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PAX

E3 was hugely disappointing... one tiny room for all the games, no banners, no buzz; I know that I used to complain about the old E3 but that was the one week of the year when videogames were the center of entertainment and pop culture. This year's E3 made you depressed to be in videogames.

PAX redeemed that all, bringing back the excitement without, miraculously, the sleaze and cheese factor that E3 sometimes dripped with. What I've always loved about PAX is that it is so authentic -- it's for the fans; there's no bullshit. And I love it for that.

It's growing so massively, too. The first year I attended, which was 2005 (PAX's second year), I think there were about 4-5,000 attendees. Last week's show had 50,000 pre-registered, with many more tickets sold at the door. I'm excited by the growth and it's great for the folks who run PAX, but I do miss the nerdy intimacy of three years ago.

Still, I think PAX has the potential to become a homegrown Leipzig -- a split consumer/trade event. What would be neat is if the trade folks had a couple of days before the show, like they do at TGS, so some of the suits can clear out before the fans arrive Friday afternoon. You don't need the corporates milling about on the weekend. (...I say, being one, technically, myself.)

No matter what happens, though, I'll always have a huge soft spot in my heart for PAX and the folks who run it and make it all work. It's a miracle! So, thanks, Jerry, Mike, Robert, Kristin, Jeff, and other folks I don't yet know. Thanks for a really good time.

Plus, any time I get to hang in Shorty's is all right by me. ;)

Harvey Smith is The Man

And I mean that in the best possible sense, that he is manly. At his talk on Tuesday he gave a brief most-mortem in which he basically apologized for Blacksite. I wasn't there, but I heard about it through friends.

I think this is incredibly brave of him. It's very unusual to have this level of frankness from a creative director about a game. But I appreciate the honesty and the attempt to provide some transparency to game development. Sometimes projects don't go as planned. ...Sometimes, they don't even get planned properly. Harvey was brought into Blacksite really late to, basically, rescue it. All summer and most of the fall this year he was personally staying up to 3 am to go in and fix code and track bugs. He cared about the game and poured his energy into it.

It's like my friend Ryan always says: the line between a bad film and a good on is a razor's edge. So much can go wrong to turn a good film bad. I wonder if the line is even thinner in games.

In any case, I think Harvey is so articulate and personable and talented that he'll weather this and go on to something even better. Because he's the man.

Conversations in Montreal

I didn't get to see a great many sessions yesterday because I had a string of interviews to do but the four that I got to catch revealed a couple of interesting common themes. First is the notion that we are now mature gamers and we want deeper, more meaningful play experiences. Clint brought this up in his panel, Jon Blow talked about this in his awesomely inspiring and challenging keynote, Ben Sawyer lamented the lack of playable, shareable games for small children, and Koizumi Yoshiaki spoke about the need for a game that would be simple and fun for the whole family in his talk on Super Mario Galaxy.

It's true. We're not kids anymore. The power fantasies and the simplistic good versus evil tales which pleased us back when we were kids awed by Star Wars are still good fun, but we want something more complex now, maybe more challenging, more Citizen Kane and Chinatown and Breathless than Transformers or Die Hard.

I also realized something else, listening to Jon Blow's excellent critique of why Bioshock is manipulative schlock - he could put into words what I had intuitively felt about the game but wasn't able to express because I lacked the analytical tools. It also reminded me of Clint's really smart critique of the game. Why does it take game designers to provide actual critique of games in this manner? Because we don't have a real game studies department, we don't have writers who are training in formal analysis of game systems - the people who are most qualified to think about games in this way are people who are building systems and confronting systemic challenges constantly. I don't think it's necessary to have education to be able to talk about games as smartly as people like Jon and Clint do; but it would help. And I'm afraid that true game criticism will not come from game enthusiast press, which are essentially the modern equivalent of fanzines.

Well, more to think about.

CCP Fan Fest in Reykjavik

Woot, I'm going to the EVE-Online Fan Fest next week! I love fan festivals - it's exciting to feel the energy of the crowd and to be around people who are so passionately into something - and, of course, I'm really thrilled to be able to check out Reykjavik, the most expensive city in Europe. Ha!

I'm only there for a few days but is there anything I should absolutely do while I'm there?

You Have Until November 1st

...to create a game for entry into Kokoromi's Gamma 256, the game/art festival the collective throws during the Montreal International Game Summit. I went last year and it was a blast. I wish I could program so I can make something for this year. But I can't!

I know some of you, however, can - so get to it!

UT Videogame Archive Project

A few months back I visited the Center for American History's inaugural launch reception for the UT Videogame Archive Project,

This is very exciting - we've been working with the University of Texas a little bit to help promote their fundraise for the UT Videogame Archive project. It's a party on Richard Garriott's fabled estate, Britannia Manor. Actually, not in the castle itself, but on the grounds, overlooking a lake, where there is also a reproduction of the Globe Theatre (as made famous by Shakespeare).

Platinum sponsors get to sit in the Royal Box at the theatre. Guests will bid on, among other things, a Zero G flight. Which I, of course, totally want to try. Although I've heard that most people throw up. A little puke is worth it, though, no?

Well, Duh.

We all knew this was going to happen, right?

Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, on a spectacular showing.

So, who's going to be in my band? We just need a kick-ass name.

Game Writing Workshop at Austin

Attention writers of games planning to go to Austin GDC - Richard Dansky and Daniel Erickson are leading a 2-part, 2-hour intensive Game Writing Workshop at Austin GDC. Here's how it works - you submit your writing sample to agdcwritersworkshop(at)gmail(dot)com before August 15th and Richard and Daniel will tell you if you're in. It's first-come, first-serve. Then for two hours you will receive and provide feedback on fifteen pieces submitted by you and other participants. A writing workshop!

If I weren't working the show I would SO love to sit in on this.

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!

GDC Blog

GDC, on which I work now, has a blog. I didn't know that until a few days ago. But now that I do know it, I'll be using that space to post sessions that catch my eye. There are some cool ones I bet you didn't know we had!

I'm also still working on adding new sessions, so I'll post "latest accepted sessions" information there as well.