sephfire

Mark Ecko's Getting Up --> It's a cheap used copy, but I have no idea what I was thinking. It actually wasn't too bad if you turned on a bunch of cheats so you didn't have to deal with the horrendous gameplay. The vibe and cutscenes were still pretty cool if you just cheated your way out of playing the game. Still, probably not worth the money.

Harry Potter: OoTP --> EA was throwing out truckloads of free games at Siggraph. I got "lucky." Ninety-Nine Nights --> I don't know why I expected this to be good. Devil May Cry 2 --> I had 1 & 3 and my compulsive collector inside took over. Family Guy Game --> I was blinded by love for the show. DOA Xtreme 2 --> I'd enjoyed the mellow fun of the first one so much. It didn't carry over.

This. I've gained an appreciation for all the genres of rock music where I used to just listen to a very narrow range. Even my wife has learned to love all kinds of rock just from hearing me play. She's even told me it has taught her to listen to the guitar in rock music and appreciating its intricacies where it used to just blend in to the wall of sound before and vocals were all she focused on. She also said she enjoys hearing me play Rock Band drums because she can hear the complexity of the drums in music where she couldn't before. It's been really interesting seeing her gain new understandings of music just from being around while I'm playing. It's like second-hand music appreciation or something.

I haven't had this problem. Is it that you feel the random colors and lines don't sync up with actual drum hits in the song or is it just that each pad has to play the roll of two or more parts of the drum kit?

As a drummer, I can say that Rock Band drums translate VERY easily to real drums. If you can play hard/expert Rock Band drums, you'll be missing a lot of fundamentals (holding sticks properly, posture, controlling hi-hat with left foot, etc.), but you could sit down at a drum and start banging out a beat in a few minutes. Since moving to Savannah, I haven't had any drums to play. Rock Band drums have been a fantastic substitute.

Also, as bonus trivia, the "me" in the video is wearing the same shirt/tie combo I wore in person while presenting. Not sure they noticed, but I'll always know.

Just got my grade back today. A solid 97. Most students commented that the narration was exhaustingly fast, which I expected. They haven't been listening to Yahtzee's lightning fast rants for months like we have. Otherwise they all liked it. I even got one comment saying how awesome Psychonauts was and it's too bad more people didn't play it. I did not expect to find even ONE student in that class who had played the game. All in all, I count this a victory.

Definitely. That game is proof that a game doesn't need to be wordy (Mass Effect) to tell a great story and have emotional impact.

I gave the presentation yesterday. The classroom's acoustics were a bit spotty, so I think the fast voice might have been muddied in a bit of reverb, but it still seemed to land. Got a lot more chuckles than I expected out of an art history class.

Yahtzee appeared at GDC last night with some clips for the Game Developer's Choice Awards. Rather than a review this week, we get to see what he showed. Yahtzee Goes to GDC I do hope someone filmed the actual presentation at GDC.

I can't take it. I have to buy it for my wife's PC. I must be able to surf through my own remixes. I can't imagine how awesome a treat that will be.

I share your hopes.

I wouldn't say Japan produces better stories. There really are great stories coming from both sides of the lake. The main thing I'm really waiting for is for an AMAZING story to arrive. It might take some time (film didn't start getting amazing stories for decades), but it'll rock when it happens. I think the localization process hurts Japanese story games during translation, but even that is getting better (FFXII's translation in particular was fantastic).

I have NO idea how Yahtzee does one of these a week. I know his are half this length, but dang, thing really wore me out. I'd love to try making another sometime, just the same.

For anyone interested in reading more on this topic, I highly recommend this little series of articles. Very informative. Why Writing in Games Matters: Part I -- Advancing the Art of Storytelling Why Writing in Games Matters: Part II -- Challenges of Interactive Storytelling Why Writing in Games Matters: Part III -- Creating Character with Susan O'Connor Also check Susan O'Connor out. She wrote for Gears of War and Bioshock, founded the Game Writer's Conference and has a lot of great insights into the art of game writing. I think she's really going to be a big player in pushing game writing forward.

Wow, that's some good feedback. I may not be able to apply most of it to this particular presentation, but I'll be remembering it for my next one. I'm sure it won't be the last presentation I have to give during my time at SCAD. A lot of that advice could easily apply to my future thesis animation, actually. Thanks.

Yeah, sorry about the voice. I sped it up for two reasons. One, the presentation has to be exactly 10 minutes in length. Two, my speaking voice is generally very dull to listen to. I know it can be a bit grating, but I had to choose between that or boring. I'm still not sure which would have been worse. If I had more time to prepare, I'd have tried to find someone with a better voice to read it, but I had to spend every waking hour this weekend working on this as it was.

.mov and youtube links added!

Narrative Evolved: Video Games and Storytelling (.mp4) YouTube link: This is a short video presentation I've been working on for one of my classes. I've been researching, writing, recording, drawing and editing all week, but I think it was worth it. I'm not presenting it until wednesday, but I'd love to hear some feedback from actual gamers. I'm not sure my art history class is going to care much at all. I sank way too much time into it for no one to enjoy it. If any of you are interested in the future of games as a narrative medium, check it out. I loosely emulated Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation review style to keep it from getting dull. Thanks to CarboHydroM and Dj Redlight for unknowingly providing intro and outro music. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Ah, that hits the spot. It's been too long.

Good point.

It seems to me he's criticizing issues that pervade Sim games in general. Not that the problem keeps them from being fun. Perhaps the problem is much more obvious in Societies than in the others.

This mix just weirds me out when I listen to it now. Not only is it my first amateur attempt at remixing, but I hadn't figured out my sound by this point, so it doesn't sound like me to me. I can listen to my KH remix and think "ah, that's when I started figuring things out." But this one just baffles me. It feels very familiar, and yet foreign at the same time. I'm sure a lot of other remixers probably feel the same way about their first attempts at music.

Sim City Societies Delicious.

I think CNN ran a story on the strike being on the verge of ending. Someone was offering a deal or somesuch. I went to a lecture by Simpsons writer/director Mike Reiss last night and he said that (to his knowledge) the strike was on its last few weeks. I don't know. Hearing that from two different sources in one day seems to suggest good news. I want to rent No More Heroes so badly. I've been dying for a new reason to break out the Wii.