A man at the bar insults my date. I insult his mother.
He hurls a drink; I throw a punch;
He breaks a bottle; I pull a knife;
He draws a pistol; I pump a shotgun;
He shoulders a rocket launcher; I call an airstrike;
He drops a nuke; I destroy the Earth.
Floating in space, my date looks impressed. She kisses my cheek.

While in Paris, I was interviewed by students from ESRA about my experience as a tumbleweed at Shakespeare & Co. Their presentation has been uploaded to YouTube.

My own piece about Shakespeare & Co. runs in the Arts & Entertainment section of the Feb. 24 issue of The Clinton Courier, and can be read online (registration required).

• His fists;
• His whip;
• His elbow;
• His foot;
• His face;
• A rock;
• A tank;
• An airplane propeller.

I was at the GameX Industry Summit in Philadelphia this past weekend for the Philly Game Jam. As part of the six-man Team D.U.I. (Developing Under the Influence), my job was to provide sound effects, music, and additional design. We had 48 hours to create a game from scratch based on the James Michener quote, “An age is called dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”

Our game, Zeal, is a 2-player, competitive micro-RTS set during the Third Crusade. Players take on the role of Richard the Lionheart or Saladin, and issue a series of movement commands to the hundred-or-so troops that wander out of the castles on either side of the screen. The goal is to get ten of your units to the other player’s castle and destroy it.

There is a write-up of our game and a video interview on Baltimore Gamer. My photos from the event are on flickr.

Release build and screenshots coming soon!

I’ve been meaning to post these for a while, but have been delayed by an impending milestone at work.

Below are links to two pieces from Game Design Aspect of the Month. GDAM is a blog, set up as part of the IGDA’s Game Design Special Interest Group, where each month developers and academics discuss a variety of design-related topics.

My contributions for April and July 2009, respectively, were a brief analysis of the relationship between cost and length in game development and a podcast on the topic of games with mature themes.

How Big Games Are Getting Smaller and Small Games Are Getting Better

Mature Games Podcast