At E3 2009, Microsoft unleashed a demon.
A week has gone by, and for most of us the words Project Natal already mean something. In case they don't, let me try to sum it up: it's a game platform where you don't need a controller. You just sit (or stand) in front of the screen, and move, and things happen.
This is a sneaky way to get some feedback on my thesis paper: I'm posting section one to the blog. This first part runs through a lite history of interactive narrative, and argues that role-playing games form the dominant paradigm for almost all our interactive stories. I've taken out the footnotes for your reading sanity... but everthing else is intact. What do you think? Is this readable? Sensical? Rife with grammatical no-no's? Read! Discuss! Please???
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Joseph Wheeler has lived a full life… seventy-three long, strange years lay behind him. With time, however, his memory has thinned, and now he can only remember a few fleeting moments. Spectre is a new interactive narrative that explores this character’s experiences, and uses play to examine the idea that no one “story” can do a person justice.
I came across this gem while researching Hypertext for my paper... a naive, hilarious and wonderful view of Interactive Media circa 1990. Leave it to Douglas Adams to get it so wrong, yet so right.
If it's all getting little too linear for you, try skipping around... I guarantee you'll encounter some classic out-of-context BBC action.
Well, the winter break is over... and as Matt Korba pointed out, it's likely to be the last school vacation of my life. I'm ready for this last semester, ready to move on to other things, but the notion of graduation always makes me a little misty-eyed.
But while school may be coming to an end for me, Spectre is just starting to come into its own. We have two things to announce: first, the Spectre website is live... go to http://www.spectregame.com and check it out! Sean's done some great work for the site, including images, team bios and a forum. The download section is quiet for now, but that will change soon enough.
In addition, I just finished cutting the first Spectre trailer. Check it out:
If you have comments on either the site or the trailer, leave them below!
This is just one of those lazy blog entries to let you know I'm still more or less alive.
Two weeks of game revision, unpacking*, Fallout 3 and tryptophan (not necessarily in that order) have left me feeling well-rested and massively out of shape. I hope to remedy both these issues shortly: there will be plenty of exercise and exhaustion in the next few December weeks as we update our game for IGF.
And that, our first screenshot of Spectre, represents perfectly how I will feel tomorrow...
after I've slept a few hours.
36 hours 'til the IGF deadline... and the Spectre team is racing towards the finish.
(Above, Sam Farmer and Asher Vollmer tightening up the graphics on level two. NO, those amazing blue and orange worms will not be in the final game)
When I remember that six weeks ago this was just an inkling, a bare concept that Sean and I decided might benefit from a team, I can hardly believe it. The way these eight people have pulled together and, outside their already busy school, work and social lives, turned a shadow into a fully fledged game... words fail me (possibly due to lack of sleep).
We're not the only IMD team racing towards the November 15th student deadline... Andre Clark, Mike Rossmassler and Ian Dallas (and perhaps others that I'm forgetting) are all in the final stretch as well preparing their own games, pushing the envelope of this medium. Good luck to all you fellow IGF travellers... and if you get the chance, wish us luck as well.
Here's my first tease of Spectre stuff... a few pieces of character art from our art director, Mike Rossmassler.
This is our hero, Joseph Wheeler. known to the team as "Specs".
It turns out everything changes.
I knew that, of course... babies know it. But the last three months have reinforced that fact.
