exp.alt

Hello! Last weekend at the Toronto Independent Game Jam I...

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:43:00 -0400

Hello! Last weekend at the Toronto Independent Game Jam I (Mathew Kumar, in case you’re lost) and a team of developers—Capy’s Vic Nguyen and Frankie Leung, Andrew Carvalho (previously of Queasy Games) and Shaun Hatton (offsite as “DJ Finish Him”)—created Knight and Damsel, which I describe as a “competitive two-player feminist puzzle platformer.”

As there’s been a bit of interest in the game since Vic shared some of his work online (including coverage from, of all places, Kotaku) I thought I should share some screenshots of the game being played and describe it (roughly.)

So! Knight and Damsel’s inspiration actually comes from a few places, but one worth mentioning is Feminist Frequency’s first Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video, Damsel in Distress. I’m not particularly interested in this context of debating the quality/value of the series, but one thing that struck me was an aside that in your average video game, if a princess is captured, she waits passively to be rescued. Yet for heroes, being captured is just another challenge to be faced (and heroes getting captured happens all the time. It’s basically all James Bond does.)

Hence the set-up: in Knight and Damsel, one player takes the role of the Knight, questing to save the Damsel, and one player takes the role of the Damsel, who can quite happily save herself.

The twist is: what is a knight without a damsel to save? To avoid losing face, the Knight must do what he can to stop the Damsel rescuing herself, something she isn’t too happy about. So we worked up some video game magic that allows the Knight and Damsel to affect each other’s screens by throwing the blocks, axes and bombs that litter the level onto the other’s screen, allowing them to hurt or trap their opponent, while, at the same time, doing their best to navigate further into the level before their opponent.

Both the Knight and Damsel are inevitably heading towards each other, however, and at this stage of the game it becomes a tense, shared-screen face-off, with the Knight attempting to grab the dodging Damsel before she can run back to town. Once the Damsel either rescues herself or is “rescued” scores are totted up based on who managed to get further (plus some bonuses) and either the Knight is praised by the unsuspecting townsfolk for his heroism, or the Damsel gains new respect for proving she didn’t need to be rescued at all.

And that’s the game! As we only had a weekend, it’s currently only a proof of concept, but one that (I feel) definitely works. The majority of the team have other obligations right now (Super Time Force, for example) but we are looking at ways we can take the time to not merely “finish” it as a jam game but polish and tune the play and add a bit more content to put it out properly. I personally very much hope that we can.

venuspatrol: New on Venus Patrol: Videogame Romantics T-shirts...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:06:08 -0400

venuspatrol:

New on Venus Patrol: Videogame Romantics T-shirts & More Now Available At The New Venus Patrol Shop

Honestly thought that Attract Mode (powered by Fangamer) had sold all of the last stock of exp., but after a mysterious sighting of the ‘zines at Venus Patrol/Wild Rumpus’ “All Other Parties are Still Trite and Dull”, it turns out there are still a few copies out there. So if you want copies this has to be your last chance.

Buy: minus one / zero / infinity

The Call of Duty EP by Daryl Waller

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:59:00 -0400

The Call of Duty EP by Daryl Waller:

The Call of Duty EP by Daryl Waller

This EP came out almost a year ago, and despite its undoubtedly limited reach (the 7” vinyl came out in an edition of 100 from a tiny experimental label; it doesn’t seem to have sold even that) I’m almost surprised it didn’t at least hit a few video game blogs as a self-described “concept piece about children playing the computer game Call of Duty.” You’d have thought it would have turned up in enough Google alerts to at least stoke some controversy.

I’d be hard pressed to call it a particularly subtle work (“To the parents, who want the quiet life” … “train them when they’re young”) but it’s the interesting, dare I say artistic viewpoint of an outsider (to the video games industry.) It’s almost absurdly refreshing—after reading tens of articles about Bioshock Infinite—to return to this and be reminded you can consider video games outside of the sphere of the “opinion column.”

Via Gary Penn (who posted this to his Facebook, um, three years...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:13:42 -0400

Via Gary Penn (who posted this to his Facebook, um, three years ago) here’s a picture of the Amiga Power offices in “1991-ish” including writers Stuart Campbell and Mark Ramshaw.

Linked because in 1991-ish this was my dream job and my dream office. Now it sorta just looks like a tip to me, but the spirit of Amiga Power does live on in my heart.

Gamers Magazine, by Liam K. Hubbert. Discovered by...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:49:23 -0400

Gamers Magazine, by Liam K. Hubbert. Discovered by finalfinalgirl at Dog Eared Books (900 Valencia St., San Francisco.)

Three hand-stapled and punched, single-sided letter-sized pages in an edition of ???. It cost a dollar.

Make a Game at Night, Get Fired in the Morning

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:24:00 -0500

Make a Game at Night, Get Fired in the Morning:

David S. Gallant is a Toronto-local game developer who lost his job after the Toronto Star posted an “expose” of the fact he was a Canada Revenue Agency call centre employee who developed the game “I Get This Call Every Day” in his spare time.

David had not revealed his status as an employee of the CRA at any point before or even to the reporter at the Star, who discovered that fact through some other means.

In the above article I clear up that fact and attempt to combat the coverage from the mainstream media for the past couple of weeks which portrayed David’s game as anti-taxpayer (it isn’t) somehow directly critical of the CRA (it’s never mentioned) and that David was asking for and somehow happy to be fired (definitely not.)

It’s my opinion that the Toronto Star breached journalistic ethics and standards in their attempt to manufacture a “juicy” story where there was none; there was no value or public good in Gallant being fired even though—by taking vague details of the game to the National Revenue Minister—they knew he would be.

They owe him an apology.

(Of course, that’s never going to happen. But at the very least consider sharing this story to publicly shame them, and if you would like to support David, please considering purchasing I Get This Call Every Day under its pay what you want scheme (min. $2).)

babiesareyum: “A member of the Scottish National Antarctic...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:40:23 -0500

babiesareyum:

“A member of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition plays the bagpipe for an indifferent penguin, 1904.”

(In the run-up to Halloween I kept seeing the original...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:58:48 -0500

(In the run-up to Halloween I kept seeing the original variations of this poster linked, and I can’t believe I’m the first person to do this. I sure couldn’t find anyone else that had, however.)

harveyjames: Gum from Jet Set Radio.

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:58:56 -0500

harveyjames:

Gum from Jet Set Radio.

Lego Blade Runner Spinner by _Tiler. (There’s a whole...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:06:48 -0400

Lego Blade Runner Spinner by _Tiler.

(There’s a whole group of people doing absolutely incredible work with Lego over on flickr. I’ve barely scratched the surface—in fact I don’t know where to start—I just loved the simplicity of this piece. I also recommend Fredochi’s incredible selection of mechs, space ships and sky fighters, and who can overlook Nannan Z.’s star fighter that uses pieces from the much maligned Lego Friends sets?)

vgjunk: If, like me, you were reading videogame magazines in...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:48:05 -0400

vgjunk:

If, like me, you were reading videogame magazines in the ’90s, you’ll probably remember the “Toby” comics. They were adverts for the then-fledgling CeX company (Formerly “Computer Exchange” and now “Complete Entertainment eXchange”) and they’re most notable now for being drawn by famous comedy misanthrope Charlie Brooker.

Charlie Brooker’s violent and irreverent CeX adverts absolutely blew my mind when I first read them in the nineties. His zine, Superkaylo, was actually online for a while in the late nineties, but it seems like he’s completely wiped it from history now he’s a television personality and Guardian columnist (or more likely, just failed to maintain what he probably sees as a collection of childish scribbles.) If anyone has an archive of it, somehow, or any issues of the zine, please get in touch.

Lichtenstein x Adventure Time. An improbable combination,...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:56:51 -0400

Lichtenstein x Adventure Time. An improbable combination, impossibly perfect.

“I was very impressed; I used to go on the old...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:11:00 -0400

“I was very impressed; I used to go on the old underground, and this is really good. It suits the eighties, I think, and Glasgow.”

Sound Shapes is out! Admittedly only in North America; we had...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:51:00 -0400

Sound Shapes is out! Admittedly only in North America; we had dearly hoped that we’d manage a near-simultaneous release pretty much worldwide, but you can’t have it all, unfortunately. It hits for Europe at least on August 15th (so only a bit over a week away) and other regions real soon (promise.) If you want all the important facts you can read my launch post over at the PlayStation Blog, and watch the launch trailer too (all the footage is me playing, folks!) Oh, and there’s the community website now, too (from which the above Cory Schmitz-of-course art comes from.)

What can I say about Sound Shapes, on this, the day of its release? To be honest, clear post-natal thoughts are a distance away yet, but at this minute I’ll simply allow myself to be immensely proud of the work I and the whole team put into the game. It was truly a collaborative experience, not just with our external partners but within the team itself, and I think it represents all of us (though the fun part would probably be trying to work out whose influence was most exerted where.)

I hope—in fact I think we all hope—that the game is taken as we intended, and that players, through our level creation tools and community, take that intention and run with it.

So: it’s yours now. Enjoy it!

Attract Mode is back, and I blogged about it over at the main...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:26:00 -0400

Attract Mode is back, and I blogged about it over at the main exp. website, basically making a point of the fact that the very last, no-foolin’ final stock of exp. minus one, zero and infinity are on sale in the Attract Mode shop. Except by the time I finished writing the blog post exp. infinity had already sold out…

Photo

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:36:00 -0400

Haven’t been able to Tumbl’ recently because this...

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:35:31 -0400

Haven’t been able to Tumbl’ recently because this has been taking up all of my efforts. Sound Shapes launches on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita August 7th in North America for $14.99 ($11.99 for PlayStation Plus owners in launch week) and on August 8th for the UK/Europe priced at £9.99/€12.99. Above is our reveal trailer for the album we worked on with Beck and (art and design studio) Pyramid Attack, Cities, featuring the titular song and MY FACE REPEATEDLY.

"If you’re not a writer who is constantly struggling to write well, and constantly questioning the..."

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:52:05 -0400

“If you’re not a writer who is constantly struggling to write well, and constantly questioning the quality of everything you do, then you are also not a writer who looks deeply into what you are writing about. You don’t pay attention to the messages within your work. You’re not asking yourself what you’re saying to your audience.”

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—Consolevania/VideoGaiden/Burniston creator and unashamed iconoclast Robert Florence, discussing video game writers from within the prism of the current Tomb Raider controversy.

"…in another sense, my fiction is extremely autobiographical, and, moreover, that I consider it..."

Sun, 27 May 2012 14:44:45 -0400

“…in another sense, my fiction is extremely autobiographical, and, moreover, that I consider it my job as a writer to make it ever more so. My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author’s story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family’s table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with his Jewish heritage, with moral law, with his unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka’s work, which grows out of the night-time dreamworld in Kafka’s brain, is more autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka’s, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There is an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer’s work, the smaller its superficial resemblance to the writer’s actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer’s life become impediments to deliberate dreaming.”

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—Jonathan Franzen on autobiography and fiction at the Guardian. (I could easily have run this quote on for the following two paragraphs, so I heartily recommend you read the whole article.)

Simply have to reblog these fictional magazine covers, created...

Sat, 26 May 2012 20:32:00 -0400

Simply have to reblog these fictional magazine covers, created for Blade Runner by production illustrator Tom Southwell in 1980-1981 and posted up by sciencefiction (though I spotted them because of a tweet from Edge Magazine’s new editor, Alex Wiltshire.) These were used only in the background on a magazine stand that wasn’t even really seen in the city street scenes, and have a ton of detail that, at least at the time, was never seen by anyone except staff and (I guess) a few extras. Perhaps most fond of Dorgon Magazine, which pretty much looks exactly like Nylon Magazine (established 1999.)

Print, of course, will be dead by 2029… won’t it?