John Polson of IndieGames.com has an exclusive interview with myself and Richard Boeser, developer of ibb and obb.
Read the first part here.
And the second part here.
Press coverage!
Posted in Duet, Games, Press Coverage with tags 2 player game, a game about cooperation, Duet, Ibb and obb, indie games, IndieGames.com, John Polson, low tide productions, Press coverage of Duet, Richard Boeser, Sparpweed, two player game, video games on November 18, 2011 by garlandobloomAbsolutely Nothing
Posted in Game Reviews, Games, Rants with tags Call of Duty, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Game Reviews, Games, Modern Warfare, rant, Rants, Saving Private Ryan, video games, war on November 1, 2011 by garlandobloom
Those who know me, know that I often deride the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series as a exploitation of veterans. The game seems to offer an unrealisticly positive representation of modern warzones, twisting something terrible into something fun. The game appears as Halo, only skinned to look like real war. Replace the SMG with an AK-47, the Warthog with a Humvee, Space Marine with a real Marine. Also, if you know me, you know that I, until this writing, have never played the Modern Warfare series.
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Down to the Wire
Posted in Duet, Games, My Life with tags 2 player game, a game about cooperation, Duet, IGF, IGF 2012, Independent Games Festival, two player game on October 25, 2011 by garlandobloom
On the last day before the deadline, after a rush to the bank to deposit the 95 dollar entrance fee into a check card ready account and a 40 minute drive back home to get the thumb drive holding the code for the prototype, following a late arrival for work with a sneaky ftp upload when I was supposed to be retouching, Duet is now officially entered into the 2012 Independent Games Festival.
It is competing alongside 568 other games: a record turnout. Submissions come both from first time developers, as well as seasoned veterans. Unfortunately, the production version was not yet complete enough for a viable submission, so that means no fancy graphics or sound. Here’s hoping Duet wows some judges with it’s intellectually stimulating puzzly goodness!
Prepare to Live ( Dark Souls Diary, Part 3 )
Posted in Game Design, Game Diaries, Games, Rants with tags Dark Souls, Dark Souls Diary, Demon's Souls, Game Design, Games, Meditation, Prepare to Die, Prepare to Live, Rants, RPGs, Tom Bissell, video games on October 16, 2011 by garlandobloom
Dark Souls is a unique game. Simultaneously planting one foot in the checkered video game past, and the other so far in the future that you will find yourself lost as you try to keep up. There is something truly special at work here. Even if you don’t enjoy the experience, it is impossible to deny admiration for the boldness of its conviction. It is truly a work inspired by a unbending philosophy and a belief that games can and should offer different experiences.
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Laugh a little. Seriously.
Posted in Duet, Game Design, Games, Rants with tags 2 player game, a game about cooperation, Alec Holowka, Duet, Game Design, Game Development, Games, ThatGameCompany, two player game, video games on September 28, 2011 by garlandobloom
It’s so easy to get attached to a project when you work on it for a long time. I’ve already been looking at Duet for a year. Despite that, for the past six months or so I haven’t made much progress. This is partly due to laziness and working a full time job. Staring closely at what you are doing can make it seem so much bigger than it really is.
The fact is that Duet is a small game. If I’m being realistic, it probably won’t change the world; it probably won’t change much of anything. But I’ve become so intimately close with the project that it has grown an importance to me that isn’t really due. I’ve created an abstract idea of what Duet is, and it seems imperative that I must create that. I can feel the importance of what I’m doing, and I find that paralyzing.
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Games Are Art.
Posted in Computers, Game Design, Games, Rants with tags are games art?, art games, artgames, Fahrenheit, Games are art, games are not art, heavy rain, Indigo Prophecy, Jonathan blow, NotGames, Quantic dream, Roger Ebert, Tale of Tales, the graveyard, the witness on September 11, 2011 by garlandobloom
So, are games really art?
Roger Ebert has quite famously come out to say that Games cannot be art, or as he calls it “high art.” ( Essentially meaning all forms of art that most people consider when they talk about art. Art as in “artist,” as opposed to “artisan.”) I’m not sure this distinction was entirely necessary to make. I don’t think that many people were attempting to argue that games should be considered art alongside dance or pottery. The question is really about whether games are or are not a medium for communicating ideas and emotions in at least the same capacity as film or books.
I am not simply dismissing the issue imposed by Roger Ebert’s statements, but it would seem to me that he does not truly understand games as an art form. More specifically, he does not understand that the way in which games function artistically is quite different from films and other media. Unfortunately, many modern game designers do not understand this distinction either. Viewed as works of art, most games are quite meaningless when compared to great works in other mediums.
So, can we solve the dilemma we face in dealing with Roger Ebert’s belief? He stated that “If you change [the ending of a story], you become the artist,” proposing, “Would “Romeo and Juliet” have been better with a different ending?” It is here that he makes his claim most poignantly.
Silence.
Posted in Books, Game Design, Games, Rants with tags Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Game Design, Games, Good Old Games, narrative in games, planescape, Planescape: Torment, Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design, Tom Bissell, video games on September 9, 2011 by garlandobloomSo, I haven’t been playing games recently.
After finishing Catherine, I haven’t really found myself in a financial affordance to purchase anything new, although I’ve been thinking of purchasing something old. Quite old, in fact. The game I’ve been considering is a PC game called Planescape: Torment.
Planescape has a reputation for being one of the most well-written RPGs ever. It is often brought up anytime a new RPG is about to be released, as some sort of evidence of a by-gone era of good game writing. Unfortunately, I never played this game and find myself somewhat intolerant of my ignorance. It is uncomfortable for me to proclaim the utter failure of games as a narrative medium when compared to film and books when I have not experienced what many consider to be such a great story.
Discussion of narrative in games is always a bit challenging, because the terms are so poorly defined in most cases. By which, I mean, most people do not understand any clear difference between the terms “narrative”, “plot”, and “story.” Plot being a unchanging linear sequence of events; narrative being an all-encompassing term for a collection of characters, plot, setting, dialogue, and themes; story being the cohesive experience created by the narrative as it’s parts come together in the mind.
Most of the time, people think of these as basically the same thing. But if narrative were just plot, there would be no room for the story to exist separately in the mind of the person experiencing it, and thusly there would be no need or room for discussion of a narrative. We would all be in agreement about the plot, and there would be really nothing else to say.
I think that games can be privy to many of the elements of narrative. But plot is something that they just do not excel at to the same extent as other mediums. However, they can effectively communicate themes, characters, and dialogue. And in the case of setting, I would argue they do better than any other medium.
So if I do choose to buy the game, ( which is conveniently available for download on Good Old Games, along with a bunch of other older PC titles ) I will be interested to see the way in which the game communicates it’s narrative. Especially if it is not as plot-driven as most modern games are.
On an entirely different note, I have just purchased two great books on games. I read the sample previews and just knew that I wanted to spend a little more time with them. The first book is “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” by Raph Koster. The second is “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” by Tom Bissell. I will hopefully have more to say about those books very soon.
