Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Game Diary - March 2, 2011: The Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo 3DSOur import Nintendo 3DS finally arrived at our San Francisco office yesterday. The 3DS is Nintendo's glasses free 3-D handheld device, but what do you do if, like us, you have no 3DS games to play on the device? You'll try out the backwards compatibility of a massive DS library, of course.

We filmed a handful of DS games playing on the device with my iPhone and compiled some of them into this news story. Click to read more.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Game Diary - March 1, 2011: Welcome Back!

Yes, I've decided to start writing here again. No, I can't tell you if it will last longer than the month of March but it feels like a good time to get some practice writing in because of my morning job. How much practice writing you ask? Well, enough to make me feel comfortable and ready for a couple of big assignments coming up this week.

Actually, this is usually my favorite time of year - it's GDC week here in San Francisco. The annual Game Developer's conference is an yearly highlight for me, full of well-made PowerPoint presentations and interesting game design discussions. It's truly remarkable to listen to some of these conversations as someone who's played games for a large portion of his life. It truncates the kind of stuff you often think about while playing games, but maybe never talk about. Small stuff, like lighting and combat choices. Interactions and quest lines or damage modifiers. I'm not sure if any of this stuff enters your head when you play games, but sometimes I see telltale signs, or reasons for things to be the way they are designed. Sometimes I question them, sometimes I don't, and every game has their own unique set: even the poorly made ones.

I've only got time for one session this GDC, and in some ways it's a bit of a letdown. I'll be attending a unique panel discussion tomorrow labeled GC Microtalks 2011, which has some pretty amazing guest speakers all firing off slides in rapid fire style and pace. It's a great talk that instantly buzzes the brain with information overload, but still manages to maintain enough balance to somehow keep you interested.

Even with GDC 2011 underway, and all the panels and attendees, and videogames discussion, I guess I'm looking forward to writing here again and getting my personal blogging time back.

Keep your eyes peeled for more posts for the month of March.