If you’ve visited Telltale’s website in the last, er, day or so, you might have noticed that it’s been redesigned. And by God, it’s beautiful! Here’s a public thank you to Jake Rodkin and Doug Tabacco for spending many a sleepless night putting it all together.

Also, if you’ve looked at the new blog page over there, you’ll notice that there’s a link to me in the sidebar. Yes, me. Right next to Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman and Jeff Smith. Gee, I feel important and interesting. However, that also means that I now feel pressured to write things in this blog that actually are important and interesting. I suppose that’s a good thing, though.

As you may or may not have already gathered, I’m the kind of person who thrives on deadlines. No matter how driven and motivated I am to do something, I end up procrastinating it forever unless someone gives me a specific date on which to complete the project in question. Then, I’ll do anything and everything in my power to get it done. [1]

But wait! There’s more…

Sam & Max came out on GameTap this week, and the internet generally seems to like it. There is, however, a very vocal group of self-proclaimed “fans of the genre” who complains that the puzzles are too easy and that the game feels more like an interactive cartoon than an adventure game – because in a REAL adventure game, all puzzles should take at least three days to figure out. The sad thing is, I have no idea why this is a bad thing.

Don’t get me wrong; I love a good puzzle, otherwise why would I study computer science, or spend so much time playing Sudoku on my Nintendo DS? It’s just that, unlike a lot of adventure gamers, I don’t find the idea of “getting stuck” to be very much fun. In fact, I find that the more I get engrossed in a game’s story, the more frustrated I get when I’m stuck, usually leading me to use a walkthrough and hate myself in the morning. Maybe I’m just not all that great at “thinking outside the box”, so to speak, but sometimes I wonder whether “thinking outside the box” is actually a code word for “becoming a Psychonaut and reading the game designer’s mind”.

Anyway, on a somewhat related note, I’ve recently become addicted to this little game called Armadillo Run. It’s got lots and lots of puzzles that are way more fun to solve than the ones traditional to adventure games (they, like, use physics and stuff!) and better yet, there’s none of that annoying story crud that always gets in the way. Yay!

Last Tuesday, I went to my first-ever IGDA chapter meeting in San Francisco. Mind you, I’ve never even been to an IGDA meeting in Vancouver or anywhere else for that matter, so this was my first-ever IGDA chapter meeting, period. It was interesting, to say the least, especially given that the presentation pertained to Telltale and CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder.

I don’t really have all that much to say, especially given that Heather wrote all about that particular evening already. [1] So, uh, go read that instead.