Today at the IGC East Ethan and I gave a talk called “Rapid, Iterative Prototyping, or How to Rip Off Dinosaur Comics”. A lot of people were asking, so here’s the slideshow from the talk. Enjoy! I’ll gladly answer any questions in the commnets section.
If you come visit us at Fire Hose (and you should!) on any given day you will hear many bizarre comments, like “Always the joker! Ha ha…” , “Ahem…. hem…”, and “We’ll be fine, just GO”. At this point you’d probably think that we’re totally bonkers and/or completely awkward, but in reality you’d be only half right – we’re really referencing Facade, a terrific if not strange game by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern.
Facade is a very weird 2005 title in which you are invited to a dinner party by a pair of old friends, Trip and Grace. During the course of the evening the happy couple reveals that they are kinda miserable, and their marriage disintegrates in front of your eyes. Personally, I like to see how quickly I can get thrown out by being a jerk; Ethan has managed to get booted before even setting foot in the door. The really interesting part is that the game does natural language parsing (albeit poorly) and you interact with Trip and Grace by typing with the keyboard.
This game pushes the boundaries so much it’s terrific. It’s free too, so go download it now.
