Now that we’ve made it through a very decent chunk of the World Tour mode, there’s two things about Rock Band that have been bothering me of late. The first is that we can’t pick our AI band mates.  Sure, they’re just filler; they don’t really matter, but after we’ve worked on coming up with [...]

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I’ve been slammed with doing my GDC write-up for work the past couple of nights. In the mean-time, check out this great call for more game critique. I guess I need to start taking out ads or something to get noticed.

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One of the more satisfying results of the Game Design Workshop I took was the elective for the Three Musketeers.  We were asked to come up with an alternative 3 or 4 player version of the game, one where the ruleset would remain consistent, and maintain as much of the “fiction” as possible. For those [...]

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Missed the Force Unleashed prezo today because I was almost running late and in my haste forgot to grab my badge.  Brilliant.  I’m pretty sure it’s online somewhere, so I should run off and read it later.  I really wanted to see how they integrated Euphoria now that it’s not a complete joke and looks [...]

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Today was the first official conference/Expo day, and I managed to hit a few talks and walked around the show floor. First I hit Ken Levine’s Bioshock talk, which was (in retrospect) a really amazing speech.  He discussed how he made the narrative passive in Bioshock, which forced the player to engage in it as [...]

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More Game Design Workshop tutorials!  I came up with a 2/3/4 player version of the Three Musketeers that I felt was a better game than the original, but our table was really focused on the fiction vs. the fun (seriously, fiction in a paper board/poker chip game is more important than fun?), so my idea got punted [...]

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As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m taking the Game Design Workshop while at GDC, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I’m being asked to think about game types that I wouldn’t actually ever make at my current job.  It’s nice to look at hypotheticals and come up with [...]

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If first impressions are really worth anything, then this convention’s a bust.  Lucky for them the Workshop I’m taking is making up for things a bit. I certainly hope that the registration/customer service lines get some improvement; all I needed was a badge reprinted (mine had the wrong tutorial printed on it and they wouldn’t [...]

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I’m heading off to my very first GDC tomorrow morning, so wish me luck. Posting is either going to be super light or on-fire depending on a ton of variables including power outlet availability, wireless access, and inspiration levels from tutorials/talks.  Not to mention free time/availability as I think I know about 1/2 of the [...]

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Vigilante 8 via XBLA? My god, I haven’t played that game since…well since it came out on the PSX forever ago. As far as car combat goes, it’s the one brand I’d be willing to revisit. Those sticky rockets you can fire onto other vehicles will forever be one of my favorite ways to “make [...]

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