No time for games, Dr. Jones!!

For the first time in my career, I am faced with a terrible (well, I think it's terrible) problem. I have a huge stack of games and no time to play them. You must understand, this violates everything I believe in as a game creator. Early on in my career, I vowed that I would never be one of those people in games who didn't play games. I worked with too many people who did (and some who even took pride in their non-game playing.)

In order to understand games, in order to make games, in order to be relevant, YOU MUST PLAY GAMES. So, I have a big stack of games. What I want from YOU (and I know you are out there) is recommendations of which ones to play first. Some of these I've started to play, others of them I haven't even unwrapped yet.

Here's the list:

Resident Evil 5
Left 4 Dead
Heavenly Sword
Viking

Bioshock (played two levels)
Half Life 2
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction

Prince of Persia (2008)

Resistance 1

Resistance 2
Dead Space (played first chapter)

Kung Fu Panda
Crayola colorful journey (don't ask)

Psychonauts (played first two worlds)
Dawn of War II

Give me your list and I'll maybe I'll write up some mini-reviews!

Thanks in advance!

OK, I'm sure you're sick of reading these...

But I'm not!

It's been almost a month since GDC and I'm still finding love for my talk around the inter-webs.

Ryan Shwayder's Nerfbat not only gave a nice review but his blog commenters bring up some good points. I guess I'm not the only person with great blog readers!

ETCKT blog gives a nice summation of my talk. Pretty good as ETCKT isn't even a gaming site!

Javier Elizondo's Twitter message says that the line was "insane" - Sorry you couldn't get in Javier, so make sure you read the slides!

According to Stephen Jacob's "Class Acts: The Post-GDC Notes" you really need to listen to the AV files of the talk to appreciate it. Thanks, Stephen! Anyone who created a "Banjo Hero" game is aces in my book.

Burn the Rope!

I played "You Have To Burn The Rope" when it first came out, but a pal of mine recently reminded me of it. It's an action platformer with all the elements you need - a hero, jumping, object collection (fire), a puzzle, a boss and a big explosion at the end. Oh, and it takes about 2 minutes to play. But the best part of "You Have To Burn The Rope" is the ending credits song - which lasts about 4 minutes - twice as long as the game! Funny, brilliant stuff.


"You Have To Burn The Rope" reminded me of another game that I love - "Skullmonkeys" for the PS1. Besides the awesome clay animation, Skullmonkeys had the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a game - particularly the infamous bonus level song. If you haven't played the game, I recommend it, but beware, you will be throwing your controller as it is BALLS-HARD.

But that's the way we rolled back in those days.

I see STARS!

Sent to me by my old partner in crime Mark Rogers (no relation!) is the throughly addictive Hoshi Saga.

It's kind of like Wario-Ware but far more stylized and far more clever and some times downright impossible to fathom. There are three sets of 30 puzzles and there's at least one in each set that I have no friggin idea how to solve.

Great fun though and a great exercise in variations on a theme... find the star!

Lectures are even more awesome in Japanese.

I've officially gone world-wide.

The Japanese gaming site: Inside for Business has put up a review of my GDC talk. And if my website translator wasn't broken, it's seemed to be a pretty favorable review!



And yes, that is me wearing a pair of mouse ears. See what you miss when you don't attend these things in person?

You can read the untranslated article here.

You might have missed it...

In all the excitement of posting my GDC slides and follow ups, I forgot to finish a fun entry called "10 movies video games have completely ripped off (and what we can still rip off from them!)"

Well , it's done and ready for your enjoyment! Just scroll down below the GDC slides on this page or follow the "movies" label on the right.

Carded!

One of the chotzkies they give GDC speakers is a deck of cards with faces of the IGDA board members and top rated speakers.

Well, thanks to my "top rated" lecture from 2008, "How to Make the World's Greatest Boss Battle and Why not to do it" - I was awarded with the distinction of being this year's Five of Hearts!

I just hope no one uses the deck to hunt us down like those Iraqi Death cards!

You liked it. You really liked it.

I thought I'd share a few more links to blogs and nice reviews from around the interwebs about my GDC talk.

Penultimate Level Design's Tinkergirl didn't actually attend the talk, but she obviously ended up at the Design Lair! Her (?) review is here.

Terminally Trivial twittered that he (?) attended and enjoyed the talk. Still waiting for that review though!

...and Stephen Jacobs (definitely a guy!) gives my talk a shout out on the Gamasutra Blog in his "Class Acts of GDC."

Thanks guys and gals for all the love!

I guess I DID say that...

Joystiq, one of the better video game related blogs I actually read, has printed a very complimentary article about my GDC talk. http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/28/gdc09-disneylands-the-haunted-mansion-is-a-first-person-shoo/ - in which I am quoted as saying "The Haunted Mansion is essentally a First Person Shooter" - I was talking about the way the omnimover directs what the guest sees in the same way that the environment should direct the player in a FPS.

This article is already starting to make the rounds to all the news feeds. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a HUGE Haunted Mansion fan (I proposed to my wife there, but that's another story), so having my name and the Haunted Mansion actually be a searchable topic on Google is pretty darn cool!

Speaking of a Haunted Mansion FPS, check out this rad Counterstrike mod on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnFekqVATLU

Mr Boss goes BOINGBOING!

BoingBoing is a very fine blog.

Not only do they update their blog far more often than I do, they also have impecable taste - which is why Cory Doctorow wrote a very flattering article about my GDC talk. He also takes great notes (now I know who to sit next to in class) and has a very cool business card.

You can read his write-up about my GDC talk here: http://boingboing.hexten.net/2009/03/27/gamedesign-lessons-f.html

And if you are visiting Mr Boss' Design Lair from BoingBoing, Welcome!