Month: September 2014

“I was read­ing David Chang’s Momo­fuku cook­book, and there’s a pas­sage in there where he points out that there’s this con­ven­tion amongst top-flight chefs,” he con­tin­ues. “They are all expect­ed to offer their own per­son­al take on two basic stan­dards: bread ser­vice, and an egg dish. These foods are so neu­tral in flavour and so depen­dent on tech­nique that you can use them to ana­lyze the dif­fer­ence between chefs as artists.”

“And I reflect­ed on what that would mean for game design­ers. I decid­ed that we should all make our own ver­sions of Pong (which is eggs), and chess (which is def­i­nite­ly bread),” Fod­dy sug­gests. “I would strong­ly rec­om­mend it as an exer­cise to any­one in a cre­ative field—figure out what the bread is, and what the eggs are, and then give them your best shot. It’s a great way of fig­ur­ing out your own iden­ti­ty as a creator.”

(via Gama­su­tra — The very good rea­sons for Ben­nett Foddy’s mad Speed Chess)

(Source: http://gamasutra.com/)

I’ve been track­ing the emer­gence of a “play eth­ic” in the inter­net of things / con­nect­ed prod­ucts field for a while because most of the projects are so damn util­i­tar­i­an. This new series of works by Bren­dan about email is kind of inter­est­ing in that regard. Lana in par­tic­u­lar is nice because it appears to “con­tain” email and spits it back at you in a sort of ran­dom manner.

(via Bren­dan Dawes — Six Mon­keys)

(Source: http://brendandawes.com/)

He cred­it­ed his friend and fel­low artist Lawrence Abu Ham­dan with show­ing him that Wik­iLeaks and the NSA actu­al­ly have a very sim­i­lar view of the world. “They both believe there’s a mas­sive secret out there, and if they just get hold of the secret every­thing will be bet­ter,” Bri­dle said.

Been work­ing on a card game about drone sur­veil­lance and war­fare for a while now and James’s work has been a big influ­ence. Nobody I know has put as much thought in the impli­ca­tions of these tech­nolo­gies through mak­ing things as he has.

(via This Artist’s Data­base Com­piles All Known Data on the Drone Wars | Moth­er­board)

We didn’t do the things that tech com­pa­nies were sup­posed to do. We didn’t move fast and break things. We didn’t dis­rupt and aban­don. We didn’t do moon shots. We cre­at­ed a future by sit­ting the world down with a cup of tea and a bun and ask­ing it some questions.
Infovore » The Ship­ping Forecast

I’ve spent a lot of time watch­ing dogs play­ing and it’s been a source of fas­ci­na­tion and hap­pi­ness for years. So the sub­ject mat­ter felt real­ly nat­ur­al to me. But as a game design­er, I find the dynam­ics of how dogs play togeth­er real­ly inter­est­ing. Dogs are expert play­ers. Dog play is made of all these rit­u­al­ized moments of vio­lence and dom­i­nance, but when it’s healthy play, it doesn’t cross the line into real vio­lence. Dogs are real­ly good at reg­u­lat­ing their play. Play­ing and play­ing well is this real­ly deep instinct for dogs, and I thought it would be inter­est­ing to try to pull some of that into a game for humans. Healthy dog play isn’t about defeat­ing a bunch of oppo­nents — it’s about hav­ing fun above all, while sim­u­lat­ing all these real­ly dark and dan­ger­ous real-life sit­u­a­tions and work­ing out social relationships.

So the pre­ten­tious idea at the heart of Dog Park is to make a game that has all kinds awe­some “fight­ing” in it that’s not about defeat­ing your ene­mies. It’s about how we work togeth­er, by pre­tend­ing to fight each oth­er, by com­pet­ing with each oth­er, to cre­ate enjoy­ment for each oth­er. In oth­er words, it’s about try­ing to turn my play­ers into dogs, for a few min­utes at a time.

(via » Kevin Can­ci­enne)