The Brainy Gamer

Derniers articles

• Wholesome cacophony

  9 mai, par Michael Abbott
  If forceful writing inspires assessment and introspection - with a dash of outrage and resistance - Taylor Clark’s Atlantic profile of Jonathan Blow was potent stuff. I responded here, aided by 350 readers who contributed entries to my "Smart Game" Catalog. A hearty thanks to all who helped! (...)

• I got your smart games right here.

  3 mai, par Michael Abbott
  There's no nice way to say this, but it needs to be said: video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb. And they’re not just dumb in the gleeful, winking way that a big Hollywood movie is dumb; they’re dumb in the puerile, excruciatingly serious way that a grown man in latex elf ears reciting (...)

• Dissident designer

  18 avril, par Michael Abbott
  The 8000-word profile of Jonathan Blow that appears in this month’s Atlantic Magazine reveals a game designer behaving as dissident artists have behaved for centuries: defiantly rejecting popular paradigms, brashly challenging his contemporaries, thoroughly consumed with exploring the nature and (...)

• Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 36

  9 avril, par Michael Abbott
  The Brainy Gamer podcast is back! In this edition I talk with Stephen Totilo, editor-in-chief of Kotaku, one of the most influential blogs websites devoted to video games in the world. Stephen and I discuss video game journalism, the changes he's implementing at Kotaku, why "you can't escape (...)

• Journey as Flow

  2 avril, par Michael Abbott
  Mapping out a sky. What you feel like, planning a sky. What you feel when voices that come Through the window Go until they distance and die, Until there's nothing but sky. -Stephen Sondheim, "Finishing the Hat" In my previous post I tried to explain why I see thatgamecompany’s Journey as rooted (...)

• Seeking the light

  28 mars, par Michael Abbott
  You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers Who soar to high heights. –Dr. Seuss The best games are travelogues. Returning home, we regale our friends with tales of the things we did and places we saw. We battled five rows of eleven aliens for thirty minutes (...)

• A week long Journey

  26 mars, par Michael Abbott
  "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” –Joan Didion It’s no fun being predictable. Writers savor the chance to stake out an unoccupied point of view, set up camp there, and launch word-flares into the air for (...)

• The Brain Game

  20 mars, par Michael Abbott
  “I’m hungry for knowledge about the human mind." -Rich Lemarchand, Lead Game Designer, Naughty Dog If you listen to game developers talk about their business, common themes emerge. Now that the dust has settled on GDC, I’ve been thinking about what I heard people say last week in San Francisco. (...)

• Hitting the game design wall

  11 mars, par Michael Abbott
  Recently we've heard game designers, critics, and educators proclaim the limitless potential of games to do all sorts of wonderful things. They can make us smarter. They can teach our kids. They can help us better understand social and geopolitical issues. Margaret Robertson (development (...)

• GDC for dilettantes

  6 mars, par Michael Abbott
  I'm not a a game designer, but every year I eagerly look forward to the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. I learn more in one hour-long GDC session than in a month of reading theory books or playing games. If you want to understand the inspiration, ingenuity, and complex (...)

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