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Notes and highlights from Code 2k12
The following mostly dot-point notes are what I remember to be the stand-out points from a few of the highlight talks from Code 2012, held at Swinburne this week. It’s telling that the “standouts” are just about every single paper and presentation I went to (no slight on the rest that I also attended but […]
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Some comments on, and two reservations about, #AltLit
I’ve recently joined (found?) the massively distributed online (sub?)culture that calls itself (is called?) Alt.Lit. My journey of discovery is not so important, but it started on twitter, moved to Facebook and now I see it everywhere. And let’s be honest, it’s not really a literature movement anymore; it’s become a cultural juggernaut steamrolling everything […]
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Jon McCalmont on Prometheus, Myths and Calvinball stories
At his consistently exceptional ‘Ruthless Culture’ blog Jonathan McCalmont has a great meta-review of Prometheus, in which he locates the film within the broader constellation of ‘myth-making’ in films and modern popular culture that is so prevalent right now. Having not seen Prometheus yet, I can’t really agree or disagree, but his analysis of wider […]
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Modern camouflage
In the following video, McDonald’s Marketing Director Hope Bagozzi answers a question asked (I think) via Facebook: “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?” To answer the question (and this is the brilliant part) she goes on to reveal over the next three minutes all of the painstaking […]
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Attention and Immersion
A video essay about the term ‘immersion’ and why I think it should be replaced. While video of Richard Lemarchand’s GDC talk is behind the GDC Vault paywall, his slides and text from the talk are online here. I’ve received a few very nice replies and comments – Shawn Trautman wrote out some of his reservations and emailed […]
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MLG[PRO] 420 FANVIDs
There’s a strange, and relatively new, genre of YouTube video, based on parodying the over-serious, über-gamer culture that surrounds professional gaming, and in particular the MLG (Major League Gaming) circuit. The typical MLG fragvid is full of over-the-top special effects, in-text commentary, and often accompanied by a dubstep soundtrack, oriented towards demonstrating a certain Pro […]
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My final two GDC reports
The brilliant sounding feedback tool used by Radical on Prototype 2. And the Far Cry 3 designer’s research into Psychological models of player motivation – this one is going to be a standard thing in the games industry in a decade’s time, mark my words.
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My Tuesday session write up
I wrote about a fairly interesting debate between Alexander Bruce (who I have some history of mild and friendly antagonism with) and John Edwards of ThatGameCompany, and the piece is up on Gamasutra. I didn’t even find out who cleaned up in Super Tuesday!
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Monday GDC session write up
I went to a session about Social Games and wrote about it for Gamasutra, and it’s online here now.
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GDC 2012
I could ostensibly live-blog a lot of these talks. I will probably just tweet though.