First things first: my friend Lee and I have started a new blog for Stage!, the game we’re codeveloping. A few things have changed since the last time I talked about it here, namely, it’s now an interactive comic book rather than an adventure game proper, and it’s going to be made in Flash. [1] So far, only Lee has been posting, but it’s interesting reading regardless, and I’ll be following suit once I think of interesting things to add on my part. Have a looksie.

Second, I’ve posted a mini-review/critique of The Graveyard over on the Adventure Gamers staff blog. It’s an artsy interactive piece that I mentioned in passing in one scene of DREAMING, [2] and although I personally wasn’t too crazy about the execution, don’t let that stop you from taking a peek anyway.

Finally, I’m heading over to the other side of the world tomorrow — specifically, to Israel, followed by a small selection of European countries. Don’t mess up the place while I’m gone, okay?

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.

But wait, there's more! »

For those who hadn’t heard me say so elsewhere, I attended PAX in Seattle over the weekend. It brought to mind a smaller, friendlier E3, which is certainly an improvement in my eyes, particularly given the complete lack of booth babes. Much of my time was spent attending every single panel in which the staff of Telltale made an appearance, resulting in such brag-worthy experiences as getting called by name whenever I went up to ask questions and even playing the role of Sybil in an audience-generated Sam & Max scene, in which I got to say such classic lines as my now-favourite “I’m an orthopaedic surgeon, baby!” [1] I also ended up spending quality time chatting with assorted internet buddies in person, as well as running into a couple of people I used to know from high school. (I suppose it was bound to happen, considering that Seattle is about four hours away from my hometown.)

The one thing that bothered me throughout, however, was several game companies’ overwhelming tendency to refer to their games as “products” and to their players as “consumers”. It’s unsurprising that they would do so, really, but it also makes me more than a little uncomfortable. What does it mean to “consume” a game, anyway? Did I miss the memo stating that games are to be officially relegated as food items or somesuch? Maybe that’s the reason why they decrease in value as they get older. Hmm…

Following my trend in recent months of playing around with different adventure game development engines, I’ve been recently teaching myself how to use Wintermute. I’d known about this particular engine for quite a while, but for some reason, I never really got around to actually trying it until a week and a bit ago. But, by God, I’ve been finding it to be my favourite adventure game developing environment ever. It has everything I loved about SLUDGE[1] (i.e. scripting flexibility), and more (i.e. better GUI editors for certain things, better graphics support, gets updated more frequently). I have to say, I’m very impressed.

I’ll be announcing the game I plan on making with this engine sometime soon, so stay tuned…

At the moment, I’ve got a nice week off from the sturm und drang of school, which means that I finally get to play a bunch of games I’ve been neglecting. I’ve just started Zelda: Twilight Princess, which is excellent - I really like its atmosphere and the controls don’t feel all that gimmicky, either. I’ve also been chugging along at Phoenix Wright 2, which is good over-the-top fun as always. Though, for some reason, the English translation of this game bothers me more than that of the first one did. Maybe it’s because I have a personal bias against the use of the word “alright” instead of “all right”…

Furthermore, I’ve been teaching myself how to use OGRE, because, y’know, 3D gaming is, like, totally the way of the future. Not that I’m completely giving up the 2D world or anything like that; it’s just that both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I feel it’s necessary as a game designer slash programmer to familiarize oneself with both.

In non-gaming-related news, I’ve recently switched from Trillian to Miranda for my instant messaging-related needs. I’ve been a devout user of the former for years, even going so far as to pay for it once; however, it hardly ever gets updated, and had quite a few bugs with its MSN implementation, which I was kind of getting sick of. Miranda, on the other hand, does get updated on a regular basis, and is far more minimalistic, yet still very nice and customizable. And functional too, at that.

You may or may not have noticed that after over a year of using the same white-on-black colour scheme on this blog, I’ve gone and changed it to a bright-greenish-yellow-and-purple. Nine out of ten pianists agree that it hurts the eyes much less than the old one did, all the while still retaining that trademark Deirdra Kiai Productions ugliness. Hopefully, you will feel the same way.

In even more uninteresting news, the “Who am I?” page has also had an overhaul.

As you can imagine from my last post, I’ve been keeping myself quite busy with my new Wii. It’s wonderful. I’ve fallen absolutely madly in love with it. I can’t possibly imagine playing games with a normal controller again.

I mean, really. The Wii has so much potential for adventure games, it’s amazing. What better way to create immersive interactive stories than to do so on a system that even my parents can pick up and play effortlessly? Gawrsh, I wish I were developing games for the Wii. Sadly, as a lowly student, I have to resort to making games for the PC instead. Woe is me.

Now for something completely different: a piece of music I just wrote. It’ll likely be featured in a future game or something.