Posts tagged with “Gene”

Generoso Fierro has just posted a set of podcasts on paper prototyping on the GAMBIT website. Since this seems to be something mysterious that new game developers frequently wonder about I figured it’d be worth reposting here. Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the videos yet, but Gene regularly puts together kick ass stuff so I’m guessing they’re pretty good.

Gene writes:

Have you ever wondered about the first stage of creating a video game? GAMBIT’s Technical Director Andrew Grant along with GAMBIT’s Lead Game Designer, Matthew Weise lead a group of three game designers (Kevin Laughlin, Alexis Brownell and Sophia Foster-Dimino) through the paper prototyping stage of videogame development. Video Produced by Generoso Fierro, Music and Editing by Garrett Beazley.

PART ONE: Andrew and Matthew present our game designers with a concept for a game. Here begins the process of creating the gameplay! Our designers use markers on paper, blocks, string and a host of other tools to make the game a reality.

PART TWO: Our game designers have decided to abandon the “paper” stage of development and go right for the whiteboard to hash out their game.

PART THREE: Design Consultant Tim Stellmach comes by to play and review the prototype the designers have come up with based on the game concept.

If you like these videos be sure to check out episode 2. Cool Stuff!

Attention anime nerds: Ever want to hear a academic reconstruct your obsession with all things Japanese related? Well you’re in luck! In this talk Mia Consalvo, noted game academic and all around kick-ass individual, delves into why we love Japan when it comes to games. It’s a long talk but pretty interesting and definitely worth watching. Thanks to Gene and CMS for the recording.

Here’s the talk description:

From Nintendo’s first Famicom system, Japanese consoles and videogames have played a central role in the development and expansion of the digital game industry. Players globally have consumed and enjoyed Japanese games for many reasons, and in a variety of contexts. This study examines one particular subset of videogame players, for whom the consumption of Japanese videogames in particular is of great value, in addition to their related activities consuming anime and manga from Japan. Through in-depth interviews with such players, this study investigates how transnational fandom operates in the realm of videogame culture, and how a particular group of videogame players interprets their gameplay experience in terms of a global, if hybrid, industry.

Enjoy!

Another lecture blog post? HELLS YES. We’ll stop putting these up when the awesome guys at GAMBIT stop making them. Thanks to Gene, Abe, Ken Zolot, and anyone else who was involved with making this that I’m not aware of.

In this talk Eran Egozy (co-founder and CTO of Harmonix, whom you know and love for Guitar Hero and Rock Band) talks about how Harmonix started out, how they got off the ground and shifted into (and ultimately defined the genre of) music games, and then fields a bunch of questions from some really smart MIT and Sloan students. Check it out!

So while we were busy crunching for some competition deadlines, GAMBIT was in full swing with some awesome speakers. Most recently they had Clint Hocking, a super famous developer and the creative director of Ubisoft Montreal, in to give a talk on hyper realism in video games. Being the main guy behind Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell I think this guy has some serious cred in that area, and the talk looks fascinating.

Gene was awesome enough to video tape the entire 90 minute talk and following Q+A, watch it here!