Game Design Lectures by Jonathan Blow

"If our medium is powerful, we should be have the capability to do things that we should be ashamed of, and then make the choice about whether we are going to do them or not."
-Jonathan Blow

I found these lectures by indy game developer Jonathan Blow fascinating, engaging and applicable to mediums other then video games:

• Programming is Easy; Production is Harder; Design is Hardest.
• Programming, Design, and ‘Art’
• Design Reboot (the above quote is from this one)
  
• Indie Prototyping (.mov) (Why questions over How questions in game design)
• Two video lectures on game design
• Interview with Jonathan at the Indy Game Dev. Podcast

Check out Jonathan's blog/website here: http://braid-game.com/news/
The game he's been working on for at least 4 years, Braid, is something I'm looking forward to.

exploring game worlds and eden as a video game

This may be obvious, but I think the difference between how we experience a beautiful computer game, (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Riven for example) and the way we experience our world is the relationship we have to that world. The artificial world does not have all the responsibilities that the real one does, and perhaps the newness of the format makes me see it with new eyes. Because I see a videogame as crafted, I notice and marvel at the craft.

Or is it the distance that makes it so attractive? It is that way to some degree with paintings, photos or the grass on the otherside of the fence. Is it the absence of me? Perhaps my driving force is just trying to get to a place free of me. But what is it about game worlds that is so attractive to me? In exploring abandoned buildings I get some of the same feeling. The desire to explore. What is it about horizons that so attracts us?

Relevant texts:
my post on kierkegaard and our relation to nature
C.S. Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress.
John Howe's blog post on Wanderlust

What about drawing? Does that help me get that feeling in the real world? Maybe
Or Photography? Yes and No.

Did Eden feel like an adventure game to Adam? Did life feel like a game? Was there play before the fall?

In many ways the world was like a game. Adam suddenly existed fully formed in a new world teaming with life. I suppose he had no memory. He did not yet know how this world, this life, worked, and what he was supposed to do. What the objective was. But then he was told. It became multiplayer. He got started, and then a things went south. But the games objectives didn't change. It became more complicated, but the rules and ultimate task are the same for us.

free book on aesthetics of video games

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then perhaps writing about video games is like meditating about explosions.

Nonetheless, Steve Poole is giving away his book Trigger Happy: the Inner Life of Video Games for free as a PDF.

He describes it as "a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics."

I checked it out from a library once after reading Earnest Adam's article the game designer's library.

Ernest Adams on RPGs

"You may have heard John F. Kennedy’s joke that Washington D.C. is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm. Well, in my opinion most RPG’s combine the pulse-pounding excitement of a business simulation with the intellectual challenge of a shooter. I play games of medieval adventure and heroism to slay princesses and rescue dragons; I don’t play them to spend two-thirds of my time dickering with shopkeepers. I want to be a hero, but the game forces me to be an itinerant second-hand arms dealer. Earning money by robbing corpses doesn’t make me feel all that noble, either."

-Ernest Adams in his 1998 "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!" article.

Podcasts, etc Part 2

FxGuide Podcast
Interviews with artists in the visual effects industry. Lots of them, in mp3, I particularly enjoyed this interview "on design issues, the role of titles and the nature of film trailers"

Sword of Gryffindor
Great Harry Potter podcast by Travis Prinzi, who has degrees in theology and literature. Rowling has said in interviews that she believes in God, not magic that her faith is the key to what is coming in the books.

Economics and Culture Lectures

Soundtrack.net Podcasts and ScoreNotes Interviews
I have always been fascinated by, and enjoy listening to film scores. These are some great interviews with composers.

Gamesutra podcast
Game design

ImageMethod Cinematography podcast
This is an excellent video podcast, but I like to record the audio to mp3 (with audacity) and listen to it in the car or while I work.