March 23, 2008
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!