Jamie Antonisse

This, too, is homework. It's the raw beginnings of a thesis statement, in three parts. It's just a start, but I'd love feedback.

I am exploring the construction of deterministic narrative environments

because I believe in the possibility of a medium for personal interactive experiences with unified content,

in order to provide storytellers and audiences with a new means of creative expression.

That's what I'm doing.

If you ever get the chance, try playing Velociraptor Safari while listening to Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby". Trust me.

I started recounting the BagHead incident, my epic experience with Herb Yang's thesis Kingpin prototype, early last fall. I don't think I've posted anything about it here since October. One side of me wanted to leave it at "Part Three", teetering just short of a conclusion, like the end of the Sopranos but without the comforting darkness. David Chase would have liked it that way.

But this isn't HBO, this isn't even television, this is a different beast entirely. It's likely I could've left the BagHead story unfinished and no one would've noticed... but the moral of the tale has kept me invested on a personal level in getting this sucker done. So, for the faithful who remember and the curious who will read anyway, here is the Punchline of the BagHead Chronicles, late but intact.

Just wanted to add:

The final BagHead entry is extra appropriate because today, my Intermediate Game Project, Hush, got something akin to a review.

Today: a seven hour drive through cow country, a stop at Pea Soup Andersen's (easily the best German restaurant in Santa Nella), and a hundred rounds of three-player Mario Kart DS in the backseat. It's surreal, feeling a real car swerve under you just as you power slide around a corner.

Tomorrow, I'm joining six other members of Team Winterbottom at my first Game Developer's Conference.

Well, I am back in the hotel room, and I have a moment to mull over my GDC education.
But not MUCH of a moment... sometime in the next hour I have to move all my stuff to another hotel room. Best Western Americania is a harsh mistress.

So in place of a full rundown of the hurricane that has been Team Winterbottom's GDC Adventure, here's the first important thing I learned this week:

Play This Thing has found it's way into my aggregator recently... it's a good read, and great way to get exposed to a wide variety of games. Lo and behold, today they deviated from their normal pleasantries and posted this overwhelmingly negative Review of Game Criticism.

Well, I'll make this short. I'm jealous.

I want to be writing for RJ's blog. More specifically, I want to be writing this and this and this.

I've come to a difficult point in my blogging life: specifically, I've become aware of the blog as a potentially powerful tool. As anyone creative knows, POTENTIAL is a downer. All the things you COULD do tend to cripple your ability to properly DO anything.