So Earth Primer, which used to be “GeoBook,” is nearing completion! It’s been a long journey. I won’t say much about it here because I’ve been working very hard on a web page and trailer (www.earthprimer.com). It should be coming out very soon, within the next month or so. As soon as the launch […]
Last year Lea Redmond and I co-designed a game/installation called Toy Chest for the SF Come Out and Play Festival. Originally we called the game Toy Fight, but found that this wasn’t putting people in an appropriately cooperative/improvisational frame of mind. The basic idea was to design a game (and installation for […]
I just finished teaching a class at Univ. of California Santa Cruz on Simulation for Games. Below is a demo reel of the student projects. At the class page you can learn more about the class, play all the student projects (in browser!), and read the syllabus. Final projects are prototypes of dynamic explanations embedded […]
I recently gave a talk at the ASAP/3 conference that sketched the history of computers as tools & playthings. I’ve learned my lesson on giving dominantly visual talks: if you don’t have good notes then they are a major bummer to give in the future, plus nobody else can read them. What was I […]
Jan. 2015 update: see the launch trailer and learn more at EarthPrimer.com.
So, IndieCade happened, and we (we being my project & me, I suppose) were lucky enough to be selected for inclusion in the festival! I made two videos for the festival that I’d like to share. First, a trailer so you […]
Jan. 2015 update: See the launch trailer and learn more at EarthPrimer.com.
Last week I wrapped up my submission to IndieCade. It’s not actually a game—like much of the stuff I find fascinating these days—and this requires some explanation. IndieCade, you might be surprised to learn (I was), isn’t just for games. […]
This essay was written part way through Spore’s development, and summarizes one of the biggest transitions the project made — unknown to many — from what could have been a SimEarth like game/science toy to a capital-G computer Game. It tells how Spore made some of its early, and most crucial, navigational decisions down […]
The following essay was originally published in Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop (2008). I had given talks in the past on prototyping, but this was the first essay I wrote on the topic, and I think it holds up. If you’re interested in the Advanced Prototyping talk Chris Hecker and I gave at GDC’06, […]
I recently helped my friend Lea Redmond over at Leafcutter Designs make a cute little stop motion animation for her World’s Tiniest Post Service.
I don’t think the promotion is still available, but the tiny letters and packages, not to mention many other goodies, are still available over at her site.
[…]
It’s time. The server hosting my old web site melted. My old web page was created around 2001, and it limped along with whatever patchy attention I would give it. The photograph of me is the same one on my passport. I get long looks when passing through border control. I’m far more handsome now, […]
More
