So, I’m generally disappointed in the state of game journalism and game criticism, but I won’t talk about that too much today. It’s been harped on by people far more eloquent than me and I don’t think it needs to be reiterated. However, last night I got a copy of this [...]

Though not directly in responce to Randy (and Brenda I guess), someone has made a very short Game Maker game where “your choices have consequences.”  (Note: do not read the thread first.  Read it after.)  This is a very interesting “game,” and I highly recommend you take the 10 minutes out of your day to [...]

Those of you that know me know that I really enjoy cooking. Well, really, I enjoy eating good food, but I’ve found that the easiest (and most inexpensive) way to get good food it to make it yourself. So, tangentially, I enjoy cooking.
As a result, I spend a lot of time online [...]

The format of the last Boston Post Mortem meeting was a series of presentations, each consisting of 20 slides for 20 seconds each slide. The last (and probably best) talk of the night has already started making the rounds around the internet.
But I was also able to finagle my way into giving [...]

Last night, on the way to the Post Mortem, I got into a discussion with my co-workers about my last post, which led to a discussion about the types of games we like. I, of course, related this all to agency theory, and started looking at things through the perspectives of what types of [...]

So, I’ve proposed the theory on this blog that addictiveness of games is directly related to the amount of perceived agency present in said game. There is, of course, much more that contributes to whether or not a game is addictive or not, but I am of the opinion that perceived agency is a [...]

This is in response to Darius’s post on Agile development. I post it on my blog because, well, Darius only allows people with Blogger accounts to post comments to his blog and I refuse to get a Blogger account. I don’t know why, I just do.
Anyway, Darius talks about how the Agile process [...]

So, I have a nice 6 hour flight on my way to GDC (to my layover anyway), 2 hours of battery life in my laptop and lots of thoughts running through my head concerning story in games. These thoughts have been mulling around in my head since Craig made his original post way back in [...]

This post comes after seeing the Gamasutra post of the first chapter of Game Design Patterns, a subsequent conversation with Darius, and after reading two posts from Craig on the subject. I still can’t say that I have a firm grasp on anything about the book, but I am now willing to offer my [...]

I’ve been re-reading a book I read for my thesis, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, and I’ve found some of the passages that never made it into the thesis, but heavily influenced my current assertion that when playing a game, you are not playing yourself, but a character based in [...]