Jamie Antonisse

The playtests were a bit of a rollercoaster for me. The first one, while extremely informative, didn't go so well, and felt totally demoralizing. The second was a revelation, the third was an affirmation, the fourth, with Sean, was a three-hour play and brainstorming session that crystalized the direction this system needs to take.

A five weeks ago, I had no idea I was making a paper prototype of this game. Now I think it may be the best decision I've made since first putting pen to paper.

I have to once again thank Mike Rossmassler, who came up with the notion of a physical simulation of the Cache, and who lent his seemingly inexhaustible heart and soul to this collaboration. See how good this prototype looks? Not MY fault. Mike brought this whole thing together.

Next entry, I'm going to go into a bit more detail about what happened this Wednesday and Thursday... what this strange object is, what I learned from the tests, and where this crazy ship is headed.

To reiterate, with visuals...

This is a prototype of a new sort of narrative, a fully explorable environment fixed in space and time. Each page shows a map. As you flip forward through the pages, time moves forward by fifteen second intervals. The game covers four floors of a space (each represented by a colored oval) over four minutes of time.

The back of each card narrates a Moment, a particular 15-second chunk in a particular room of the space. Sometimes there are people moving through the spaces, other times you act as a camera, surveying details of the space itself.

The artifact you're looking at isn't really a game... there's no way to win or lose. The reason we've been running this test is to see how people interact with this sort of story space. How do people read when they can move through space and time at will? What do they want to DO with this power?

Already, with a mere four tests under our belt, we've gotten some very interesting results.

I almost forgot!!

For those interested, the games/movie debate has been continuing in full force over at Sean's blog, Softcore Gamer. Ethan Kennerly has weighed in as well with some interesting stuff... check the comment section of the entry.

Our Thanksgiving turkey, courtesy of Hutson Hayward. Brined (brined!) for two days prior to eating. Amazing.

We have a nice little Thanksgiving tradition: a gathering of East Coast expatriates that congregates at our house on turkey day, a second family for the family starved. This year the party grew to seventeen; we threw every table and chair in our house into the center of the room, stacked foodstuff on every surface, and ate ourselves to distraction. Forget Christmas, Thanksgiving is the holiday that really showcases people's giving spirit: twenty dishes! Eight desserts! 15 bottles of wine! And I never needed to stray farther afield than my sidewalk. What a holiday.

Yes, it has been awhile. I have not been a well-oiled blogging machine. There are of course several reasons for this, none of them exciting or in any way Guild-related. So no, I am not on Strike.

[Nice segue, Jamie!]

I realize I am late to the party on these things, but I just recently discovered N, a well-made little Flash game that has driven better men than I to the brink of insanity. At first, it barely made a dent in my schedule. But slowly, the clever level designs and the huge payoff of the simple control scheme drew me in. So here I am, bleary-eyed from listening to the entire Girl Talk album during my latest round of spectacular deaths. The combination almost lobotomized me. But I have come back to the Blog before I pass out to rattle off some thoughts about failure and replay in games.

Who says criticism can't change the world.

Thank you, Ben Abrams, for finding the best page on the IMDB.

Pony party, anyone?