A really good way came to me to explain what emergent properties are. You know when you write something, like a story or a poem, and someone says “Oh, I really like the subtext about such and such.” And you think about it, and yeah, there is subtext about such and such, but you didn’t […]
FFXII : When Elementals Attack
The most delightful thing about Final Fantasy XII is that, when it rains, there are these big ball of energy elementals who wander around various areas of the game. Their primary purpose is to look at first glance like an average level friendly mob, but upon hearing one of your characters have a wet-dream about […]
Review: Thief of Time
Title: Thief of Time Author: Terry Pratchett Year of Publication: 2002 Genre: Fantasy/Fiction Length: 384 pages in the hardcover version Rating: 3.5/5 – Worth buying second-hand. Review: Thief of Time is one of the many Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Although this one doesn’t spend all of it’s time in the “charming” city of Anhk-Morpork, […]
Workshopping Games (and not Games Workshop)
The problem with taking several writing classes at once is that they ALL want to teach you how to workshop, even though there’s only so much you can teach about being a critical thinker about a piece of artistic expression. A lot of it is having experience in the field in question. For example, I’m […]
My Ears are Bleeding (literally)
Back at the dawn of February there was some discussion of comicbook movie adaptations, and not surprisingly he-who-should-not-be-named was…well, named. The dark one, the spawn of satanic movie-making, Joel Schumacher. I will refrain from repeating his name any further, as on the third time I’ve heard he springs forth from your VCR and suffocates you […]
More on the Tragedy of Multiplayer (Spotlighting Wario Ware)
The name “Wii” caused a number of reactions in the online community, ranging from those who swore they would not buy it to those who thought it was an interesting name that set it apart from the field. Through it all, Nintendo swore that the reason for the change was that it would bring people […]
Review: Son of a Witch
Title: Son of a Witch (Sequel to previously reviewed Wicked) Author: Gregory Maguire Year of Publication: 2006 Genre: Fantasy/Fiction Length: 329 pages; small font, large book, not a quick read. Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price. Review: Warning: There are spoilers for Wicked in this review. Son of a Witch is the sequel to […]
Destroying Your Childhood, One Game at a Time
So last week I asked for requests on games that I could trash for game design reasons, and I got a pretty decent list of the usual suspects. So here we go:
This is How Wii Roll
I will take the beginning opportunity to explain to the un-educated exactly what a “boyfriend bomb” is. If you’ve already figured it out, then consider this an online IQ test and you’ve just scored above einstein but just below those cavemen on those Geico commercials. They’re stylin’ dudes… Boyfriend Bomb (v) – 1.) The act of […]
It's Now Official
Due to how busy I’ve been this week, I’m not able to present my normal indepth (read: long) commentary about design. There are a few things that I wanted to mention: WizKids has scored the Halo license, and will be producing “Halo ActionClix.” No word what, if anything, it’s going to be compatible with. I […]
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