Games

I was really anticipating Firewatch and I was sorely disappointed as was of course bound to happen.

Rob Dubbin at the Awl has written a comprehensive account of what is wrong with Secret Hitler. I agree with his critique but I want to highlight one issue in particular.

Last week we finally got featured with Bycatch on Boingboing and Fast Company thanks to our invitation to the XOXO festival. It is amazing to see what that attention does and what kind of effect that has on sales.

This was my situation for most of last week watching The International main event take place thanks to the time difference.

Mirror’s Edge looks great but the tutorial was really difficult and frustrating already. Not sure this is the best interface for a parkour game.

Modern Warfare 2, I’m in a deep cover mission with a Russian terrorist and anytime I kill a civilian I have to restart. Whenever I die the game gives me quotes by Cheney and Gandhi.

I have found myself in the custody of a Playstation 3 console and have borrowed a couple dozen games to play over the holidays. This came to be after I mentioned to my local game design support group that I hadn’t played anything on a console for over ten years and that I was quite happy with that state of being. They thought that this was unacceptable.

Extremely crude but a decent shooter nonetheless. Can be a bit of a slough at times but now that I’ve played more from the genre that seems to be par for the course.

The Last of Us is amazing. Even at the easiest level it is kicking my ass. And now that I got some dramatic story progression I am well amazed.

Hij staat ook bij Niels op de site in het blokje paid alpha’s wat erg leuk geworden is. Prison Architect is een curieus spel en ik heb er een tijdje op gezeten om te kijken of ze het nu af gingen maken of niet en uiteindelijk heb ik dit korte stukje ervan gemaakt:

I have a current shtick that says that game designers harbour no illusions about human reality. Designing and testing a game on people reveal the murky depths of human nature in a way few other pursuits do. Take even the simplest game with the possibility of deception and it will often devolve into the horrible treatment of one player for the advantage of another.

I played a bunch of Ultratron over the past couple of weeks. It’s beautiful pulsing dance of bullets that lost its charm somewhere past level 100 where I thought I had the game beat, but everything keeps on repeating ever faster. That was eleven hours of obsessive pleasure (according to Steam) followed by emptiness.

Dear Niels and Kars,

Hier mijn recensie van Proteus voor de nrc.next een paar weken geleden geplaatst (dit is een fractie van wat Bogost heeft gedaan op Gamasutra maar in Nederland is er geen plek, tijd of geld voor games):

Hi Niels & Kars,

Last Monday Uber had drinks here in Berlin and took a complimentary Uber there to chat with their Berlin team. The experience was extremely comfortable but given big city traffic it wasn’t very fast 1. In cities where the cab market is unreliable and corrupt I can definitely imagine the appeal of Uber. People working on transit apps should take note, this is the way it should work.

Recess! is a correspondence series with personal ruminations on games.

Recensie verschenen in de nrc.next ergens in oktober 2011:

Recensie verschenen in de nrc.next ergens in december 2011:

Recensie verschenen in de nrc.next van 20 juni 2012:

Ik ben even in de e-mail archieven gedoken om mijn recensie-arbeid voor de nrc.next te verzamelen. Naast wat er al op het ter-ziele-gegane Bashers staat, zal ik de rest hier posten.

Last week I presented at the Berlin Ignite. I had been present at the last one and greatly enjoyed, so I looked what I could add to the mix.

De serie video’s Blind Sequence Trust van kunstenaar Joan Leandre speelt in DAM nog tot en met 5 mei.

A week or two ago I attended a discussion at the Deutsches Theater ‘Holland in Not’ that was organized because of a recently published book “Der Kulturinfarkt, vom Allem zu viel und überall das Gleiche” that proposed to close half of all theaters in Germany.

When I just got into Germany we managed to pin point something I had noticed before. It is striking how conservative people in Germany are when it comes to the internet and especially people who work in cultural positions. Compared to that, the Netherlands of the past five years has gone through a rather tumultuous revolution.

I dived into my log to make the yearly tally of what I did and saw. All in all 2011 has proven to be a good year.

Last week a bunch of visual progress was made on culiacán. Expect an August release on that.

Some of my own misgivings about whether to write about games and related phenomena or not are reflected in the critique of game criticism at Lost Garden.

Mijn stukje over de trailer van Dead Island die we vorige week zagen staat online bij Bashers (mijn debuut). Zie verder ook de comments.

Ik MOET de nieuwe Zelda spelen.

Barcamp London seems to have been a complete blast understandably. I’ve been reading the reports but from Jeremy’s blog I found these two nuggets:

T.L. Taylor - Play

Interesting article on Wired about if video games can provoke emotions in players beyond simple victory and frustration. To see if people get carried away so totally into a game that they make personal connections with a character.

De Hebben!-factor is net weer een tandje omhoog voor de PSP. Bij Russell Beatie een link naar een FPS op de PSP met filmpjes.

Er is nu op radio (en op tv) een ontzettend nare reclame met Peter R. de Vries. De Vries vertelt op zijn normale belerende toontje dat als je games en software verspreidt dat je dan fout bezig bent.

Ik heb een deel van oudejaarsavond doorgebracht met het kijken naar mensen die groot op de muur geprojecteerd video-spelletjes aan het spelen waren.

Ik weet dat er in Delft bij ons best wel wat mensen bezig zijn met spelletjes maken. Lees ik (via) dat er een Nederlands bedrijf op zoek is naar programmeurs.

[Ochtend] Ik heb de halve nacht van donderdag op vrijdag Neverwinter Nights zitten spelen. Leuk, mooi, spannend spel. Doet het goed bij de D&D fanboys. Op een gegeven moment loopt dat leuke spel vast. Na een kwartier vind ik het wel leuk geweest en ram het spel eruit. De ellende begint.

Gisteren na het werk Munchkin gespeeld. Erg leuk D&D-achtig kaartspel voor mensen die het echte spel teveel gedoe vinden en bang zijn om een ‘nerd’ te worden. We waren er wel lang mee bezig.