Being Done

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I recently released an iPhone/iPad game called Bounce Box, a simple arcade reflex game with trance visuals. It’s not the best game I’ve ever made or have ever wanted to make, but it is a lot of fun to play, and it’s done. Game development takes time and especially when working solo and without hard deadlines, it can be really hard to actually push something out the door. At almost every stage, there is more that can be added or polished but at a certain point all of these improvements prevent the game from ever happening.

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Thesis 2012: The Liar

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As the semester draws to a close, we’d like to preview some of the cool games-related thesis projects getting built at Parsons. Come play them at the MFADT Thesis show opening, May 6th, 7-10 PM at 6 East 16th Street // 2 West 13th Street. (And yes, there will be beer.)

THE LIAR, a point-and-click adventure game about con-men in space, by Nicolas Cinquegrani and Andrew Knaup.

Local Multiplayer Games

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I try very hard to avoid being nostalgic about games.  I think it’s problematic.  I dislike the concept of the “good old days.”  I’m a believer (or sometimes I want to believe) that games keep getting better, and that as the number of people playing digital games keeps growing, game designers will have more and more chances to create interesting new play styles.

With that said, I miss the Nintendo 64.

I’m not nostalgic about the game design decisions or the horrible/beautiful early 3D graphics.  It’s not about the strange controller or cartridges with minimal loading time (and minimal storage space).  What I miss most is Nintendo’s little black box with four controller slots, that hardware decision that brought four friends together to play games.

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Thesis 2012: Souvenir

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As the semester draws to a close, we’d like to preview some of the cool games-related thesis projects getting built at Parsons. Come play them at the MFADT Thesis show opening, May 6th, 7-10 PM at 6 East 16th Street // 2 West 13th Street. (And yes, there will be beer.)

SOUVENIR, a first person adventure game by Mohini Dutta, Ben Norskov, and Robert Yang. Music / sound design by Alejandro Ghersi. Character art and concept art by Shi “Stone” Huang.

Thesis 2012: R.A.T.

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As the semester draws to a close, we’d like to preview some of the cool games-related thesis projects getting built at Parsons. Come play them at the MFADT Thesis show opening, May 6th, 7-10 PM at 6 East 16th Street // 2 West 13th Street. (And yes, there will be beer.)

R.A.T., is a 3D platformer that redefines the use of space in a game world using perspective changes as its core mechanic, providing the player with a 2D platform experience to perceive the 3D game space, by Shan Huang.

de_dust and the reality / unreality of game architecture.

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This is part of a series of short essays I’m writing for my architecture criticism class; our assignment was to blog in our own voices about architecture.

Last July, the German new media artist Aram Bartholl secured funding from Rhizome to begin building de_dust, a popular video game level, as a 1:1 scale model cast out of solid concrete. It would be a crime to paraphrase his concisely argued rationale, so I’ve pasted a large chunk of it here:

“Computer games differ from other mediums such as books, movies or TV, in that spatial cognition is a crucial aspect in computer games. To win a game the player needs to know the 3D game space very very well. Spatial recognition and remembrance is an important part of our human capability and has formed over millions of years by evolution. A place, house or space inscribes itself in our spatial memory. We can talk about the qualities of the same movies we watched or books we have read. Continue reading →

Why game architecture matters.

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This is part of a series of short essays I’m writing for my architecture criticism class; our assignment was to blog in our own voices about architecture.

It may seem strange to write criticism on virtual architecture.

After all, “real” buildings are commitments to the future, the result of considering countless affordances offered by cost, materials, building codes, urban planning, stakeholders, history, land use, style, etc. Every single building must be built to remain for some period of time, and even the most fanciful and esoteric structures must provide some sort of roof or shelter. This very practical notion of building things for humans has grounded architecture as a discipline.

Virtual buildings have no such constraints. In a virtual world, coliseums can float like clouds, steel frames are purely cosmetic, and matter / energy are limited only by computing power and memory. So in a way, this virtual architecture is limited by money and time, just like anything “real.” Continue reading →

MFADT Spring Fair 2012!

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Come to Parsons MFA Design and Technology’s first ever “Spring Fair” — basically we’re just going to show all the different wacky things we’ve been working on for the past year. There’ll be interactive installations, robots, games — it’s basically just some plain cool shit.

I’m planning to show my first person sex education game CondomCorps XXLL, fellow student Andy Wallace is going to have some Doodle Defense going, and we hear Ramiro “Hokra” Corbetta has something up his Brazilian sleeves. Also, meet a bunch of cool people who use technology for something other than video games! (yeah, I don’t get it either)
Sunday, April 15th.
1 – 6 PM. Stay as short or long as you want.
6 East 16th Street, 12th floor. (map)

Addictive

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People who review games, from users to professional reviewers, often call games they like “addictive.”  Publishers and developers love to add the word to the description of their game or to the back of the box.  Making an addictive game is often seen as a great game design accomplishment.

I find this use of the word “addictive” problematic.

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