My Games Design

I was in London last week for NMK's Writing for Games Event and while the event was interesting in and of itself, it's also got me thinking about the relationship between narrative and game play. The panel was pretty cool, consisting of Katie Ellwood, (who worked on Getaway franchise), Steve Ince (who worked on the BAFTA nominated Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon ), Adrian Hon and Naomi Alderman (who were both involved in Perplex City , an ARG , with Adrian as designer and producer and Naomi as a writer) and it was fascinating to hear about their different experiences. It did seem like the event was aimed more at people who were looking to break into the games industry as writers, such as Justin who I sat next too and had quite an interesting chat with afterwards. While becoming a games writer is not something I've ever really considered, I do feel I came away with a better idea about the part writing plays in the game design process. There were a couple of things that s...

Chris Plante posted an article called "Problematic Peripherals" about all the extra kit that seems to come along with games these days. He's got a point - where exactly are you supposed to find space to put it all? And what sort of place are you supposed to be living in to have space to play things like Wii Fit or god forbid, Rock Band ? For the Wii alone I seem to have collected two wimmotes and nunchucks, at least one plastic guitar (two if you count the one I've borrowed from the department), a Mario Kart steering wheel and four GameCube controllers (that I seem to have acquired on long term loan). The funny thing about Mario Kart is that I found the the steering wheel to be the most difficult choice of controller. Playing it with a group of friends the other week, it seemed like the more traditional GameCube controllers were easiest, though one us seemed quite happy using the Wiimote and nunchuck combination. Maybe it's because the older controllers are jus...