thing is, i WANT to see the most depraved motion-murders they came up with for the wii. i want to see that stuff pushed as far as possible. and now i wont. ever.
ill have to play a watered-down, censored version of what might have been.

im a grown-up man and i want to rip-off someone's face with a set of keys without nintendo protecting me from myself.

Adult Only.
sent to die.

as you may know, rockstar's Manhunt 2 received an AO rating from the ESRB, just after being completely banned from retail in england.
major retailers like walmart wont carry AO titles, and now blockbuster and gamefly have announced they wont have the game available for rental either.

rockstar hasnt announced what they plan to do but one thing for sure, we'll never see an uncompromised version on Wii, as nintendo simply does not allow AO games on their platforms.

this is a nice little reminder that platform holders have power of life and death over everything. they decide what is right for us. and this pisses me off to no end.

anyway, discuss.

Also, obligatory OS X request!

2nded.

I am drunk and alone right now. Celebrating submitting our demo to see if we can get greenlit. On my own.

*Manhugs for Bez*

Just chiming in, since I tend to over-lurk and under-post...needless to say we're over the moon about being involved in IGF.  Honestly, it's the only game competition I've ever considered meaningful.  Let me just say this: if you're on the fence about entering, please do! Don't assume your game has 'no chance'  because it's 'not finished' or is 'not as good as other games you know will be entered.'  If you put your heart into it, please enter it. It's probably better, more complete, and more awesome than you realize. Personal projects are like that.

you just want our 95 bucks!

there was a time where my dad took my gamecube from the basement, plugged it in the livingroom and just started playing zelda ocarina of time from begining to end. he hadnt played a zelda since the first one.

then when he was done with that, he started playing animal crossing.
intensely. furiously.
all the time.
for months.

it was amzing to see.
this grumpy old man who usualy just sits there and read sci-fi spent most of his free time picking apples and platings flowers.

it was totally weird.

hell. me too.

but yeah, a huge part of it is just being there.
fuck, i wasnt even part of it i spent tons of time just hanging out there.
its like some sort of futuristic web 3.0 where you actually interact with real people.
crazy!

im addicted to almost any kind of industry function/game related events.
those are the few moments in life when i feel a genuine feeling of belonging.

so yeah...you have to go. thems the rules.
but its fun and all that.

ive said it before, but it bears repeating: you're good with the colors.
this looks all sorts of awesome.
cant wait to see how it plays.

man, that quote is now my bible.

ah, good ol Al Einstein. he's always been on my side.

you dont even need one!
if they have the right junk installed, you can run a PC build of an XNA game, no problem.

i sent them an email about it.
this is a deal or no deal situation for me.

argh.
i really want to enter but im not sure i can make it in time.
beta, full features all that. might be a bit tight.
oh well, there's always 09.

also, is a game made with XNA eligible for this?
there's this clause stating that the developers must have the rights to commercially publish the game or something like that.

another fake holiday designed for the sole purpose of making me feel like shit because i didnt buy my dad a fucking cordless drill.

anyway, dad got me into gaming.
2 years old, on his lap, playing some obscure c64 game.
and then when i was 4, he bought me a NES with zelda, mario and tetris for xmas.
it was actualy as much for him as it was for me.
he'd translate me all the hints in zelda.
didnt read much english when i was 4.

there was also all the tiems we were both playing MYST or RIVEN, and we'd trade hints and solutions.

i dont mind odin sphere's gameplay.
i pretty much just play it for the art.
i find it to be one of the prettiest things on ps2.
i dont really like RPGs anyway, but i like fucking awesome giant hand-painted sprites.

mac support!
thank you!

im bummed by the fee as i plan to enter eventually, and im piss poor, but yeah, its almost negigable, really.

the travel is what kills.
im still paying back my CCs for the GDC trip.
thank jeebus i was freakin invited and didnt need to pay for the pass or else there was NO WAY i could have afforded everything.
since i will most probably not be invited again, i need to convince my job to send me, which is no easy task. and even tehre i still need to pay for travel, but the pass is paid.

Here's a sneak peek at my current project:



If you see a fat goat with a unibrow approaching, don't trust it.

i love this.
such a simple, efficient design for such a low-res sprite.

i know! i noticed that when i saw the vids from coachella.
how cool.
im not supprised to see someone like her kind of give credibility to this new tool that way.

its kinda like when beck embraced the chiptune aesthetic.
except bjork isnt a scientologist.

i really just want to buy some old country house somewhere in the countryside, invite  all my best friends (who are pretty much all artists/designers) and just...fucking grow carrots there and make games.

fuck.

and we'd wear white robes and id grow a patchy beard.

me too.
do it in montreal and im ill be the first lined up.

there's this cool old factory in st-henri where they used to build colecovisions AND cabbage patch kids dolls! think of the history.

so im working on this little design presentation for the first montreal pecha kucha night. for those who dont know, pecha kucha is a presentation format, where a number of talkers are invited to talk about design. any kind of design. fashion, architecture, name it. and ill be representing videogames. and ill be talking about independent game design.

the format is: every rpesenter is allowed 20 slides, on which he cant spent more than 10 seconds each. the presentation may not last more than 6 minutes. we'll have 10 presenters. so, withing one hour, 10 different people will talk about 10 different aspects of design in 10 different ways.

anyway.

id like to open with a little definition of what it means to be an independant game designer. and id like your imput.

i work for an "independent" studio. we have no shareholders, we work with different publishers and clients everytime. but there are over 300 of us in this building, working for disney, vivendi, whatever. so are we "indies"? am i more indie when i go home and work on my own stuff, with nobody breeding down my neck? does independence start with total creative freedom? what does it mean.

gimme a hand.

thanks.