Wonderland

A week of silence

It's been a hell of a week. It's going to be a hell of a weekend, and I kick off next week with another talk at another venue for another large bunch of people. I've barely had time to kill a few zombies, my RSS feeds are all at max unread, and the house is a pit.

On the upside, I'm posting this from my hammock ;-) It's like the south of France out here!

Upcoming: other than the corporate stuff on Monday, I'm going to be at Develop for both Games:Edu and the main conference. I'll be talking about the games we've commissioned at C4 (since Bow Street Runner, Routes and 1066), and also what developing for public service is actually like.

But in the meanwhile:

Gundam goes pink!

... and a gameboy sleeve for the iPhone.

Aah that's better.

L4D custom bead sprites

Willya look at the Francis on that.

He would hate it. I however, do not.

Battle of the Planets (band) shirt

Band shirts. The quickest way to salute your tribe... my favourites: the original 'tendos, the L4D team, and now, Battle of the Planets from our Matt, who also produced the fantastic getexcitedandmakethings tee. Dial your nerd-hipster meter to 11:

Also, way cheaper at 16 euro, whereas the L4D ones were coming in at like 30+ dollars.

Harvey Nicks' streetfighter-esque ads

Harvey Nichols, for you non-UK residents, is a very chi-chi department store selling expensive designer gear. And yet, they've turned to Street Fighter and pals for inspiration for their latest sale ads:

That's just freaky. And it kind of works.

(Thanks Lee!)

Another Perfect World

More4 (Channel 4's deep-thinking digital channel) did a documentary on virtual worlds, featuring no less than Raph Koster and pals.

True Stories presents: Jorien van Nes and Femke Wolting's fascinating insight into online virtual worlds. Second Life, World of Warcraft, Metaplace, U World - all virtual worlds where the user can create their own paradise, far removed from real life. People can create societies that range from the democratic to the dictatorial, have avatars that resemble their ideal and can engage in actions that their real life personality would never dream of doing, from cyber-sex to virtual crime. But who creates these worlds and are they the right people to be crafting idealised societies that pretend to address and solve the inadequacies of the real world?

You can watch it on Channel 4.com although apparently that's only to UK users? If you're not one of those, well, you don't need me to tell you how to use Pirate Google or YouTube. I welcome the day when global release rights are negotiated at the point of commission...

Cogs

I'm reviewing some indie games at the moment, and one of them is Cogs. I thought you might like to see it: it's one of those anti-dementia, hangover-fixing games, and The Escapist loves everything about it (except the price).

Seeing as I have a hangover right now (we went to see Derren Brown last night, and it was good), Cogs is very welcome.

Huge set of 56 needlepointed Space Invaders fridge magnets

Look at these beauties:

Here is a huge set of fridge magnets modeled after the popular retro video game, Space Invaders. You get 56 fridge magnets in total, including:

- 50 aliens (that you shoot at in the game)
- 1 UFO (flies across top of screen in game)
- 1 Laser Cannon (that you control in the game)
- 4 Stationary Defense Bunkers

The fridge magnets are all completely handmade in needlepoint and are fully stitched by hand. They measure approximately 1" across in length.

Now these you can buy. Assuming you get there first...! RUN!!

Video game compact mirror

Hand-made, natch. And completely unavailable to buy. Bah!

I think Matthew just sent me this link to make me jealous :-)

(Thanks Matthew!)

Why give away game currency at all?

Dungeons & Dragons Online reckon you can just buy your in-game stuff with real money from the off. How is this different from other games with microtransactions? Not so much - you can just buy more infrastructural things here, including player classes, and even quests - but it feels really different to me. Can't put my finger on it.

Feels.. more like real life, somehow: expensive!

Sociable television (as it should be)

I find television really boring if I'm on my own watching it. With pals it's good; as background fodder to other things (like WoW) it's good. On its own, no good.

So this fixes things somewhat:

Is this an exclusive thing to Sky Sports? Because stick an HBO drama in there (mmm True Blood) and I'm in. That would get me "watching TV" again.

Kev and Alice, the homeless Sims

Kev and Alice are two Sims - father and daughter - created by Robin, a UK-based games design student.

Kev and Alice are homeless.

Welcome to the tale of Alice and Kev.

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. [...]

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

Start the story here... it's really sad. And completely compelling.

(thanks Harry!)

Chilean cosplayers

Cosplay is a global language!

Chile's Anime & Videogames Expo seems to be pretty big and held in a grand old train station?

Guillermo del Toro not happy with Konami

In Wired's interview with the extremely arty director:

del Toro: We are used to thinking of stories in a linear way—act one, act two, act three. We're still on the Aristotelian model. What the digital approach allows you to do is take a tangential and nonlinear model and use it to expand the world. For example: If you're following Leo Bloom from Ulysses on a certain day and he crosses a street, you can abandon him and follow someone else.

Wired: You're describing a model that's more like a videogame. Is the merger of movies and games the first step?

del Toro: Unfortunately, I've found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the studios. I was disappointed with the first Hellboy game. I'm very impressed with the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto. You can get lost in that world. But we're using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.

My bolds. When you have a director like del Toro interested in games, it's a proper fuckup to miss that opportunity and churn out the dross that was the Hellboy game.

I'm always curious as to what happens to the executives who make those sorts of decisions - and how a company can get so big and unimaginative that it would do such a thing in the first place. Everyone makes mistakes, and making good games is hard, but this sort of thing just seems to be amazingly avoidable.

My L4D mobile

Gaze upon it in awe, friends.

Old sausagefingers didn't manage to capture the angle that shows all the characters: Boomer is not showing up against my armadillo-handbag and box of photos. Zoey looks like she's strangling Smoker. I LOVE IT.

Xbox Live Community Channel rebrands to Xbox Live Indie Games

Wow. Much better. They benefit from the rosy glow that the term "indie games" creates, too. Clever.

 

"We believe this name better represents the independent spirit of XNA Game Studio gaming and creations," it says on the site.

[...]

The announcement was made as Microsoft launches XNA Game Studio 3.1.XNA users can now put Avatars and Party play in their games, and stick videos in them too.

Deeper integration. Verrrry interesting.

(Via Eurogamer)