I’ve received nine submissions to my call for artwork so far, with a small handful of others who’ve said they plan to contribute as well. I have to admit, this is a lot more than I expected, though I suspect the project in question will be better for it — the more places to explore, the better, right? Anyway, given that so many people seem to be intrigued, I thought I’d talk a little bit about what this thing’s all about, and what you all can expect. [1]

The game’s another one of those not-really-a-game games I’ve been tinkering with lately. It’s a series of disjoint interactive conversational vignettes that all make up a single dream sequence. These vignettes are randomized into a different order each playthrough, highlighting the absence of a coherent, author-generated plot progression. Instead, much like dreams themselves, the plot becomes a creation of the player, who pieces what they’ve just seen into their own personal narrative. They have no control over the images presented to them, but it’s up to them to decide what they mean.

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I came across yet another Adventure Gamers thread started by some game developer trying to solicit statistics on what people enjoy and don’t enjoy in games. While I made it clear that I don’t condone developing games based on such statistics, I later came back and decided to answer the questions anyway, changing them a bit to make it clear that the answers are my personal preferences rather than a reflection of a subgroup of “adventure gamers” as a whole. So, without further ado, here they are…

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I read a post over at Man Bytes Blog today about themes of isolation, how they’re so popular in movies and such these days, and how not enough games intentionally exploit said themes, even despite the fact that games are inherently isolating. And then I felt really really good about myself because lo and behold, my most recent games actually do deal quite a bit with isolation in their subject matter. Of course, being a little indie designer whose work attracts a niche audience the size of a protozoa, no one really cares all that much. Still, maybe that Corvus Elrod dude might get a kick out of the fact that hey, not all proponents of “games as art” lie purely on the side of theory. Some of them, you know, actually make stuff.

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Okay, so here’s the thing. I’ve got this little strange-but-personally-meaningful game project idea that’s been kicking in my head for the past little while. However, to bring it to life, I’m going to need some help. Specifically, I need some artwork. I’m trying to go for an art style that changes in every scene, and I figure that the best way to accomplish this will be to get each scene to be created by a separate artist. Hence, I’ve decided to go looking for artists in perhaps the quickest and most convenient place possible: the vast, random depths of the internet!

If this piques your interest at all, and if you have any rudimentary idea at all as to how to create adventure game graphics, what I want you to do is create one background image and (at least) one character in any style you’d like, and send them to “me at deirdrakiai dot com”. Details are as follows…

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I’ve had my eye on Hothead Games ever since I found out that Ron Gilbert was working for them. The fact that they do episodic indie games, have a good relationship with the Telltale folks, and are based in my current hometown is nice enough, but honestly, any company that’s smart enough to hire the creator of the Monkey Island™ series — one of the defining inspirations of my formative indie adventure game developer years — is definitely worth working for.

Bearing this in mind, I’m very proud to announce that as of this coming May, only days after my long-awaited graduation from university, I am going to be working at Hothead full-time as a programmer. [1] They’ll be putting me on DeathSpank, the episodic adventure/RPG that Ron’s been trying to get made for the past handful of years, which I’m super excited about because it espouses many ideals similar to what I attempted with Chivalry is Not Dead, namely morally complex situations and a silly, satirical outlook on your average video game story. In other words, you should all be looking forward to it, if you aren’t already.

P.S. Happy Pi Day!

As I mentioned earlier, last week, I went to my second GDC, which was very enjoyable, as always. Though oddly enough, this time around the actual conference sessions weren’t all that interesting. Or at least, not as interesting as I remember them being last year. Maybe because game developers, by and large, tend to keep saying the same things every year, but since I was a first-timer, it was all new to me. Then again, this year, people seemed a little more all-around optimistic about the state of innovation and creativity in games, perhaps owing to the success of things like Portal, which I promise myself I’m going to play once I finally get a new computer.

Was it still worth going? Definitely. Not just because I had an excuse to visit San Francisco, but because I got to be surrounded by game developers again for the first time in what seemed like forever. People who are highly intelligent, highly creative, and highly passionate about the same things I’m passionate about. Indie games, serious games, comedic games, games from the perspectives of women and other minorities, games that tell compelling interactive stories, and games that change the world for the better… you name it, I got to have a conversation about it with someone, in the flesh. And that’s really an experience I don’t get to have every day.

Personal highlights include the following: Marek Bronstring’s voice, which he’d completely lost early in the week resulting in him sounding like an evil swamp creature; meeting Dave Gilbert again, this time accompanied with his lovely British programmer girlfriend Janet (FEMALE PROGRAMMERS FOR THE WIN!) and occasionally Edmundo Ruiz, a guy I’ve known on the internet since the days of SCRAMM; seeing my Telltale buddies again and meeting a few of the new hires (and the pretty new office!) they’ve accumulated since I went back to school; and looking sadly at the IGF student finalists that completely edged out Chivalry for a chance at the awards. More to come soonish…

I remember when I first started posting on message boards some time in my early teens, how people, by and large, always tended to assume I was male unless I told them otherwise. My usernames were usually on the gender-neutral side, and my writing style back then was very concise and to the point; those factors, combined with the statistical likelihood of most forum posters in my spheres of interest being male, were probably what made people default to such assumptions about me, even though I don’t recall anything about my approaches being particularly masculine. It seemed like the only time people would really call someone’s gender into question was when they had a particularly feminine-sounding username or choice of words.

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