The following was my favorite session at GDC 2007. In this presentation, entitled “Cutting the Apron Strings: Developer Liberation and Free Agency”, free lance game designer Michael John (Spiro The Dragon, Daxter, God of War PSP) delivers a heart felt message championing developer freedom and the need for a common voice.

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If the video doesn’t [...]

At a press event last month Capcom announced two projects that I’ve contributed to: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.
This was actually an image that I had made to justify the budget to commission all new sprites for SSFIITHDR; I can’t believe they actually used it [...]

Will Wright has some interesting things to say about education in a recent interview with Popular Science about Spore:
And a lot of it also is… you know, some of the most effective education is failure-based, where you’re given a system and you can manipulate it and explore different failure states and success states, and all [...]

The fine folks at Stormfront Studios have hired me to do character control and combat design on their new project which I will refer to as Ogre until it has been officially announced. I’m super excited to be working there with a great group of seasoned and talented developers. I’ve just finished my first [...]

Sirlin has announced a physical card game that we have been working on. It had its first public play test at this year’s Evolution Fighting Game Championships in Las Vegas. My involvement with this game began at GDC 2005 where I meet David Sirlin for the first time. He gave me an impromptu design test; [...]

Iwatani-san, after nearly 30 year, is leaving Namco (where he designed Pac-Man, among other games) to teach at a university. Good luck Iwatani-san!
I like this quote from the article:
“For example, mental training games have become very popular lately,” he said. “TPU has set up facilities to monitor brain activity so that we can thoroughly investigate [...]

BACKDROP:

Many people spend a large amount of their leisure time playing video games.
Games, due to their immersive nature, can potentially be a more powerful form of media than film, literature, or television. By powerful I mean the capacity to effect the user on a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or social level.
Many games are unoriginal, uninspired, [...]