Grand Text Auto

This segment on the Today show, aired June 18, 2009, talks about how the games industry is increasingly focusing on girls and women in game creation and marketing. While the segment has its cringeworthy moments (floating talking head in a video game world, ew!), it mostly provides a good overview of current industry thinking about designing and marketing games for girls and women. Interviews with women on the floor of GDC are generally very good.

My daughter Tatum is shown in the segment (she’s in the light blue top with brown straps). She was invited up to Ubisoft in San Francisco for an afternoon during GDC for the taping of the segment. They were great hosts!

Chaos Theory looks great even now, mainly due to its strong filter effects

Spurred on by the delicious gameplay for Splinter Cell: Conviction at E3, as well as somehow managing to contract a cold in the Californian summertime, I found myself downloading Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory from the Xbox Originals service. I expected to be underwhelmed by the graphics, as it’s often easy to let graphical fidelity get in the way of a play experience (for those unconvinced, I dare you to try and play Final Fantasy VII again!).

I am pleasantly surprised to say I am wrong: this game remains a great, thrilling experience.