Fullbright

Respectfulness

2012-02-18T19:39:00.000-08:00

Since I quietly reopened this blog, I've been kicking a thought around in my head. It keeps coming back to me, even when I think I've given up on it, so there must be something there. I think I've had trouble figuring out how to write about it, because it seems to touch a lot of things. But I'm going to try. There's an ongoing question of what drives us. It's been a part of writing this blog

Games of 2011

2012-01-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Hello there. Here are some games I played in 2011. The Binding of Isaac Alchemy is a dark art, but a romantic one. Who doesn't love the idea of combining disparate, arcane elements, and, surprise!, coming away with something new and valuable and beautiful? Maybe it's why some people love crafting in games so much. Maybe it's part of why Minecraft is so popular. Maybe it's why we care about "

What if things were different

2012-01-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading Uzumaki by Junji Ito, a horror manga where supernatural phenomena revolve around spiral patterns. I find it to be more of dark humor than truly frightening, but that's okay. It's a fun, strange, and often really gross read. But aside from the specific content, I appreciate the approach Ito takes in creating his own twisted take on the modern world. It's a technique used

Helping Players Find Their Own Way - talk from NYU Practice 2011

2011-11-03T19:50:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I was lucky enough to participate in the first annual Practice Conference at NYU. I gave a talk on level design technique and wanted to share it here. So please click through to the presentation on Slideshare and be sure to click the "Speaker Notes" button beneath the slideshow. This way you can read through the presentation along with the illustrations.Here's the

The closed loop

2010-09-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

"Humanity, loss, race, friendship, acceptance - heavy topics for any medium, and especially difficult for videogames. After finishing Minerva's Den, these are the things I'm contemplating regardless."-from Arthur Gies' review on IGN.comSo, a couple of weeks ago, Minerva's Den, the story-based DLC for BioShock 2, was made available on Xbox Live and Playstation Network. This gives me some stuff

The Thinker Knows

2010-08-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den will be released for Xbox 360 and PS3 on August 31! 800 MS points, $9.99 on PSN. Below is a trailer we put together to herald the launch. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I hope you'll find it intriguing as well.That Minerva's Den poster at the end is the handiwork of the immensely talented Karla Zimonja, my assistant director on the project, and Devin St.

Minerva's Den

2010-08-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

It's officially announced! The upcoming story DLC for BioShock 2 is called Minerva's Den-- a new part of Rapture with its own story, featuring a cast of new characters plus a few familiar faces.I was writer and Lead Designer on the project (as well as designing the first level myself...) and while I can't say much more about it yet, I can say that I'm extremely proud of what our team accomplished

On the old vs. the new

2010-08-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

I think it's fair to question the motives behind striving for "immersion," sensory or otherwise. "To be immersed" shouldn't be an end unto itself; it's a means to achieving some specific mix of sensation, but what?I think that, at its essence, traditional, sensory immersion imparts a feeling of wonder: wonder at being in a wholly different place and experiencing a context outside our everyday, to

Specific Violence

2010-07-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

How does one refer to this discussion? It's the one we have all the time, in the blogs and in the design pits-- the one about maturity, about meaning, gravity, the medium mattering. About how all we do is let players shoot each other in the face and how we could be so much more. The one about our potential and how we fall short and what we can do about it. The one about how we're a bunch of

Darks Days 2

2010-06-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry the blog's been dark (again.) I'm consumed once more by getting something squared away at work. Hopefully sooner than later it'll be revealed publicly. Until then... maybe not a lot of blogging. Apologies, but with any luck, this will end up having been worth missing some blog posts for.

Extra Lives

2010-06-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

"So what have games given me? Experiences. Not surrogate experiences, but actual experiences, many of which are as important to me as any real memories. Once I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium. Then I wanted games to tell me a story in a way that no other medium can. Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself. ... I learned that maybe all a game can

Any questions?

2010-05-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

I'm giving Formspring a try. I figured some interesting conversations might start. Feel free to send something my way and fill up the space between blogposts.http://www.formspring.me/fullbright

Quick Hits 2

2010-04-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the second episode of Quick Hits, wherein I sling nonsense about a number of topics, with no real connective throughline. Bang! Starter pistol.Fuck This ConversationI'm just gonna say it: art. I didn't want to say it, I don't want to hear it ever again, but here we are.Why don't I want to hear about it? I'm a veteran of that war. Anyone who went to art school is. We have PTSD from that

State change as the key to emergent play

2010-02-27T13:36:00.001-08:00

Here's something that I'd only recently considered concretely (or that I'd probably heard in one of Clint's talks years ago and forgotten), which is elementary yet worth restating:The key to fostering emergent play is the introduction of meaningful state change into a game's sytems.Consider a game with little emergent play in its combat encounters: your verbs are bullets and grenades, and so are

Points

2010-02-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write a response to Jesse Schell's DICE talk, but David Sirlin said everything I wanted to say, better and more concisely than I would have. If you've watched or heard about the Schell talk on the future of game design, do read Sirlin's response. To picture the best game designers of the coming generation throwing their talents away on building false reward structures to manipulate

BioShock 2... seeeeeeecrets

2010-02-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start with a little self-congratulatory bullshit, so brace for that or skip ahead.Four years ago last month, I started this blog. At the time I was a temporary certification tester at Sony in San Mateo. In my off hours, I was just beginning to build my first amateur level in the F.E.A.R. editor-- this blog was originally intended as a progress journal, to keep me on track in building

On pointlessness

2010-01-30T13:47:00.001-08:00

If you've played through Mass Effect 2, you've met Thane. He's an assassin with morals: a stoic figure who only kills those that he believes are causing suffering to others. He has a deep belief in the old gods of his people's native religion; after completing each assignment, he retreats to his quarters for solemn meditation.His characterization works well in the game; I found him to be the most

An obligation

2010-01-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

Here's the typical internal exchange:When something terrible happens in the world; when people are sick, hungry and dying, uneducated, unjustly treated and suffering, doesn't it seem like if everybody turned their efforts to those causes, the world would be a better place?Maybe. But then who would take out the trash? Sell us groceries? Keep the phone lines connected and the trains running on time

09

2009-12-25T11:25:00.001-08:00

2009 was a weird one for games. There were no real monolithic standouts in my mind, unlike 07 (Portal, BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy,) or 08 (Fallout 3, GTA4.) So it wasn't easy, but I fought through the pain to bring you this, my favorite games of 2009. In no particular order.Silent Hill Shattered Memories: I wrote this one up as a long-form critique just now, so I'll refer you to that post for

Quick critique: Silent Hill Shattered Memories

2009-12-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an incredibly interesting and enjoyable... what is it, exactly? Well, it's Silent Hill. Which in this case means an immersive third-person/first-person psychological horror adventure. Bit of a mouthful. But the immediacy of navigating this new imagining of that town, Silent Hill, is wonderfully compelling. When not being chased by faceless ghouls, you spend

The untying knot

2009-12-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

I'm going to recommend you buy a video game today. The game is Saira by Nifflas. It's a knot that's made to be untied.The nature of the untying knot is part of what makes some video games feel like a "waste of time:" that they are often ornate puzzle boxes, taking years to construct then hours to disassemble and discard. In a game like Saira (or other Metroid/Castlevania-style games) you start

Quick hits

2009-12-06T16:46:00.001-08:00

Wherein I sling bullshit regarding a few game things, in brief segments.--------------------------------------------------------------------DialogueIn the most recent issue of Edge Magazine, Randy Smith's column addresses three approaches to dialogue with AI characters.1. Natural Language Processing-- speaking to an AI as you would another person, and letting them reason out a response

The middle child at peace

2009-11-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

It's been close to two years now since I made a provocative wager on this blog. Most commenters at the time took me up on it. Recently, the underlying question seems to be on some people's minds.Chris Hecker's recent IGDA keynote fretted about how video games might avoid ending up in the "cultural ghetto" along with comic books; Matt Burns wrote a piece, seemingly at least partly inspired by the

Design of a decade

2009-11-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

It's near the end of the decade, and everybody's making a list. Why not?These aren't my favorites. If this were a list of my personal favorites, Fallout 3 would be number one, and Hitman: Blood Money would be number two. Metal Gear Solid 3 would be near the top as well.Instead, here's my idea of 10 titles that defined the state of the art in game design in the 00's:10 Ico. (Sept. 24, 2001) Fumito

Two links worth reading

2009-11-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

Jordan Mechner's tips for designing narrative-based games, 1996Tom Chick's reaction to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 mission "No Russian"