Author: Matthew VanDevander

An award-winning graphic designer, an independent game developer, a self-published novelist, a movie and video game critic, and everyday artist. Matthew VanDevander lives in the great state of Tennessee and is on a never-ending quest for the deeper meaning of life.

Hell week.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

It’s a pretty hectic school week, and today in particular. I have two exams tomorrow, both of which I am vastly underprepared for. And It’s almost eleven o’clock. I’m currently taking a break from studying to chow down on some Taco Bell. (These Enchilada Platters are delish but filling.) So that’s why you see me typing instead of studying. Just thought I’d let everyone in the world have the chance to know how much I will bomb my Spanish and Recent American History Exams.

Oh, and the chick at the Taco Bell window asked me if I was Kurt Cobain, I’m not sure whether I should laugh or stab someone…

More progress should happen on the game during the next week, considering it’s Covocation week, which basically means that I don’t have homework and have to go to Chapel a lot.

New banner! Yay!

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

I have finally decided to make a banner for the blog, which you may gaze at to your hearts content. (Hint: It’s somewhere above this post.) It looks way better than the old banner, which wasn’t a banner at all by the way. And I guess you can also consider it a teaser for the game, considering the sources…hmm… In other news, if you’ll look up at the top of your browser window in the address bar, there’s should hopefully be a little (somewhat legible) image for my blog there as well. If not, blame WordPress for the tiny image.

In other news, I should have spent time writing an essay for my homework instead of creating that banner, so I’ll have to see you later.

Does anyone else find it odd that WordPress shows up as a misspelled word in WordPress’s post editor?

Gaddang it’s been a long freaking time..

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

And another three months or so pass before Matthew VanDevander writes his next blog post. I guess I’ve just been busy with college, or maybe it’s the fact that I changed my firefox homepage to ANGEL instead of my blog managing page. I’m betting it’s the second one. If I don’t really get the time to think about posting new blogs, how can I ever actually post new ones. I have to apologize every time I post a new blog it seems, because I’m so unreliable in terms of how often I do post them. I want to be more regular with them so that I can get some people to be interested in reading. I don’t want to disappoint someone who is reading my blog to the point of them just giving up on ever reading it again.

Well, since it has been so long, I guess that means that I had better supply the goods when it comes to this post, which definitely means some sort of lengthy rant or a review. Hmm… what about?

Continue reading “Gaddang it’s been a long freaking time..” →

Buy Braid, now…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Braid is perhaps one of the most important games of all time, and you absolutely must play it. If you have an Xbox 360, download it of XBLA now. If you can’t afford the $15 worth of MS Points, then just download the demo. (But believe me, it’s worth the money.) If you don’t have an Xbox 360, buy one. You must play this game.

Seriously, stop reading this and go play the game already.

It’s been a while…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Sorry about not updating for a while once again… I’ll just put it off to laziness, but you should be glad that I’ve took the time to write a new post for you all now. And since you are investing your valuable time in reading it, I will try to make it worth your while.

Update on my life:

I’m enrolled at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and I’m about to enter the amazing world of college life for the first time. To be honest, it’s a bit scary, and to be more honest, I’m not really excited about it, but I thought I’d let you know. My room-mate is some kid named Josh from Connecticut, I talked to him on the phone, he seems pretty cool from what we talked about.

My girlfriend got a settlement check from a car accident that me and her were in. She injured her neck and I guess they don’t want her to decide to sue later on if she experiences more trouble with it. So she got a check for $2000. Which her parents immediately took $500 out of for “bills.” *rollseyes* Anyways, so we got hers a computer and she bought me an Xbox 360 and GTA IV. (Which made me feel like crap…I don’t deserve that, I mean, seriously…DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THOSE THINGS COST???) Ahem… Well… I’m pretty grateful about that though, cause she didn’t really need to spend any money on me. But I won’t bore you with any more of this and I’ll get on to my impressions of GTA IV thus far.

Continue reading “It’s been a while…” →

Grey, The new Black and White.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Bear with me, because this is a bit of a long rant, but it’s hopefully worth the read…

Alright, so lets talk about morality and moral choices in games. There’s obviously a lot of games out there that provide moral choices as a core game concept: the Fable series, Bioshock, almost all of Bioware’s games… So all of these games are supposed to be centered around this idea of moral choices between good and evil.

And the basic way in which these games implement morality is with what basically accounts to a slider with good on one end and evil on the other. So in order to become an evil character you have to have a lot of evil points, or if you’re wanting to play a good character you’ve got to have a lot of those points. But the problem is that in order for this to work, and for the game be able to determine where you are on this slider, every decision in the game has be reduced into a simple black and white decision; one choice will yield good points and the other choice yields evil points. Unfortunately, this also makes the most of the game’s choices uninteresting and defeats the initial draw the whole moral choice idea had in the first place, because all of the choices are so easy to make. Continue reading “Grey, The new Black and White.” →

School trips and stuff…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Yeah, well I’ve been kinda ignoring this blog for maybe a little bit too long now. I haven’t even posted on it in probably 2 weeks or something. I’ve been gone on trips to…well basically all over the place. I went up to Washington D.C. two weeks ago for the national history day competition. I was competing in the category of group documentary. I didn’t even make the finals but I guess it was better for me to go and try/see what happens than to just say screw it…well anyways. We went to New York and Gettysburg and walked all around D.C. and I hurt my feets with all the walking… But eventually I returned home for a much needed rest.

Only to go on ANOTHER trip Continue reading “School trips and stuff…” →

Goode Ideas.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

I just found an awesome video tutorial series that my friend Josh Goode ( pronounced “guud”) started called “Goode Ideas.” Check out the first episode here. The other two episodes may be accessed by going to Josh’s YouTube user page here.

You can visit Josh Goode’s personal website as well: JoshuaGoode.net

Hope you enjoyed it.