Comments on: Curran Affairs: Global Game Jam Keynote

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:29:07 +0000

I took part in the game jam here in London. Lots of fun, though coding pretty much non-stop for almost 30 hours is a bit crazy. I’ll definitely take part again next year. Going into the weekend not knowing what your concept will be, who you’ll be working with, what tools you’ll be using, and ending it with new acquaintances and a fully working game is brilliant.

By: ctankep

ctankep — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:18:16 +0000

Kobzon:

Such rules are not meant to be taken as guidelines. You’re just going to cripple yourself. Dovlatov had a rule where no two words in one sentence could start with the same letters. He used that trick as a handicap, to make the writing process more fun.

Guess Vonnegut was always, essentially a humanist an’ really loved reading Breakfast of Champions when I was a wee teenangster. Dovlatov sounds intriguing though an’ am always fascinated by these kind of formal logical restrictions cut across th’ semiotics of writing. Georges Perec an’ th’ French Oulipo group / movement are also very interesting featuring the likes of Calvino. From th’ 60s onwards they created formal rules for constrain’d writing + games [ design ] in th’ form of lipograms which would be played on their Saturday afternoon radio shows.

Most impressively, Perec wrote La Disparition which was a novel about a missing person that contained no “e”s whatsoever. Even more staggeringly, th’ entire novel was translated from French into English some years later without breaking this rule as well. “Life: A User’s Manual” is also worth checking out / kind of like a linear version of GTA4 compacted into an apartment building. Really interesting bleeding of a linear literary form into areas of game theory + design ..

– Chuan

By: joseph

joseph — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:14:50 +0000

I liked it more than Kyle Gabler’s.

By: EaterOfCheese

EaterOfCheese — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:58:23 +0000

I liked that.

By: Hybrid

Hybrid — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:21:48 +0000

A great keynote! Really enjoyed watching it.

By: joseph

joseph — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:55:55 +0000

Yeah… you don’t have to make a statement for it to be art imo. What about “the art of making fun games”?

By: Riesenmaulhai

Riesenmaulhai — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:45:14 +0000

My ex-girlfriend was one of those gamedesign students. I was full of envy for them, since they could afford themselves what I never could, but really couldn’t. But when talking to them it became clear all they wanted to do was another bigger and shinier and faster Crysis. I doubt they were all that way, but a lot of them were. But to be honest: That’s not a problem at all. Actually it’s good. These people will be working on videogames which might show some young people their way to these brilliant worlds. Young people who perhaps will one day be full of envy for those who can afford to study gamedesign. And that would be a good aspect for me personally.
A lot of people enjoy games and I enjoy a lot of games which aren’t necessarily full of brilliant ideas. Not everybody who is working on games needs to be a genius, you know.

By: negativedge

negativedge — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:34:07 +0000

how obnoxious

By: FunkyB

FunkyB — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:15:53 +0000

Just in case I wasn’t obvious enough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISZBfgyP1dY

By: FunkyB

FunkyB — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:13:21 +0000

STEPHEN!!!

By: ste

ste — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:32:59 +0000

Kyle’s was lovely for SURE.

Anyway, thank you all for saying nice things. The Vonnegut thing is interesting — as I mention in the video, he says that great writers break all of the rules except for the first, which is don’t waste time. I was never a great writer but that’s the main thing I took from them. The others are good guidelines which, as someone who wanted to get better at writing, I relied upon rather more than perhaps I should have done. Asinine, maybe, but again: I wasn’t a great writer.

I think they’re super fascinating though.

FYI: he also declares the semicolon as impotent and I use them all the time; maybe that means I am amazing!

By: Larington

Larington — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:10:52 +0000

Umm, I preferred the previous keynote by Kyle Gabler, which is a hard one to live up to so it’s understandable really.