Lars Doucet recently did an interview for TIGSource with Jamie Fristrom. And just who is Mr. Fristrom?
Jamie Fristrom is an old industry veteran. He’s worked on everything from DOS games on the PC back in the day to Spider-Man 2 on the Xbox. Currently he’s working on a game for the Xbox 360 called Schizoid, a quirky blend of Ikaruga and Pac-Man that’s being billed as “The Most co-op game ever.” Schizoid also has the honor of being the first game developed in Microsoft’s new XNA Game Studio to be commercially released on Xbox Live Arcade.
Be forewarned, it’s loooooong interview. But a great read that covers a wide range of topics, including game design, XNA, team management, moral responsibility in game development, and Richard Garfield (the guy who created Magic: the Gathering). Definitely worth checking out.
There’s a great podcast discussion with Tarn Adams on GeekNights. Tarn, as you may or may not know, is one half of the Dwarf Fortress team, and its sole programmer. The other half, Zach (also Tarn’s brother), develops stories which Tarn makes work within Dwarf Fortress’s intimidating game engine.
The podcast focuses on Dwarf Fortress, but Tarn touches on a variety of subjects, from his older games to his thoughts on gaming and game design in general. I found it to be pretty fascinating.
And, I gotta say, for a self-described introvert and the developer behind one of the most insanely detailed games ever made, Tarn is very well-spoken and sounds really down-to-earth. Respect!
Speaking of cactus, here’s an interview that Gamelab did with him recently.
The visuals in my games are largely a result of trying to create something that looks cool while being easy to produce in necessary quantities. The sprites that I use in my games would probably look uninteresting and bland if taken out of their context. I like making them come alive through programming instead.
Matt Hammill is one-man-show behind the beautiful action/puzzle game Gesundheit!, Comic Dice, and other fun, nifty things. Recently, Steve “moshboy” Cook took the opportunity to ask this talented Canadian illustrator/game developer a few questions about life and the pursuit of gaming.
2d Boy are actually two men – Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler. Together, they’re living the indie dream. You may recognize Kyle as the developer behind the Experimental Gameplay Project and Tower of Goo, the unique physics game that has you building structures out of little goo balls. World of Goo, the company’s first title, takes the basic idea behind Tower of Goo, and expands it into a living, breathing world.
Steve Cook got a chance to throw the dynamic duo a few questions about IGF (in which World of Goo is a competitor), the indie life, and how their goo balls are doing1.
Veteran game reviewer Kieron Gillen (who’s previously written for PC Gamer, EDGE and Eurogamer, among others) has reposted an old EDGE article to his collaborative games blog, Rock Paper Shotgun. The article is entitled “Word Play”, and it’s about the use of text in videogames.
The first half of the article is compelling enough, I suppose, but it’s the second part that’s really interesting to me. Kieron moves on to discuss “one corner of the modern games scene [where text] is dominant… the Interactive Fiction or IF Community. Or, as they were known in the eighties, text adventures.”
This section includes interviews with IF notables Emily Short and Adam Cadre (the authors of Galatea and Photopia, respectively), and talks about their influences, their approach to game design, and their view of how things are going to pan out for IF in the future.
I remember reading it in EDGE a few years ago, and at the time, I’d only played Photopia and some older well known text adventures like Zork and Colossal Cave. This article is what finally got me to explore Interactive Fiction in more depth, and I’m quite glad I did! There seemed to be something missing from this republished version though, so I dusted off my collection of old copies of EDGE and had a look for the original article (it’s November 2004, E142). Huzzah! The original had a little separate boxed off section titled “A short IF reading list”, which listed a number of introductory titles that I recommend checking out as soon as you possibly can, if you haven’t already.
I don’t know why this wasn’t included in this version of the article, but it’s well worth reading, so I’ve copied it from the original and reproduced it here. Hit the extended to read it!
MTV’s all up in indie gaming’s grill these days, and with good reason. This time they’re doing an interview with the one-and-only Jonathan Blow, about life, games, and Braid.
One of the things that made “Braid” different from the beginning was my determination to strike out in a new design direction, and just have faith that I could make it work. Rewind was going to be the basis of the game. If rewind conflicted with some other element of the design, then I would throw away that other element — regardless of how traditionally necessary it was. And I was glad I had that faith, because it paid off.
I’m noticing that Jon is getting a little bit of flak for his interview, most notably in the comments of Wired’s Game|Life blog. Now, I know he doesn’t need me to defend him, because he is an extremely smart and successful guy who could also kill any one of us with kung fu (really), but seriously, as someone who has heard Jon speak and played his game (albeit an early version), let me just assure you that a) if you perceive any egotism or condescension on his part, it’s the inevitable result of his being brilliant and also honest (he’s actually quite down to earth), and b) he is fully deserving of the so-called “hype” he’s been getting. Honestly, he deserves more. And a lot of independent developers do.
And c) it’s really sad how you can’t criticize anything anymore without somebody taking immediate offense and calling you a “wanker.” I give more credit to the man who is called a wanker because he has lots of strong opinions than the man who’s only opinion is that someone else is a wanker. Alright, you wankers?
There’s a short interview with Kenta Cho up on Siliconera where he talks about Blast Works and console development. Some choice quotes:
“Since the original TUMIKI Fighters is very simple shmup, additional new features are essential for making it up into a full game. I don’t know details of features such as the hangar and the editor but they sound very interesting. The only thing that concerns me is whether the game becomes too complicated to play by adding these features. I like a simple and intuitive gameplay.”
“I’m interested in developing a game for a console and now I’m trying to write some prototypes in XNA. XNA is a great environment to experience the development of the modern console game.”
I’m a bit saddened that it seems Kenta Cho is not involved more in the development of this port. The fact that he seems unaware that Blast Works is now going to include, at the very least, rRootage, but possibly also Gunroar and Torus Trooper, makes me uneasy. Not sure why Siliconera didn’t ask him about this.
The guy seems incredibly easy going and happy to see his games on consoles. But if there were ever a time when I’d like to see someone’s name in front of a game title, it’s now.
