On teaching ideas, mainly with reference to children. With some demos of squeak, the $100 laptop and a couple of fun proofs of basic maths concepts.
Video of Warren Spector’s lectures for the University of Texas at Austin, featuring contributions from such industry luminaries as Tim Willits and Richard Garriot. I’ve been hoping these would be released since I saw mention of them in an interview.
A “making of” for Charles Petzold’s new book. Looks to be a semi-sequel to his “Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software”, which is a wonderful book.
Short appraisal in a literary criticism style, with reference to the other games in Bioshock’s lineage from Looking Glass Studios. Published in Eludamos a new “journal for computer game culture”.
Awful, awful teaser site for the Frank Miller directed adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic books. Mr. Miller just went down in my estimation for that insultingly bad Sin City knock-off poster, even if it is just a mock-up.
Interview with creator of Trism, accelerometer and touch-screen enhanced iPhone puzzle game. Also includes video of it in action.
Short run through of the capabilities and limitations of early hardware like the Atari 800, Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64.
After the end of an incredible year for triple-A console titles we now find ourselves in a post-Christmas lull. There’s a sour taste in our mouths from the few hopefuls who closed out the year with a rush to market in search of easy xmas dollahs (pointing no fingers). So what can be done to sweeten our palate? Well I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing more and more promise in the lands of the portable, the web-based and the independent.
Dear oh dear. It seems to me that we’re in a strange predicament at the moment. The sheer budget, visual polish and hollywood-ification of a lot of next-gen output is throwing our good/bad detectors off kilter. There’s something very wrong when a game like Mass Effect sneaks into the metacritic charts alongside 90 percenters like Bioshock, The Orange Box, CoD4 and even Halo 3. Let’s not beat about the bush, Mass Effect is a terrible game.
1930s inspiration for freebie knick-knacks included with Infocom games. I once read about a Lovecraftian play-by-mail game that sent you little props and physical clues with every turn. Sounded cool.