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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Oh my. It appears as though while I wasn’t looking, a bunch of people went and blogged about Pigeons in the Park. First there was Greg Costikyan over at Play This Thing!, who’d written a lovely, analytical shpiel about Chivalry earlier; this time around, he’s just as analytical, which is exactly the kind of feedback a young and relatively inexperienced kid like me needs to get better at this art thing. Then, apparently as a result of said exposure, I found this one guy who’s apparently making a game very similar to my work in terms of design, except it’s about a young man whose father has cancer, or so I gather. In any case, I’ll be keeping an eye out for it. [1] And finally, it looks like Emily Short has given the game a looksie as well. This, I find very impressive in particular since, as I alluded earlier, it was her conversational IF work that played a big part in inspiring this game [2] in the first place.

All in all, I have to say I’m very, very flattered.

Some time ago, I read this one rather lengthy article that compared third-person adventure games to “little theater plays with clunky movement, no dramatic camera angles and a distanced view that makes it impossible to see any facial expressions”. This comparison, of course, was made with the intent of proposing better cinematography in adventure games, which many have already attempted since said article was written back in 2003. However, my strange little mind began to wander, and I thought to myself, why do we even have to emulate movies, anyway? Why can’t we exploit this theatre aesthetic in a way that’s artistically meaningful? Hell, why can’t there be an adventure game that’s actually set on a stage?

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