Today’s Prose Poem

A Bit of Marketing Writing Writing about a light is today’s little gem. I bring you a prose poem by the good, if perhaps inebriated, people behind “Safety Warning Flashing Lamp”: Especially for the children, blind men old men in the morning or evening and the cloudy day when the bright is not enough, to […]

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Game Designers Actually Write?

Game Writers Aren’t the Only Developers Who Need Writing Skills “Game designer” is an oft-misunderstood label that, like all labels, sometimes fails completely in describing the variety and depth of tasks tackled by the many talented people who fall into this bucket. Many times game consumers and friends have told me they thought game designers […]

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Game Design Tips from Jordan Mechner

Game design pointers don’t get any better than when they come from Jordan Mechner, the man who designed Prince of Persia, The Last Express, and one of the main reasons I became a game designer, the elegant and stylish Karateka. Here’s his blog on story-based game design. Today I’m giving props to design tip #6: […]

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Game Tester Job in Austin

Austin Game Testing Opportunity We recently received notification of a need for game testers for Sony in Austin. If you’re interested in a game testing job in Austin, please fill out the contact form and we’ll pass it on to our contact at Nelson Technology. Please put the words “Game Tester” in the subject line.

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The Avatar Movie

Game Writer Thoughts on Cameron’s Avatar Movie The Avatar movie is all the rage right now, and with good reason. Here are my quick, spoiler-free thoughts. Gorgeous. The Avatar movie is simply gorgeous. It feels real, although it does have a heavy Halo texture to it too. To be fair, Cameron’s already trod this territory […]

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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: 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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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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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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