Nice little supplement in EDGE this month - basically a promotional supplement to attract devs to game development in the Nordic region, it also came with a little article on the origins of the demo scene, and a few recent examples. Heres a couple of the best:

Lifeforce by Andromeda Software Development
Very, very, impressive. Insanely long demo featuring god knows how many different algorithmic masterpieces. Without a doubt a bit cheesy, but looking at what it must be doing beneath the surface and how its generating its imagery, its extremely accomplished.

Antifact by Loose Ninja
Everyone loves a bit of Mondrian. But a Mondrian renderer set to glitch techno? Adorable huh?

Will Wright (I’m bored of writing introductions now, so you don’t get one) was made a fellow at BAFTA last week - I think the first British Academy Video Games Awards Fellowship they’ve handed out. In order to get his award he had to do sing for his supper, so to speak, and so presented the Annual lecture (as part of the London Games Festival). To be honest he covered a lot of subject material in his previous lecture “The Future of Gaming”, so I’m not going to re-type all my notes, but there were some new subjects that he addressed that really were of interest. So, a few random notes:

• There are numerous complaints about kids being overly-engrossed in video games - but is this any different to the level of engagement when reading a great book? Is this a problem? Im not sure. Theres clearly a cultural divide between the two mediums. He mentioned that novels were criticised when they first became mass-market, as did the waltz, movies, and especially rock-and-roll.
• The Interactive media age curve (ie the amount that people engage with interactive content as they age) is diffferent to the linear media age curve
• We need more thematic diversity within videogames. Walking into GAME is not like browsing novels in Borders. We also need more older people involved in the game making process to encourage this diversity.
• Game Design as a discipline is still at the apprenticeship level, where developments are based on failure based learning. There is no critical body of theory.
• Loved this one - He told the story of a pottery teacher that told a class that one half of the class will be judged on the quality of a single pot, and the other half will be judged purely on the number of pots made. The half that were to be judged on quantity ended up making much better pots (even though not concentrating on quality) simply because they had been through the process so many times their natural skill had been refined.
• Games are comprised of Story, Hobby, and Sport. Story and Hobby combined encourage imagination. Hobby and sport combined encourage skill. Story and sport combined encourage drama. There was a pretty triangle diagram for this that I dont have (but I’m sure you can imagine it).
• Each medium has its own unique strengths. For all stories its empathy. For movies it adds a visual element. For games it adds an interactive element. Media creators should play to those strengths
• Hitchcock once described how a tedious scene (say a few people chatting about work) can be entirely transformed in the eyes of the viewer with the addition of some knowledge, such as the fact tht a bomb is about to go off.

As always his presentation was inspirational. Still another 6 months to wait for spore…

I’m looking forward to next week’s Flash on the Beach conference. Looks like they’ve done a great job of organising a diverse conference that veers away from the Adobe MAX tedium of technical sessions and tutorials, and throws in a much more inspirational element. There’s a few people speaking that have really sold me the ticket, particularly Andries Odendall, Jared Tarbell and Robert Hodgin. They’ve dropped any platform prejudice and embraced folks that are just doing great interactive work (even if they’ve all actively flirted with Flash in their day).

I think tickets are sold out now, but should be a good few days down in Brighton for those going - hope to meet up with a few friends down there. Might try and put a few notes from the sessions soon after.

I’m currently studying screenwriting at the London College of Communication (part of University of the Arts London), and over the last couple of weeks really started to get into it. A few months ago I spent a bit of time thinking about what I wanted to concentrate on going forward (I’ve been freelancing for nearly a year now - Its been a great period of my life, much better than I expected - so much happier after leaving Sony), and a lot of exciting opportunities have presented themselves. One of which is the freedom to bend my schedule around to do things I wouldn’t normally be able to - in this case study/education and training up on new skills. It says “generalist” on my business card, and it would be purely misleading if I couldn’t back that up with a few peripheral skills. The wonderful team at Valve are supposedly all enormously T-Shaped/polymath types (producers that do voice acting, server admins that write screenplays, animators that write C++ etc), and I reckon they make for good inspiration.

I’m very keen to try and explore relevant areas of skills/knowledge that might not normally be flexed so much by contract work. I guess its a little like going to the gym - there’s some areas that might atrophy if not properly (not that I’ve ever been an incredible storytelling/writer) and some areas that are just great fun to explore and are definitely relevant to a lot of the projects that I work on (particularly games work). Screenwriting seems to be a natural choice, covering not only the development of character and narrative, but also the demands of the visual medium such as pacing, timing, and spatial direction - although last week I learnt that action is generally NOT directed by the screenwriter. Apparently the epic street scene from “Heat” consisted of a single line - “BIG SHOOTOUT IN STREET” or somesuch something.

Anyway, its been great, I feel like a virtual puppetmaster - getting imaginary people do to all manner of bizarre things and conversations (although I got quickly bored of making Robert Mugabe say “Simon is awesome” etc). As an education, its really helped demystify the process and build a really solid foundation for crafting stories. By the end of the course I hope to feel comfortable writing short stories or injecting narrative into projects.

So if you are a freelancer/consultant, why not do the same? Theres some great courses in London (this one is a 60 hour course for about 300 quid), covering animation, 3d modeling, illustration, screenwriting, video production, etc etc. I’m sure wherever you are you could do the same. And don’t forget. ITS TAX DEDUCTIBLE

I’ve just finished Valve’s Portal, and I’ve got to say wow. This was on my radar to pick up and look at (I mentioned it a while ago), but it has exceeded my expectations and then some. The trailer shows off some of the core mechanics, but its the way that they are chained together on later levels is breathtaking (the first 16 of the 18 levels are basically a tutorial, the last one is far longer but the whole game is only 3 hours long). I’ve been flitting between this and Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, and while the puzzles in Zelda make me exclaim “Aha! Great puzzle” and perhaps pat myself on the head, some of the ingenuity paraded by Portal makes me want to hold some sort of festival in Trafalgar square, with me on a big throne and pictures of the game’s designers on huge spinning billboards. Its that good.

And its not good in a “this is the best game I’ve ever played way”. Its good in a “look what a beautiful thing a small, dedicated and ferociously creative team can make way”. Its original, charming, funny, and has introduced mechanics we’re going to be seeing in games for years to come, no doubt. Time to open up the Hammer level editor and make some puzzles!

If you have a PC, buy the Orange Box (this plus 4 other AAA games) now from Steam. RIGHT NOW! If you have a 360 buy it tomorrow. Damn it, this collection of 5 games is simply unmissable.

Levelhead is a new open-source game by the very talented Julian Oliver (previously of Fijuu 2 fame). Augmented reality-style gaming, this uses computer vision to detect the orientation of various sides of the cube to allow for the escher-like interior to be manipulated by just rotating the cube with your hands in order to guide out the expectedly-claustrophobic and motion-sick avatar contained within:

Using tilt motions, the player moves a character through rooms that appear inside one of several cubes on a table. Each room is logically connected by a series of doors, though some doors lead nowhere (they are traps).

The player has 2 minutes to find the exit of each cube, leading the character into the entrance of the next..

Work is also being done to use invisible markers such that the cube itself appears entirely white to the naked eye.

Great idea, look forward to seeing it when released. Expect at your nearest media arts expo soon I hope

Thanks TIGSource