June 27, 2009
I would like to publicly announce that I am working on Fünde Razor, a charity event for Child’s Play Charity. Specifically, I am the event planner for the San Francisco event in December. While I don’t have too much to announce yet, I’ll go into a little background about what the charity event is for and my my role is.
Background
Child’s Play Charity is a foundation created by Penny Arcade to provide video games, toys, and other financial support for children’s hospitals around the globe. The Child’s Play website can tell you more in detail about what they do.
Fünde Razor was founded by Joel Johnson (currently the editor of Boing Boing Gadgets) started Fünde Razor in NYC where Rock Band is played to raise funds and awareness for Child’s Play. Last year the event was in three cities: NYC, Denver, and San Francisco. The other cities run by other bloggers like Brian Crecente (Kotaku), Gawker Media, and Chris Kohler (Wired Game|Life). The idea is to have a nation wide event where all cites have the events on the same night. More cities and more people are involved, but I’ll wait for Joel to make that announcement.
The overall purpose of Fünde Razor is to raise awareness for Child’s Play. Come to the events if you can, but if you can’t, consider donating directly to Child’s Play. This makes the judgement of success less about the returns of the one night, but the overall fundraising goals of Child’s Play.
My Involvement
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May 23, 2009
The past few days I’ve been playing the iPhone port of Myst as previously mentioned and have a few thoughts to review.
Scope of this Review
I think it’s important to realize that this is a culturally significant title on a platform never dreamed or intended to be on. There is much said on the game itself in the past sixteen years and I don’t think I have much to uniquely contribute from reviewing the iPhone version. What I intend to focus on is that nature of porting the title onto the iPhone and review the choices made. This review is about how this title works on the iPhone and less about the content.
As someone who claims himself as the resident Myst nerd, there isn’t much Cyan Worlds needed to do in order to buy the title. I own the Myst board game, so I can be counted as part of the base audience. My goals with this project is how this title can attract a new audience to the title. Stated different, how can the new platform revive the franchise. As I stated before, you can earn a one-to-one relationship between the desktop computer experience with a portable device. Success then is how closely the title can communicate the essence of the original experience.
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May 10, 2009
Filling out the application for speaking at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) on Higher Education in video games. Since the Boing Boing interview, I’ve had a strong desire to start a substantive debate of the roll of academics with the video games industry.
What sparked my desire to do this lecture came from a conversation I had while standing outside a GDC party for Steam/Valve. While talking to a man whom had at least 15 years in the industry, he really brought to light the disconnect between academia and the industry. We got on the education subject and snapped back by saying he preferred students from DigiPen and Fullsail because they do what they are told. I have a much different take on the situation as I consider students from these and other schools with much more respect than he did. I want to make sure there are enough students out there to prove me right and him completely wrong.
Here’s the text I used in applying for the PAX lecture. Obviously not set in stone, but I’d love your feedback as I start shaping this lecture in the next few months.
Title:
Making a Career in Video Games
One-Paragraph Description:
Are you looking for a job with a game studio, or a career in interactive media? Learn how to identify the styles in game development curricula and the tools to help you find the best education for more than a job, but a lifetime’s work in the gaming industry.
Is there anything else you think we [PAX staff] should know?
This lecture will provide tools and perspective for finding the right curriculum for the student. This entails a two part approach. First, a student needs to start figuring out what direction he or she wants to take. The second part is knowing what information to extract from potential institutions. From this foundation, attendants can make solid decisions on which schools are applicable to their educational goals. Potential undergraduate, graduate, and transfer students will all find this lecture helpful.
I include my credentials to represent my own personal expertise, but it does not illustrate endorsement by any current or former employers.
Credentials of Highlight:
* First recipient of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at Emerson College.
Created the first BFA New Media curriculum at Emerson College, Boston.
* Emerson College, Enrollment & Student Affairs
Created tools and content related to admissions and enrollment for duties related to being an admission counselor.
For more information about me, visit http://segonmedia.com/
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May 4, 2009
Myst is now released by Cyan Worlds on the Apple iTunes App Store.
Official Website @ Cyan Worlds | This link opens iTunes right to the application.
Myst is one of the trifecta of games that got me into this art form of interactive storytelling. It’s a body of work that helped shape me as an artist in new media and made me what I am today. Which is why I’m buying the crap out of this title. I have the Myst board game for goodness sake!
I hope that Cyan Worlds does a postmortem on bringing the game to the iPhone. A few immediate questions I have are what kinds of decisions were made to update the port. Was there a point where they pulled punches to make the game have the spirit of the 1993 release? I also want to know what they did with the LAV scenes. Can’t wait to play to look how they turned out on the iPhone.
On a forward-thinking note, I hope this will help Cyan Worlds fund a new project from their studio. Honestly, I hope it’s something not Myst related. Heresy, I know. I love the Myst franchise. I love the work Cyan Worlds has done. But I think it’s time to move away from the past and start with something new.
Note: I did copy the above image from the Boing Boing Gadgets article. I can also screencap it myself, but I’m lazy.
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April 11, 2009
Since my appearance on Boing Boing Video¹ I’ve been giving a lot more thought about how someone can find the right resources and tools to formulate a curriculum and career in video games. Frankly, it’s not very good. There are an assortment of issues that lead to a drought of resources in deciding an educational path. While the issue is more complicated, I’ve narrowed down the tag line to this statement:
Do you want a job or a career?
A lot of the talk and guidance about video game education is rooted in getting a job with a studio. Yes, being employed is apart of a career and one seeks an education to become employable. I’m not questioning this aspect. What concerns me is the debate is geared towards getting that one job. There isn’t talk about the sustainability for one to adapt though their life time in interactive media. Simply training for getting hired out of college, not as a practitioner of the field.
by Sklathill
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March 26, 2009
Wanted to say a quick hello to the new visitors! My time with the Boing Boing crew was great and I hope you enjoyed my appearance.
When ever Boing Boing Video posts the clip, I’ll post it on here. I’m curious to see how I cam across on the video, King of Cosmos head and all.
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March 24, 2009
I will be on Boing Boing Video’s Live coverage of the Game Developer’s Conference tomrrow (Wens March 25) at 1:00pm PDT (-7 GMT). It’s a live stream and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get a clip of it for later. You’ll be able to view everything at the BoingBoing site:
Boing Boing Video + Offworld @ GDC
Direct UStream Link
I should also note that I will be at GDC as well, sans the time when I appear on Boing Boing.
Posted in Game Developers Conference, Media Appearances 1 Comment »
March 21, 2009
Someone kinda stole my idea! :/
In all seriousness, I am very glad that an effort is being made. I only have their website to go on, so I have to go on a bit of speculation from the presented materials. They’re also starting off small but hoping to expand their collection and open a full presentation and space in 2012.
There are a few things I will be watching for. I don’t want to give the impression that I am looking down on this effort from the start, but I have deep concerns which I hope are addressed. I hope this center can make the history of our art form accessible.
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March 8, 2009
Yes, another movie review post and of a movie everyone else is watching. I need to write more…
Watchmen has finally made it to the sliver screen with much fanfare and service. The preamble has been enjoyable with posts from The New Frontiersman. An ingenious way of putting more use out of B-roll and props the film created.
This photo for example was the first put on the Flickr account, and the most important one. But there were a slue of other significant artifacts including this video “6 Minutes to Midnight”. Don’t want to dwell on this for the post, but I really wanted to illustrate that this was pre-release marking at it’s best. These things weren’t blatant and weak attempts, but strong pieces to help establish the narrative.
The format of the Media
The main point I want to make is how the format of the media can hinder or strengthen an adaptation. Watchmen is a 12 part story which also included ‘book excerpts’ for all but the 12th chapter. Even when you read the novel in the complete book form, there are 11 intermissions between each chapter; You can pause and take in the stories. Movies don’t allow for the audience to ‘digest’ the story before continuing. You have to go along for the ride until it is done. While you can pause a DVD, the fact that the movie doesn’t allow for these pauses by design.
This was the inherent problem for me with adapting Watchmen for the silver screen specifically. Even if there was a ‘part 1/2′ of the film, it still wouldn’t be enough to digest the narrative parts. I don’t claim that this film shouldn’t have been done because of this; I have to embrace the fact that we can never be satisfied with a film that can’t be broken into it’s parts.
But what form of media do we have that can be separated into parts but still yield the high production value required for the film? TV has the ability to separate into parts, but not the kind of production value to supply the demand. The movie industry can provide the funding, but the format limits. The Internet in general can do this, but not enough capital can be made to fund the production.
The Changed Ending
My LA collogues already warned me that the ending was different than the novels, but made sense and worked. When I saw the movie, I agreed that this change made a nice take. Though I would have loved to see a large squid…
What I find interesting is what kind of ‘other’ that left the society with each ending. For the novel, the ‘other’ is an alien race. This leaves the society to think to the stars and to not feel alone in the universe. Though hostile, there were other sentient beings in the universe. With the movie, the ‘other’ is Dr. Manhattan. Since he’s simply indestructible, the best path is to avoid him at all costs. Thus society is closed off from the rest of the world.
Personally, I’d rather have a world of a giant squid than Dr. Manhattan as the enemy. At least we’d be looking towards the stars more.
The Soundtrack
Being a period piece, using licensed songs can do a good job taken in the mood of an era. 99 Luftballons was welcomed both for the choice of the german version and that it’s a cold war protest song. Then it got weird.
While I can’t recall the specific songs and scenes, what stuck out was how simply inappropriate these songs were. I felt like I was back at Emerson where a professor would play a scene of Triumph of the Will (1935) and play the Yakety Sax song as the soundtrack. It ruined the mood and was simply awkward in a couple of scenes. ESPECIALLY with the sex scenes.
This is the only aspect of the film that was a completely wrong choice.
Random other thoughts
Jupiter / Silk Speckter II: Didn’t smoke. Was only apparently missing with the Mars scene.
Night Owl I: Completely skipped his death which was an extremely key aspect to Night Owl. Obviosuly we’ll be getting it with the 20-hour DVD version, but the situation around Rorschach’s death (the 2nd friend he looses in a day) really explains the crushing weight of the situation.
Rorschach: Jackie Earle Haley needs to be nominated (again) for best actor due to his performance in this movie. I can’t put it plainer than that.
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February 7, 2009
Just got out of the theatre and saw Coraline. A film based off of the story from Neil Gaiman, directed and screenplay by Henry Selick. I don’t normally do reviews, but there are a few things that I thought to muse about the film. Some personal, others observations about the film. For the record, I have not read the book. I guess this post can count as spoiler, I guess.
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