From our archive, here’s an analysis of how one of these are structured.)

The topic this month on the excellent empyre listserv is “liquid narrative“, although the discussion so far seems a bit parched. Maybe you can juice it up!

WRT informs us of two interesting developments: Literatronica, the next generation of hypertext authoring, and e-motive, visual poetry in the digital age.

Scott McCloud has a new publication forthcoming, Making Comics, and is planning a 50-state speaking tour as well.

Jane Pinckard at game girl advance has a series of posts (1 2 3) covering the recent Sex in Games conference, in which she starts off excited, then loses interest, then finishes up reasonably satisfied.

Eurogamer interviews Valve folks about their foray into episodic gaming.

Make It Big in (Indie) Games describes Five Realistic Steps To Starting A Game Development Company.

2 Responses to “Games in the Valley of the Shadow of Death”


  1. The Daily Graze » Notation for Structural Specification Says:

    […] e to examine the structure of a game. I found it through a trail of links that started at Grand Text Auto’s coverage of the Chris Crawford controv […]

  2. andrew Says:

    A bunch of people react to Chris’ statements, compiled together in this Gamasutra article.

    I love how so many people refer to Nintendogs as innovative. Of course it had innovations, but it wasn’t exactly a new idea folks. This industry’s got a short memory. Ruff.

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