My Guitar Heroes - and Heroines

So, if you listened to 1UP Yours last week you know I bitched about what Activision/Neversoft did to the female characters of Guitar Hero, especially Judy Nails, whom a lot of people loved to play for her brash, tomboyish punk look. Look at them side by side now: Judy Nails 2, totally fierce! Judy Nails 3, totally trashy! Totally slutty! Totally gross!

Ugh. Anyways, I have to admit that while I love playing the Guitar Hero series, I have never really listened to heavy metal or classic rock, so none of those dudes were really my personal guitar heroes. Slash? Carlos fucking Santana? WTF? Who cares? When I was learning guitar back, oh, a decade or so ago, I was inspired by my own heroes - and heroines, because frankly, the whole Guitar Hero series is missing some serious diversity there. Most of the musicians I swooned over as role models are women. And some day when we can import our own music to play along to, these are the musicians whose tracks I will import and play my heart out for. Keep on rocking in the free world!

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Less Grind, More Story

It's because my Night Elf Thistletoes has stalled in the mid-40s in Stranglethorn Vale that I can heartily agree with Richard Garriot, who commented in his keynote at the Develop Conference, "The obsession with damage inflicted over time as the mechanic behind combat reduces games to data management... The fact that people use the nomenclature 'grinding' to describe what they do in online games is a bad sign. Missions have been reduced to taking the next pellet from the slot machine."

And you know, reports are that Tabula Rasa is not looking that bad. And it sounds like - with the targeting system and the reduced HUD - that they are going for a more mainstream, less MO-focused audience. More actiony, perhaps, than usual for an MMO.

I also like that it's NOT MEDIEVAL FANTASY. Seriously. I am, yes, a dork, but I've spent too many hours messing about with trolls and elves now and at this point I'm ready to leave them behind. So the former Lord British's transformation to General British (will he turn his castle into a giant alien ship?) suits me just fine.

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Parappa Songs for Free In the rain or in the snow, you got the funky flow. (Thanks, Kotaku!)

Parappa the Rapper is a seminal music game, one of the first to cross over into North America with cult success. Parappa is such a charming character, and the engaging, clever, sweet songs were part of what made the game so fun.

A great original soundtrack can really elevate a game to the next level. I feel that way about both Katamari and Loco Roco - Katamari would be good, but not brilliant, without the amazingly far-ranging and creative soundtrack. Loco Roco, a less successful game, is still a minor jewel because of its adorable, completely hummable songs. In the case of Loco Roco, the music goes a long way to imparting personality to those simple little blobs, too.

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Gabe Grows Up By Acting Childish

In this case, "childish" is not pejorative. Maybe it never should be. Mike "Gabe" Krahulik has a great post on Penny-Arcade about rediscovering the joy of gaming by entering a Pokemon tournament, and seeing his min-maxing play style through the eyes of kids who are differently emotionally invested in their pokemon. Like a Scrooge, Mike also sees a reflection of the douchebag he could have been in an overly aggressive, boastful kid.

Anyway, it's a charming vignette and I love how it ends. It's wonderful to think that Pokemon is teaching kids to be gracious winners and losers, to appreciate the journey more than the destination, and to really revel in what the best of games can do - bring joy. These kids sound like they are acting way more civilized than most people twice their age who frequent Xbox Live.

Which leads me to thinking - are there games that seem to draw out better behavior than others? Are there games which, by intrisic design principles, bring out and encourage courtesy and consideration for others without forcing it on players as just another stat to max out? How would one design a game to encourage this?

In the case of Pokemon, it seems that the behavior is linked to the values exhibited in the TV show, where Ash and friends are always good guys, even when they lose. Sure, Ash can be a bit of a whiner sometimes, and he's immature, but he's got the sense of justice and honor that one sometimes finds in kids - a simple sense of doing the right thing, not yet corrupted by the world. Something to think about, anyway.

Thanks, Phil!

Shane Kim: Clueless

Anyone else find it endearing that Shane Kim was hoping to surprise Billy Berghammer with the news that Resident Evil 5 was coming to Xbox 360? Aw, Billy, you should have played along, like one does when little kids tell you something they think only they know.

"Really, Shane? You say RE5 is coming to Xbox 360? That's so great! How about Assassin's Creed, is that coming to Xbox 360 too?"

"How about a lollipop?"

P.S. The game is looking pretty nice.

Tragedy is in the Details: The Death of Theresa Duncan

The New York Times reports that writer, game designer, and filmmaker Theresa Duncan is dead, apparently by suicide. Her partner, artist Jeremy Blake, is still missing, presumably at sea. The police found a note among his folded clothes by the ocean. Theresa Duncan also left a note.

What could the notes have said?

Combing through the recent entries on her blog, The Wit of the Staircase, reveals nothing - as usual. Interestingly, it was because she had stopped posting on her blog that fans and readers suspected that something was wrong.

How does one explain to the living that one no longer wants to be among them? Is it ever possible for those left behind to understand?

The story that emerges from the small details we can piece together seem to sketch a tale that could be the subject of a film. Talented, beautiful artist kills herself; her lover comes home to discover her body; distraught, he goes to the beach, writes a note, takes off his clothes, and swims out into the ocean. Readers of her blog wonder what happened; friends talk to friends of friends; and the police find the body.

I'm not sure there is an end to a story like this.

On a mailing list I'm on, Heather Kelley writes:

Theresa was one of the early "girl games" designers from the mid 90s and was a big inspiration to me at the time. Her work was quirky and smart. She created the decidedly non-pink CD-ROM games Smarty, Chop Suey, and Zero Zero, then she left the games arena to pursue film and animation projects.

I never met her but I'm sad she left.

So am I.

Here is the funeral announcement. Those who feel so moved can also make a donation in her name to The Whitney Museum of American Art, where her oartner Jeremy Blake had three biennial exhibitions. Here's a Salon piece on her transition from game designer to filmmaker and writer.

Two More at Take-Two Fess Up

Take-Two's naughtiness apparently extends beyond their games...
Fudging financial spreadsheets? Check!
Lying to regulators? Check!
Stock options backdating, check and mate!

Steve Jobs, are you paying attention? There but for the grace of...

Peter Moore Admits: He Is the Prince of Darkness

Go Brandon! In a really solid interview with Peter Moore, late of Microsoft, our intrepid reporter asks him the critical question we've all been dying to know:

[A]re you in fact the Prince of Darkness?

PM: Damn, my cover's blown! Let me just tuck the tail in back there!

I knew it!

The rest of the interview is JUST as thought-provoking. :)

Plus, it's kind of nice to hear Peter say that he never gave up on the Dreamcast. The love was real, people!

Will Wright's TED Talk This is the reason, partly, that Will Wright wasn't at GDC this year he was at the TED conference giving this talk!

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Kokomori: Experimental Art Games Yay! Friends Heather, Phil, and Damien and their game art collective Kokoromi are profiled in This Magazine.

I went to the GAMMA 01 event last year in Montreal, it was fun - a party, with music (Freezepop played although they got stuck in customs and arrived super late!) and DJs made music on DS Lites, and the experimental games were there projected on walls so people could play. The crowd was a mix of game developers, artists, musicians, and Montreal party people.

What I love about Kokoromi is that they explore the notion that games can be used to make art - that they are a medium for self-expression; and by that I don't mean projects like the excellent iam8bit, in which games are evoked in the service of more traditional visual arts; I mean that the gameplay itself is treated as a potential artform - that interactivity is key to the experience.

Can't wait for this year's GAMMA!

Rock Stars of Videogames

I was flying home from the weekend in LA (where I didn't really go to E3, just sampled the afterparty and saw some friends) when I found myself next to Chris Hecker, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. We got to talking about why there are still very few recognizable names and faces in the videogame industry. He reminded me of the famous ad announcing the founding of EA, headlined, "Can Computers Make You Cry?"

Well, we're still struggling to answer that question, but take a look at the photo on the right - the founding members of a company that ambitiously and grandiosely called itself Electronic Arts. A name that defies the Eberts who don't see the art in computer and video games. And the photo itself says unequivocally, "Not only are computer games art, we are artists."

It looks like it could be a publicity shot for a moody rock band. The photographer has captured real personality here, individuals - dressed in dark clothes and seemingly passionately united under the aegis of a single goal.

With a few notable exceptions (you know who they are - Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto) - the industry has turned away from personalizing game development, from regarding the people who work on games as individually important. No, far better for a studio like EA to let the public see the studio behind the franchise rather than a handful of creative geniuses. The franchise is longer-lived that way, the studio system more stable.

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Gizmondo: The Final Word

Wired has an absorbing read on Gizmondo's Flameout. Working as a news editor at 1UP, I tried so many times to investigate these people - it was so clear to all of us that they were dirty as can be. But I never found anything conclusive, just a lot of things to be suspicious about.

And gamers knew it too - I mean, the product didn't make any sense, none of their press releases made any sense, and they threw these outrageous parties that cost them millions of dollars. And yet, there were so many positive reports in the mainstream media. They raised a bunch of money in stocks - and then, apparently, they stole it!

Anyway, read the article - it's an entertaining story.

Shame on You, G4

Don't you know who Jack Thompson is? He's not someone to deal with. He's not someone to give any more publicity to. He's not anyone that ought to be taken seriously. He needs to be discredited as the fraud and sensationalistic self-aggrandizer that he is.

I'm really disappointed that you'd invite him as a guest on Attack of the Show to talk about violence in videogames. He will cheapen and distort an issue that ought to be taken seriously. He will twist words, he will insult gamers, he will use the platform to make ugly, untrue accusations as he always does.

There's no winning against some people, so putting him on the show to hope to argue against him is futile. He, like Bill O'Reilly and other pundits who make careers of shouting loudly at other people, will avoid reasonable argument because he knows it will defeat him. He seeks merely to inflame passions. He freely makes up facts and lies when he does not have the information - or when he does, he twists it to suit his agenda. He is, in the most classical sense, a troll.

I'm disappointed, because putting someone like him on the show reveals that you really have lost respect for gamers and their intelligence. That said, the issue of videogame violence and how it may affect both children and adults - and our larger society - is a crucial issue that can be addressed by many, many other people besides the self-inflated Jack Thompson, including Dr. Walsh, head of The National Institute for Media and the Family, who believes essentially in the same philosophy as Thompson but refuses to employ the same dirty tactics. Or anyone from Common Sense Media, or the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, or indeed any of the hundreds of media watchdog and consumer advocacy groups who are concerned with the impact videogames have on children.

Moreover, why are two journalists (Adam Sessler and Mark Friedler, president of GameDaily Biz) asked to defend videogame violence? That is not our job. Our job is to report. The job of defense clearly belongs to an industry lobby group like the ESA. Why aren't they represented? Because they know better. The ESA has a policy of not responding to anything Jack Thompson says or does.

By the way, editors at Ziff Davis were asked to appear on the show as well. We declined.

Q Entertainment Cover Story

A week in Japan and many sweaty hours of taping have paid off: take a look at the Q Entertainment cover story put together by James Mielke and Jason Bertrand. It's pretty cool.

I forgot to ask Miz if we could go to a club together when I'm in Japan this September, but I'm counting on it.

A Day in the Life of Yoshitaka Amano

Amano is perhaps the best-known artist among videogamers, mainly for his ethereal, otherworldly character designs on the Final Fantasy series. My colleagues at Ziff, Jason and Milky, recently went to visit him at his home studio in Tokyo. In a country where few friends are invited over for a cup of tea, it's a rare glimpse into an artist's private life. Big thanks to Hiroko Minamoto for hooking up the translations!

Julian Dibbell's Play Money

When I first met Julian, he was in the process of quitting his freelance writing career to become a full-time trader of virtual goods for one year. The book that resulted has just come out: Play Money. I've ordered it, and I'll post the review here.

Julian's previous book was My Tiny Life, a virtual autobiography. He also wrote the groundbreaking article The Unreal Estate Boom for Wired in 2002. He posts at Terra Nova.

An Interview with Gregg Tavares

A while ago John Ricciardi and Hiroko Minamoto interviewed their friend Gregg Tavares in Tokyo. We used a snippet of it for the 1UP Show, focusing on his comments about the game Loco Roco, on which he is a programmer. But the footage I looked at had so many other interesting things in it, such as what it's like working as a foreigner on a Japanese dev team, and what he percieves as the tastes of Japanese gamers.

The longer version of the video is here. It's hard to believe that Gregg's first game was for Commodore 64. He looks way too young for that!

Thanks so much to Gregg and Hiroko and John.

Charlie Cleveland has a Dream

Charlie Cleveland is a young independent game developer in San Francisco. He spent years leading a team developing a Half-Life 2 mod called Natural Selection. He actually made enough money from donations to work full time on the project, but not enough money to develop his more ambitious game designs.

So what's a young independent game designer to do? Charlie took a few months to develop a casual game - hoping that the larger market and royalties will help fuel his ideas for first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. Voila: Zen of Sudoku. Charlie is transparent about the process. It's refreshing to see how someone works hard at driving his game developer dreams.

Are MMOs the New Golf?

We've all heard the rumors: Dave Chappelle loves World of Warcraft. So does Jon Stewart. Asia Carrera kills in Unreal Tournament.

But it turns out that perhaps another group of power-players are addicted to WoW - high-tech entrepreneurs, big-idea folks, internet movers and shakers. Is WoW turning into a place where they can meet and find each other? I wrote a story on it for 1UP.com: Is WoW the New Golf?

It's an interesting idea, but WoW is a long way from Friendster or mySpace or LinkedIn. For one, it's a lot harder to browse for friends; the server system is optimized for play experience, not for contact volume. And then the game itself is so involving that, unlike taking a stroll through the links, there's a lot less potential time for schmoozing while playing. At the lower levels, at least.

Still, there is something to the fact that a lot of people, including celebrities and CEOs and the like, are now choosing to relax by playing games online. With a little research you may be able to join Jon Stewart's raiding party next time you log on.

I talked with Joi Ito, a WoW player with the passion of the newly converted, about his guild, "We Know", and whether the buzz on it comes from the fact that he's attached to the project. I got the idea for the story because Eric, who's Joi's friend and fellow Guild-member, told me an amusing anecdote about going out to brunch with a big group of people and a mobile entrepreneur-type was talking about the very same guild with another bruncher.

Anyway, I took video of the chat with Joi while he also showed us around Azeroth; I'm working on editing it now and I'll post it up later. It was an experiment that turned out, I think, rather well! Thanks to Eric for his help.

Getting Up to Blogging

Marc Ecko has a blog on 1-Up. He's a very articulate speaker, so I'm not surprised that his writing is direct and clean, with well-paced emotional touches. I hope he keeps it up.

Luminosity and Obscurity

Tokyopia has an interview with Mizuguchi up. Is it just me or is it difficult to get Japanese game designers to talk about their art? Of course part of it is the language barrier - the interview, it says, used both English and Japanese but most of Mizuguchi's answers sound like they were in English, rather than translated from Japanese. There are gems of ideas dropped in here, but not fleshed out the way I *think* many Western developers would have elaborated. I've noticed this also in lectures given by Japanese game designers, even in Japanese. They don't say much, and when they do, it tends to be almost naively simple, self-deprecating, or very, very practical.

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Stan Winston on Character Design

You might not know who Stan Winston is, but you certainly know some of his characters. Winston is the visual designer who brought to life two models of terminator, 800 and 1000, the Aliens, and the Predator among many others. Getting his start in a made-for-TV movie called Gargoyles, which also won him an Emmy, Winston has been using makeup puppeteering, animatronics, and (more recently) digital wizardry to make the fantastic real.

I was lucky enough to attend a recent talk Winston gave at Electronic Arts’ Redwood Shores studio. Winston comes across as refreshingly self-depreciating, considering the stereotypes of movie industry personalities we’re all familiar with. He’s quick to confess that these days he really doesn’t do a lot of the hands-on work at his studio, nor does he really understand exactly how every effect at his studio works, but he’s plenty happy to plaster his name in giant letters over it. He’s also well versed in many geek fetishes, from comic books to toys to videogames. With respects to the latter, Winston surprised me by actually being familiar with current generation titles. I can only hope to be so with it when I, too, have grandkids.

Towards the end of the talk, one of the developers in the audience posed a problem to Stan: How do you create a strong character when you don’t have much, if any, story? Winston conceded that this was a very difficult problem, but it was one that he also had faced in the film industry. When Winston was brought on board the Predator movie, it had already been shot. The monster they had wasn’t working, so they needed Winston to build a replacement. In the movie, the Predator’s character is never really discussed, but he’s the title character, so he still had to be very compelling. Winston started by looking for existing images that told the kind of story he wanted to tell about the Predator, and eventually wound up basing the designs off a statue of a Rastafarian warrior, and working outward from there.

Anyone who has ever studied improvisational theatre will quickly grok this idea. A character’s backstory is told by how a character stands and moves, the pitch of her voice, and her general attitude. Even with heavy narrative elements, backstory has to be told in those ways first, because if the words about the character don’t keep with her actions, the audience sees through the illusion. When asked if there was any particular game that he felt exemplified how strong character can be done in games, Winston named Devil May Cry without skipping a beat (with the quick caveat that he felt the story needed work).

The talk ended much too soon for my tastes, but Stan had a plane to catch. Promises to keep, and so on.

Chris Crawford and the Holy Grail

"[Interaction] is the Holy Grail... the undiscovered country."

-Chris Crawford, December 11, 2003

Today, curmudgeonly game designer Chris Crawford (Mobygames bio) dropped by to give a talk at my grad program. With a swath of publishing credits and a yen for making challenging statements, Crawford is the sort of person you want to listen to, but also the sort of person you want to disagree with. Crawford hasn't played a videogame in 5 years (except for The Sims, which he played for an hour when Will Wright sent him a copy, looking for feedback), having decided there is nothing more they can teach him. He has tired of game design so much that he is now calling for the founding of a new discipline of interactive entertainment software that will "call itself something else" and have absolutely nothing to do with the games industry. Like I said, challenging statements.

What's Chris Crawford's big problem with modern game design? It's too focused on things, and not enough on people. Crawford asks us to try disecting game interactivity into its base verbs. At his talk, he disected a first-person shooter, but I'll simplify further with an example I used in an essay I wrote for this site a few months ago and analyze Asteroids. Asteroids has three verbs: turn, thrust, shoot. This is a fairly limited vocabulary of action, and not one that is terribly engaging to our humanity. Crawford dares game designers to think of a game's verbs as a job description, and if a game's verbs don't sound like an interesting job, then it's not going to be a worthwhile game. Crawford went on to say that while The Sims is, in his view, a first step in the right direction, it still fails in this regard. The Sims, he says, is about making dinner, cleaning, showering, going to the bathroom, and going to work. Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with all the boring parts removed." The Sims might be seen, then, as life with all the interesting parts removed.

Interestingly, MMOGs don't fare any better in this regard. MMOGs make up for the fact that we don't possess the algorithmic chops to design really good interactive characters by putting us in a world with hundreds of other people. The problem again is that people are dull. The sorts of stories that we associate with the marvelous fantasy and science fiction worlds that MMOGs invite us to play in cannot happen when interaction comes largely from other people. Characters in movies and books do not act like actual people. Dialog is not just conversation. As was recently quipped, "Star Wars: Galaxies isn't Luke Skywalker's Star Wars, it's Uncle Owen's Star Wars." Crawford likened MMOGs to a window: We can stand on opposite sides of a glass window, and we'll each see each other perfectly, but the window will never give us impressionism or cubism. Even if the game designer's art, interactivity, is crude right now, like all arts, time and the right people will bring us better things than mundane reality.

Crawford exists in a space that many find uncomfortable. He has been a creative force behind many successful game projects, and he was the first person to really write about computer game design, but these days much of what he champions seems at odds with reality. Visionary? kook? Both? In any case, worth paying attention to.

Competitive Personalities?

I've got an assignment to track down and profile personalities in professional gaming. Between 1999 and 2001 I worked at Gamers.com, which claimed Dennis "Thresh" Fong as its Chief Gaming Officer. Dennis had won a number of Quake championships, including beating Quake designer John Carmack in a competition where the prize was a Ferrari. So we had this prize Ferrari parked in the foyer of our office!

In Korea, online gaming victors are front-page news. But who in the English language world is that famous? Do you have any professional gamers that you follow?

Sierra's Direct Marketing

A group of die-hard adventure game fans got their hands on Ken Williams, co-founder of seminal PC game maker Sierra On-Line. Remember King's Quest? Or Leisure Suit Larry?

The Adventure-Treff Ken Williams interview brings up old memories for some, ancient history for others. The Adventure-Treff not-so-hidden agenda is to resurrect the adventure game genre with Williams' insight and support. Williams seems more interested in explaining the architecture of the company, and their success. To what does he attribute it? Attention to quality, detail, and dedicated direct marketing. It's a fascinating look at the early days of game publishing. And Williams comes across as a somewhat extreme guy who may have retired too early. He's running SierraGamers.com, to coordinate information sharing between fans and historians, and he has a commendable attitude about abandonware and player game-modifying.

Brenda Laurel at Stanford

Last week Brenda Laurel gave a talk to Katherine Isbister's CS class (where Justin and I also spoke a couple weeks ago). Brenda is a co-founder of Interval Research in Palo Alto, and founder of Purple Moon, a spinoff of Interval Research Corporation, focused on making technology for girls. She's written several books, including the ground-breaking Computers as Theatre (she has a PhD in Theatre) and The Utopian Entrepreneur. She's worked at several leading companies in the industry, including Apple, Activision, and Atari. She currently serves as the Chair of the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design.

She's been an inspiration to many people in the way she combines geek knowledge with humanist values. She is also an amazing speaker - funny, passionate, and absolutely thoroughly steeped in professional research. A real rabble-rousing shit-kicker, with a mane of strawberry blond hair and tatoos on her arm and peeking out over the collar of her purple tank top on her upper back. She spoke to the students about doing good design research, using her own experiences at Purple Moon as a test example. I'll attempt to paraphrase her remarks from my notes.

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Becoming: Gamer

Hiya. I’m new. Welcome me to the flock.

First of all, I'm a geek. I mean, I'd be silly to deny it after twenty years. Right down to my reverse Polish notation calculator and Tool albums, I'm all geek all the time, and I know it. I'm also fine with it. Being a geek of the female persuasion nowadays seems a lot easier to me than geek boyhood. Honestly, despite our minority status, we girl geeks have a much simpler time of it. As long as I wear clothes that at least resemble those found at Old Navy, keep MTV on in the background while I read Orson Scott Card, and buy all my M.C. Escher materials online so they arrive brown-boxed and hushed up, I function just fine in so-called normal society. And, to be fair, I live in Olympia, WA, where you can wear corduroy coats without shame and even be considered indie rather than just plain old geek as long as Phantom City Records stocks photocopies of your current homemade 'zine. In a nutshell, I may be a geek, but I'm doing fine. Go me.

So, if I'm a current-day geek, I must be a gamer as well, right?

Oh, dear.

Let's examine the facts.

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Tugbek Olek - Writer First

Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

Dedicated play can lead to work as a game journalist, at least in Turkey. But first and foremost, Tugbek Olek is a writer.

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Wagner James Au: Player Philosopher

Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

Wagner James Au studied philosophy in college, which prepared him to appreciate Thief and write articles about games for Salon.

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David Hodgson - From Witchcraft to Warcraft

David "Sothoth" Hodgson has been an editor at Maximum, GameFan, Gamers.com and now writes game strategy guides for Prima. All that with a degree in Demonic Possession. This game journalist got his start by making his own gaming publication; not a web site but rather a print 'zine about the PlayStation.

Here, David shares some advice for aspiring game journalists, and his own story:

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Dean Takahashi - They Go to School for This?

Dean Takahashi has written about games for The Wall Street Journal, Red Herring and the San Jose Mercury News. Most recently, he published a book about the development of the Xbox. He actually studied journalism in school, which helps explain the high calibre of publications he's written for. His work covering games is due to a mixture of timing and passion:

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Profiles in Game Journalism

Free games! Access to insider industry events! Substandard pay! Little respect! Foul-mouthed readers! Free games!

I've been asked, "How do I get started as a game journalist?"

I've emailed a few working writers covering the games industry to see how they got their start in professional video game journalism. Over the next week or two, I'll post their stories.

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Brief Reiko Kodama Profile

While there are ample famous male designers in the game industry, I find it hard to name more than a handful of women who can be strongly identified with games - celebrity designers, not just celebrities. Reiko Kodama is one of them - she works at Sega's OverWorks studio in Japan, responsible for the Skies of Arcadia title on the Dreamcast, now expanded to be Eternal Arcadia on Nintendo's GameCube. The Dreamcast game, which I've almost solved, is a witty whimsical pirate adventure RPG with fun, memorable characters.

There's not much information available online in English about Ms. Kodama but she has been interviewed briefly in the Denver Post: Girls joining the industry mix, by Dave Thomas, the Post's Games Columnist. (link found on the grrlgamer.com forums).

Creator of M.U.L.E. Profiled

Salon has a well-written and respectful profile of game developer Dani Bunten, co-creator of M.U.L.E., a quintessential game developer's game.

M.U.L.E. is a favorite game of Justin's, and deceptively easy to learn. Simple rules stacked up together and the unpredictability of your opponents conspire to make this a game with near-infinite variety. Is it primitive? Sure, from a graphics standpoint; but the gameplay is incredibly complex. Strategy, quick reflexes, and pure luck all play a part.

The piece is also a critique, through the lens of Bunten's career, of the last twenty years of game development history - a history which rewarded snazzy graphics over innovative game mechanics, and which left Dani Bunten, for the most part, confined to a dusty footnote in the annals.

Can you list every game you've ever played?

Kevin Fox writes about a game design assignment: list every game you've ever played. every game, not only electronic; games like chess, checkers, blindman's bluff, spin the bottle, playing house, etc.

An interesting thread results.

And I am provoked also to consider why, when I say I study "games", I usually mean only electronic/video games. Are there applicable lessons to be learned from studying Hide-and-Seek?

I will have to think about this much longer before I can come up with my list.

(via Jason Kottke)

Indie Game Interviews: Sean
An interview with independent game developer Sean Barrett.

A veteran of PC game-maker Looking Glass Technologies and their titles Thief, Terra Nova, and System Shock. Sean here muses on his past work with graphics and his interest in "interpersonal physics" - how games might better simulate engaging player-to-non-player-character relationships.

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What kind of a gamer are you?

From GameBlog ("Recording the gory details of the gaming life of Mikko Saari."), a Gameblog: Gamer profiling system.

I've graded all the games on five categories: luck element, fun element, strategical depth, length and player interaction. Each category is graded from 1 to 5, with long, verbal descriptions. So, you choose your profile and then you're provided with the ten best matches for you.

True, most of the games are board and card games (including Puerto Rico, Mahjong and Bohnanza), and the matching system software is in Finnish, still the comments contains some ongoing discussion and Mikko proposes classifying specific games so you might see what matches your values. And then if Mikko gets his game profiles done, you
(Found searching for "game" on weblogs.com)