Electron Dance Highlights
Taking A Breather: Chaim Gingold
This is the eighth article in the series The Academics Are Coming.
Chaim Gingold
Die Gute Fabrik's Doug Wilson tipped me off that Chaim Gingold might be a suitable interview subject for the series. But who is Chaim Gingold?
Well, he completed an MS in Digital Media at Georgia Tech then went into the games industry. To a job at Maxis, to be precise: Gingold was the design lead for all of Spore's Creators. He went independent in 2008, doing freelance work and creating two iPhone games - MinMe and Earth Dragon. He's now working on a personal project called Geology: An Interactive Primer, one of last year's IndieCade finalists, a geological toybox that teaches through experimentation.
But that's not the important bit: Gingold is currently engaged in a PhD at UC Santa Cruz's Expressive Intelligence Studio.
Why has a successful mainstream games developer gone back to school? In the following interview, Gingold exposes a larger question about what it means to be "games studies academic".
A Very New Thing: Dan Pinchbeck
This is the seventh article in the series The Academics Are Coming.
Dan Pinchbeck
Dr. Dan Pinchbeck is a senior lecturer for the School of Creative Technologies at the University of Portsmouth. His PhD thesis, completed in 2009, was titled “Story as a function of gameplay in First Person Shooters: an analysis of FPS diegetic content 1998-2007.”
As discussed two weeks ago on Electron Dance, Pinchbeck is a champion of development-led research. He is known principally for Dear Esther, originally a Half-Life 2 mod from 2009 which was released commercially this year. He runs a studio called thechineseroom which is working on two new projects: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs with Frictional Games.
Dan has a lot to say about the relevancy of academic research and the strengths and difficulties of academic game development.
Cat’s Away Chronicles III
The third of a five-part video series. This time I harass Ed Key. Yes, Ed Key, developer of Proteus.
Warning, this video contains colours&music. And:
- How Proteus is as much Kanaga as it is Key
- Wait, how much detail is coded into this thing?
- Proteus reference points
- I say awesomestupidthing "games which aren't games" when the correct phrasing eludes and deludes me
- Schafer vs Hofmeier deathmatch
Dear Korsakovia
This is the sixth article in the series The Academics Are Coming.
So this game. It had a dreadful. Slow. Pace. And it wouldn't let me participate or edit its story in any way. Yet, the confident, rambling narrative and superb voice acting worked some sort of mad magic.
I wasn't exactly onside with Lewis Denby when he suffered a life-threatening attack of hyperbole and said Dear Esther changed his outlook on games forever but, yeah, it was definitely interesting.
This Link Drag Is In A Box
Four writings, one podcast, two games, a bundle and two exquisite videos. Contributions from Chris Spann, Chris Dahlen, Drew Toal, Daniel Joseph, Eric Brasure, and Jenn Frank. Yes, that Jenn Frank. Again.
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- 1983 in British ComputingLike its American counterpart, the British PC industry was untenably fragmented by the beginning of 1983. The previous year had been deemed Information Technology Year by the government. Unlike so many government initiatives, this one had succeeded swimmingly in its goal of drumming up excitement and enthusiasm amongst the public for microcomputers. Where ex […]
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- Wyv and Keep: The Temple of the Lost Idol ReleasedI'm pretty much aware of the fact that Gnome's Lair isn't really covering many game releases these days, but a) that's something that will hopefully change (already looking into new ways of covering things) and b) I really enjoyed that Wyv and Keep preview of yore. In case you haven't gotten the point reader, well, Wyv and Keep: The […]
- Disaster: the unthinkable has happenedThere must be someone else we can blame for this. […]
- June 16thSince Kommandantin Ligman is off attending the Enormous Explosions Expo or some such, it has again fallen to me, humble foreign correspondent, to bring you the latest in quality games writing. Hold on to your fedoras, it’s This Week In Videogame Blogging. theletterethreetim.es Speaking of the Egregious Enthusiasm Expo, Jordan Mammo wrote about corporate clai […]