GameTruth

I am reporting in from GLS2008 in Madison, Wisconsin (It is currently downpouring outside).  This is my second year here at GLS and having presented The Winds of Orbis yesterday I truly get to relax and take in some good talks.  One of the highlights of yesterday was Drew Davidson’s talk about Portal that focused on the storytelling and analysis of the game from a more standard literary standpoint.  Drew proposed some very interesting ideas about the game design itself and did an excellent job explaining how Portal teaches the player to play.

Today there will surely be plenty of other outstanding talks.  I sat in on a fireside chat this morning that was about building virtual worlds and discussed the idea of Constant Nieuwenhuis’s New Babylon.   I think the idea is really fascinating and Iplan to read more about it andmaybe I will post more later.

Expect more updates from both Mark and me as we try to get back into the swing of this again.

-Seth

So I went to my first WoW trading card game event, and I totally got my ass kicked.  It was pretty fun to play the sealed format.  There is a big draw for me because you are given a set of random cards and need to make the best of it.  As far as card games go I have always found creating the decks being the most fun thing to do, while actually playing them comes in second.  Anyway, I plan to keep playing the WoW TCG so I will try to keep this updated.

-Seth

So I have been messing around with this card game for a while. I plan to play in some tournaments coming up and I will put up the reports here. Also I am going to do some number crunching and playtesting so that will be available as well. Hopefully will have a chance to do some analysis on the metagame in the current state just before the release of the new expansion Hunt for Illidan.

-Seth

I think Seth and I try on purpose to leave most of the game legislation and censoring garbage off this site because we do not know any lawyers and its always found unconstitutional. However, I am posting this link to the Game Politics blog where there are some posted pieces of actual testimony against Jack Thompson. The Florida Bar is trying to disbar him on ethic and other violations, I am not a lawyer so I do not care much for the details. What I did find fascinating is how insane Thompson actually is and I think this testimony shows it well. The testimony of the Judge in the Alabama case is coming I believe on Thursday. If you have some down time I really recommend giving this stuff a read.

-Mark

I wrote an article for the Escapist and it was published today. Head over and check out Dreamcraft 101, it is all about my experiences at the Entertainment Technology Center and a specific class called Building Virtual Worlds.

- Seth

Well 2008 is upon us and Seth and I are just coming off of vacation in California.  Seth is still on the west coast traveling for school but he should still be able to post until his return.

Daily questions will start up again next week but I posted one to think about over the weekend.

-Mark

They cut the show up into all the individual worlds and placed them on YouTube. The worlds that I was involved with are Connect It Relay and Pennsylvania Jones. The ending to Penn Jones is my part of the world, the rest was done by another group.

-Seth

This blog was created for the three of us to discuss video game related topics on a daily basis. It is still under construction, but feel free to join in if you somehow managed to find this page. The contact info is available to talk with any of us.

Enjoy

-Seth