Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The results are in, with the winners announced for the 2008 IGF Awards.

The standard of entries this year was just stunning, and when we’ve tried to pick out our favourite of the top prize entries, it’s been impossible. For us it came down to three. Audiosurf has taken over our lunchtimes (and mornings and afternoons and evenings) this week, and is obviously a triumphant achievement. Crayon Physics Deluxe is so charming and serene, while letting you feel like a wizard as your drawings come to life. And World of Goo evoked memories in us of the first time we played Lemmings (a high compliment indeed). Winners lie beyond.

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Occasionally encounters with human intelligence can be entirely bewildering. Suddenly you’re faced with the fact that other minds move in the same world and speak the same language, and yet have thoughts and intellectual processes going on that are entirely alien – and superior – to your own. That’s certainly how it feels to be shown the work of Eskil Steenberg, while sat at a spare table in a GDC conference hall. Steenberg’s temperamental laptop might not have wanted to help out, but what we saw flickering on that screen was astonishing and somewhat unsettling.
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While we bitterly watch Jim have adventures at GDC via the medium of excitable text-messages, the rest of RPS sit forlornly and watch the news feeds. We need a holiday. Which is one reason why this caught our eye – Avatar Reality are showing off their Crysis-engine powered Blue Mars over there. It’s set in 2177 on a terraformed Mars… and, no, come back. This isn’t an UnRed Faction Mars-based FPS. It’s actually an online environment ala Second Life where developers can build casual games to amuse everyone else, with Crysis’s fancy aesthetics on tap. Unlike Second Life, this is more about actual developers making stuff, but… well, we’ll see, eh? They’re suggesting a Public Beta before the end of 2008. And until then, some fancy screenshots.
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So yeah I’m at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and hanging about talking to game people in overcrowded bars. It’s a fun time, with a few moments of genuine delight at the bright shiny world of gaming that lies ahead of us, and a few moments of numbing jetlag or vertiginous horror at our absurdly debauched modernity.

The really astounding thing about this event is that it makes it quite clear just how many really bright people there are who basically just want to enjoy their lives by spending them making games. Bright people should really be using their giant brains to fix the sky or create cures for hiccups, but I’m nevertheless chuffed that some of them are putting their energies directly into the thing that I care most about: defeating boredom (or Ennui Lite, as I’m rebranding it for 2008). I’ll blog about one of these people a bit later. He’s someone you’ve never heard of, and who blew my mind with a laptop and a half hour conversation.

But anyway, let’s talk about The Personal Computer Gaming Alliance. Or how Intel and their gigantic computer chums want to save our platform.
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Finally some new footage of IGF competition finalist Fez.

I’ve played the first level, and oh boy. Need more.