Digital Cream

As long as I am hitting your inbox/eyeballs with release news about the Very Special Shutdown Notice I may as well give you word about this release as well. A while ago I made a few text-message games for Cipher Cities, which is a site that allows anyone to make such games. They contracted me to do some pilot games to show what the tech could do. They are having their official grand opening, so here is a good opportuntity to check them out. While there, check out my games Heart to Heart, Mixi, and Party Quiz. The first two can only be played properly by coming to Brisbane, but you can pretend to play them by simply asking for hints to all the questions– they eventually tell you the correct answers. Mixi is especially interesting as it makes you follow the wild character Mixi’s tottering stiletto-heeled footsteps as she asks you to help recall what she did last night. It has quite a bit of personality and edgy humor, so it’s good for a laugh (or at least a bemused shake of the head). Check them out, and try out Cipher Cities– it’s quite fun.

I have finished and released a fiction project which is minor and experimental (aren’t they all?) but hey, it’s a release. See it at A Very Special Shutdown Notice. As I explain in the About page, my main goals are to popularize and explore the Simulation Argument and transhuman issues; to build an audience for my eventual game Pod Tycoon; and to drive some traffic so I can exercise my site in preparation for release of the first Picture Game Platform game I am hosting, called Taboo Snaps. Please check it out and let me know what you think by leaving comments on this post.

Once the site starts to show up reliably in search engines, I will make a push for a viral spread-the-word campaign. For now, don’t make any special efforts to spread the link around. Stay tuned for my request for you to do that soon!

My local paper in Brisbane, Australia, the Courier-Mail, came out today in print and online with an article I was interviewed for earlier in the week. I am going to be in a forum in a couple days about the same subject. The article quotes me on my views about games and parenting. Check out the article online.

Results Show Need for Continued Improvement by Movie, Music, and Some Game Retailers

I read this report by the FTC with interest. It supports my general argument that it should be up to parents to enforce age ratings and pressure retailers to do the same, voting with their dollars as they do so. I expect many retailers will continue to improve. Those that don’t will be all the easier for parents to keep their kids from frequenting. (continued »)

I’ve been hard at work on my project, the Picture Game Platform, and I am coming to GDC in San Francisco to show it to everyone who may be interested. The Picture Game Platform allows developers and amateur enthusiasts to create and customize casual, easy-to-learn games in which you scurry around and take pictures, avoiding obstacles and unlocking new abilities. It’s a fun, breezy way to showcase a bunch of pictures or videos, just for its own sake or to drive traffic to other properties. I did all my own programming in Flash, which has been a true joy, and it has gotten my feet thoroughly wet in the vast sea of independent development. I’ve learned a great deal about coding, online advertising, and Web 2.0 APIs, and it has all been so fun!

The most advanced use of the Picture Game Platform is a game called Taboo Snaps, which is near completion and shows off the platform really well. I’ll be showing the Taboo Snaps alpha in my GDC demos as a way to demonstrate the PGP.

I am very keen to meet with all my friends and colleagues to show the demo and get feedback, as well as network for contacts. I am seeking a development partner who will make a mobile version of the Picture Game Platform, with Taboo Snaps as a really promising, ready-to-port app for the iPhone and other mobile devices. I am also looking for partners who want to localize PGP games for other markets, particularly Asia. If you can meet up with me in SF from February 18-29, or know someone I should meet and show the demo, please email me or leave a comment!

My son Dylan urged me to play Portal, a new game contained in Valve’s “Orange Box“ product. I already had good reasons to check it out– an amazing design riff; a Cinderella story of birth as a student project at DigiPen; and I heard bizarre rumors that it exhibited a real sense of humor. However, watching Dylan fall through an infinite chain of portals while flipping the gravitational axis made me fearfully recall a childhood viewing of The Man With The Golden Gun which put me off the hall of mirrors for years. Dylan assured me that it was not nearly as confusing as it looked, but as he gleefully recounted to his friend Harry yesterday, I once got lost in a single room in BioShock. (I crept around a bloody lab table, came upon the door through which I entered the room, exited through it thinking it was a new door, and then wandered in confusion wondering why everything looked vaguely familiar.) In any case, I screwed up my courage and gave Portal a go. I was delighted in all the ways that the game’s many fans have already extolled, but I want to especially point a prophetic finger at a feature of the game which I predict will soon be commonplace, and the game world made all the better for it: Portal has optional commentary by the game creators, much like a DVD commentary track. This is very cool and I am bursting to tell you why. (continued »)

Gday me heartys! So it be that on Talk Like A Pirate Day a story swings upon me decks. Though ‘t be a sore burden t’speak o’ video game laws in this gamesome tone, the laws o’ the sea be the laws o’ the sea, and speak like a landlubber may I not.

Grab yer tankard and roll a barrel to the foredeck as I give ye the news from Oklahoma, far over the rollin’ waves in the New World. It just so happens that a right wise wig-wearin’ man o’ the law there, deemed he a stop t’a law forbiddin’ young scalawags from buyin’ certain video games. (continued »)

On Friday night my son Dylan took my place playing BioShock on the 360. I’d had my couple hours and couple beers, and was starting to make dumb mistakes as he watched with gentle sniggers of amusement. I know he’s a far better player than me, so I was expecting to be pretty impressed when he took the controls. What I was not expecting was the realization that my son is a species entirely different from, and superior to, my own.

The forward edge of this realization came last year when I watched him play Battlefield 2 on the 360 (which, I know, to many is like painting with a bar of soap, but it was fun for a while). I noted that he could do a couple things I had not mastered, such as to run backwards with a zoomed-in sniper scope headshotting the hapless guy trying to nail him with an SMG. I consoled myself that I’d not had as much practice, and anyway, Dylan is smaller than me; his nerve pathways are probably 25% shorter.

But watching him take over BioShock led me to inescapably conclude that while his arms and nerves have gotten longer, they must have dropped in temperature to become some kind of supercooled nanoconduits autoconnecting to a hyperbrain the size of a planet. So I really should not feel bad about the pwnage; it is simply a cross-species competition, like a jaguar racing a mollusk. (continued »)

I’ve been playing BioShock on the 360 for a few weeks now, often in the evenings when my brain is too puddly to code but not ready for sleep. My son Dylan has been watching me and he has been playing it himself. I will likely write a few posts about it. In this post I want to extol the game’s overall mood of imposing, sinister breakdown and corruption. I was a great admirer of its ancestor System Shock which had a similar mood. (continued »)

Video games, like movies and books, are a nascent but promising form of artistic speech and as such must remain outside the power of any state to outlaw them by a different standard. This kind of law has been defeated on unconstitutional grounds in many states. Pursuing this kind of law wastes taxpayer money and defuses the impetus to take real, effective action against the serious problems of youth violence and antisocial behavior, both at home and in society at large.

Californians, please consider visiting this site opposing this video game law and pass it to other Californians. It helps you urge the governor to give up on his efforts to pass a law making it illegal for minors to purchase certain categories of games.