I’ve talked a bit about games and art in the past, but something that is much harder to pinpoint is programming art. I was introduced to programming art a long time ago with the demo-scene, where people are creating beautiful applications that often try to do things with a computer that computers weren’t meant for. Another example is one of my great inspirations Karl Sims. Continue reading Programming art
Having a great idea for a game is valuable. That goes without saying, but exactly how valuable is such an idea? I’ve become rather cynical on the subject after working a while in the games-industry. If 50 people work on one game for over two years, how many good ideas are thought up? And how many of those are needed for the next game? Even if you don’t have a team of 50 people or don’t plan to work on one project for that long, there is a good chance that you’ll come up with a bunch of ideas that could become great games; Ideas that never will be realized.
Cosmonaut is such an idea. Continue reading Cosmonaut
The Swedish game-magazine Level had a nice article about the relationship between art and games in their July 2007 issue. This article contained an interview with me about the game Rorschach, where I collaborated with Ida Rödén to make a small art-game. This game has been shown in a number of more “traditional” art-forums, for example at Umeå Konsthögskola and the M.A.D.E. festival. Art and games has always had a slightly weird relasionship and as usual opinions drift apart. Personally I see interactivity as the key word, and Rorschach tries to explore the interactivity of conversations; something that games in general have been pretty unsuccessful in.
Rorschach is now available for download and can be found at http://www.collectingsmiles.com/rorschach.
I just saw the first batch of reviews on Halo 3. That’s amazing. I never though they would score that great. On top of that Bioshock turned out to be incredibly as well. It’s a good time to be a gamer. While waiting to get my hands on Halo, I wanted to talk a bit about a game that’s close to my heart:
Pokémon. Yes, you heard me right, the Gotta catch’em all one. Continue reading Did you hear about this underappreciated game?
Colors! v1.06 is now released.
Colors! is a simplistic digital application for Nintendo DS based on modern painting-techniques developed for drawing tablets in programs like Photoshop. By taking advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the DS touch-screen it becomes a perfect portable digital sketch-book.
I managed to get hold of a game for the DS called Etrian Odyssey that I feel the need to rave a little about. I’m still not really sure that it’s a good game, but if you are like me and have grown up with computer role-playing games this game will definitely do the trick for you.
This game is mean in so many ways. Continue reading Etrian Odyssey – Modern nostalgica
Colors! v1.05 is ready for download.
Colors! v1.04 released.
Continue reading Colors! v1.04
Mud and plenty of wind can turn a tent into a flying dragon!
Oh sweet mud. I had the pleasure of attending the Roskilde Festival and watch a few bands like BJÖRK-INFLAMES-ROKYERICKSON-BEASTIEBOYS-DIZZEERASCAL-CSS-QUEENSOFTHESTONEAGE-MUSTASCH-BONDEDEROLE-FLAMINGLIPS-CULTOFLUNA.
But since this is a gaming-blog I will not bore you with that. Instead I’d like smoothly move the topic over to licensed music in games. In The Darkness we did a pretty cool thing. We crammed the disc full with video content that ran on the in-game TVs that were scattered all over the game. Continue reading Stop 5: Roskilde
Since I traveled with a few Irrational guys on my short trip through The New World, I got a chance to see Bioshock in quite some detail. This game has been in production in almost four years, which is a very long time for a video game. Now, I know how developing a game for a long time can be from a developer standpoint, but I’ve never spent much though on how the world’s perception of a game can evolve as well.
Continue reading Bioshock and the life of an unreleased video game