In a way, this is related to why I am irritated at the new videogame Spore. It’s become such a media event, overshadowing projects like Braid. I would never argue that Spore is a bad idea, or a bad game, or not worth paying attention to… I just think that Braid has a lot more to do with the future of the games industry than Spore does. I guess that’s technically the opposite of Radiohead, where In Rainbows is clearly an evolutionary step forward in terms of marketing… but in both cases, the media hoopla overshadows the real creativity and artistry.

The days that I remember the most fondly are always the ones where I did the least. I remember sitting on the statue outside the gate, doing my reading for Chinese history in early fall of Freshman year, and I remember a pick-up game of Frisbee from Halloween afternoon that same semester, way better than I remember the more hectic, interesting days. Even in more recent semesters, I remember walking up to Pembroke and back down Thayer with a friend, killing time while putting off something I didn’t want to do, much more than I remember most of my lectures.

I miss the way it feels to look out the window and realize that dawn has come while I worked on my paper. I really miss the way the cold air hit my face when I walked to Louie’s at 6 AM.

I’m looking forward to visiting Brown next month, but it’s going to be very bittersweet to not be able to stay.

suspense!!!

Why on earth do I have to have dreams about hard disk failure?!

Scott Miller, […] co-creator of Max Payne, writes, ‘It’s time game designers grasp the power of creating games with emotional depth, […] and really – I mean REALLY – make them care about their game’s story’

Last night I played through part of Rainbow Six: Vegas II. In one level, your team fails to prevent hundreds of innocent hostages from being slaughtered by a chemical weapon. Here’s an instance where Miller’s point could have been taken more to heart. The fact that such a scene even exists in Vegas 2 puts the game a huge step above its much more traditional, linear and uncomplicated predecessor, but at no point in that level is they player made to feel that there is any hope of saving the poor souls inside.

Now, I don’t want to start an argument about the riskiness of creating psychologically traumatic situations in videogames. All I am saying is that for any game to make an impact on the art form (particularly a game in as formulaic a pantheon as Tom Clancy’s) beyond implementing more clever mechanics and better level design, we need to take more chances. Take risks with your players’ emotions. Taunt them with cake or something. The first time you take the cake away, they may cry. They may even slip up in their grief and get incinerated in a fire pit. But it’s a game. They’ll try again, and the second time, they will have learned something.

The folks I’ve met who have participated in Teach for America emphasized one thing about their experiences above all others: if you trust somebody to rise to a challenge—a kid, a gamer, whoever—they usually will. Even if the outcome of the story is predetermined, allow the player to think, just for a moment, that they have a chance to save those men and women. Let them sweat a bit.

Just a thought.

Enjoy!

So that’s it, huh? That project was my final undergraduate work. I’ve got a critique with the professor and teaching assistants this afternoon, and then I’m done with college. Weird feeling.

But in the meantime, TO BED!

Anyway, here’s the image:

Image links to a higher-res version… it’s a pity the depth map shadows are such low quality, but any higher and it would have been going significantly slower.