Games

I had planned to post a cute little post today about AI as a design problem. But honestly in the wake of the announcement that...

Finally, by my third GDC, I have reconciled my past experiences of being an outsider with the my current privileges. This year was a big step.

I’ve been a fan of the Super Smash Bros series since the first installment on Nintendo 64 in 1999. Back then, I loved the game’s framing metaphor of the characters of Nintendo's most popular games as inanimate toys brought to life by the Master Hand’s omnipotent selection.

Agario is a game about consumption: both the aggressive, taking kind and the supportive, giving kind. Consumption is the power fantasy underlying the game's appeal...and I find it more satisfying than I'd like to admit. Moreover, I love the dynamics that have emerged around giving and sacrifice as communication.

When games reference other games, it’s almost always done in a flippant, shallow way, but allusions represent a greater possibility for ambiguity, multivalence, and expressive depth. Games deserve—and are increasingly ready to harness—that depth.

I wanted to be an engineer. But not if it meant giving up writing or design. But I was looking at it the wrong way: labels should be lenses, not boxes.