Game Designer Hopefuls, Read This

Game Design Competition at SWSW 2010 Game designer wannabes, this is your opportunity, but you’ve only got a few more hours. The Screenburn at SXSW Game Design Competition deadline is today.  This is a two-phase game design contest in which you file an entry first, and then a followup presentation if you’re picked as a […]

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A Game Hero Should Be Voiceless: Part Two

The Rude Game Hero The voiceless game hero? He’s an ass. Well, inadvertently. Have you ever noticed how a voiceless game hero fails to respond to mid-mission communications? I recently finished Resistance on the PS3, and the game’s avatar, Nathan Hale, is a classic, cliche game hero with little to say and a lot to […]

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A Game Hero Should Be Voiceless: T or F?

Game Case Study: The Voiceless Hero The typical game hero is mute. Have you noticed? Especially in first-person shooters, your typical game hero is a stoic son of a mesh. He has an inhuman pain tolerance, miraculous healing powers, and can tote as much military hardware as a Sherman tank. But he can’t communicate. He’ll […]

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Top Five Photos #2

Here are the other five photos from the European extravaganza. Hope you’re keeping up with the disjointed narrative, such as it is! The Louvre from within. Millennium Bridge headed toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. Shoreline near Durdle Door, Dorset. London at night. The Princess Di-Dodi Al-Fayed memorial in London’s tony Harrod’s shopping emporium. I was amused […]

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Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and the Future of America

Had a Red Robin Gourmet Burger and Now I Am Nostradumbass So your immodest game writer went to Red Robin, the burger chain, the other night. While the experience is fresh in my mouth (why does that sound wrong?), I feel I must crack wise about what Red Robin gourmet burgers tell us about the […]

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Uncharted 2 Steals Hearts

Uncharted 2 and Naughty Dog Revive the Adventure Genre The Uncharted 2: Among Thieves SKU and its action/adventure gameplay are dominating the ratings at Metacritic. Adventure games? Zork? Monkey Island? Indiana Jones? Hello again. We’ve missed you. Uncharted 2 brings back Nathan Drake (Indiana Jones?) for another round of high-stakes artifact hunting, this time to […]

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Hogwarts’ Harry: Top Five Europe Photos

Hogwarts’ Harry and Other Pics Hogwarts School and Harry Potter don’t actually appear in any of my “game writer on vacation” photos, but there is a connection, as you’ve probably already noticed. So I’ve decided to jump the gun and throw up a top five of the photos I took in London and Paris, with […]

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Brain Design Central: TED Talk on Brain Manipulation

Brain designer seems like a less interesting job than game designer, but it does have a certain ring to it. And let’s face it, your work is more likely to be described as “mind-blowing,” which is how I’d describe this TED talk from Rebecca Saxe, who studies the brain at the eponymous Saxelab at MIT. […]

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Game Writer: London Edition

By popular demand, here is a first sampling of some of the images and musings from my Europe trip. I’ll keep them coming- and keep them short and sweet. So, yeah, I decided to pull the trigger and visit my friend Sue in London and my cousin in Dublin. It’s not the off-peak flight period […]

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