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Jenova Chen: Journeyman
“There’s this quotation from St Augustine…” Jenova Chen puts down his hamburger and fixes me with a warm but firm stare. Trust the designer of Flower and Journey to invoke a 3rd century theologian as an entry point to the subject of online tea-bagging. “Augustine wrote: ‘People will venture out to the height of the ...
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Weight Watchers’ new game – a tough diet pill to swallow
“Play to Win” declares the new Weight Watchers slogan, although “Play to Lose” would surely be a more appropriate battle cry to lead those resolved to shed the Christmas pounds in the new year diet game. The UK is the fattest nation in Europe and with the number of obese adults in the country forecast ...
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Sonic CD
Sega is a shadow of its former self. Its star developers are scattered to the four winds while treasured series hang cracked and dry from so much tireless, often unsympathetic milking. The company is perhaps the greatest casualty in the collapse of the arcade scene, once the fertile breeding ground for its most daring ideas ...
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Welcome To Sweatshop
Sweatshop, a free strategy web game I wrote with the team at indie developer Littleloud launched today. You can play it here. It’s been developed in partnership with Channel 4 education, as part of the broadcaster’s programme to educate about fashion through games. At the start of Sweatshop you are promoted to the position of ...
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Smart Casual?
His games have been played by in excess of 200 million people, but he is neither famous nor revered. Such are the new economies of scale in the casual gaming boom that a Dutch designer in his early twenties can entertain an audience twice the size of that enjoyed by the best-selling video game of ...
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The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2
At 6am on 7th May 2004, Axel Gembe awoke in the small German town of Schönau im Schwarzwald to find his bed surrounded by police officers. Automatic weapons were pointing at his head and the words “Get out of bed. Do not touch the keyboard” were ringing in his ears. Gembe knew why they were ...
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Thinking Outside of the Box
The review I wrote of Nintendo’s commemorative 25th anniversary edition of the Famicom Super Mario games last week proved divisive. Not only were many of Eurogamer’s readers unhappy with my approach, but ex-Amiga Power journalist, Stuart Campbell felt compelled to write a rather scathing attack on my approach on his blog. That kind of thing ...
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The Curfew
The Channel 4 adventure game, The Curfew, that I’ve been producing for the past 12 months with Littleloud is now live and available to play in your web browser for free. It’s been in Beta for a fortnight now, and with all of the big bugs squished, I’m comfortable pointing you guys towards it. The ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #49: Three Frames
Created by linking together and looping a series of low resolution still images, the animated .gif is something of an anachronism in today’s internet. Streaming HD video is available to anyone with a broadband connection, so what need for these digital flickbooks-cum-zoetropes, whose raison d’être (to provide animation in a time when internet speeds meant ...
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A Reason For Everything
Last week Duncan Fyfe announced that his website, Hit Self-Destruct, will be closing in six posts time. This is awesome. Awesome because we are too quick to start things and too slow to finish them. Awesome because blogs are an exhaling balloon and his words deserve a more enduring platform. Awesome because the announcement reminded ...
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Long Time No See
Yesterday I stumbled across my life’s work. It took the form of a spattering of magazine contributions, piled high in the dusty belly of a Soho thrift store, 25 pence an issue. There amongst the musty clothes, yellowed comics and cracked DVD casings I read my old words, partially unfamiliar and somehow estranged, like photographs ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #48: Post-It Notes and Patience
SCAD student Bang-yao Liu’s project, ‘Deadline’, is a 1:54 tribute to glue, organisation and tireless patience. I especially love the section in which he’s driving down an OutRun open road, while the clouds inch left across the wall high above: the post-its behaving as pixels writ large. It’s a wonderful example of where cute concept ...