I'm not likely to buy a new system soon, due to budgetary constraints. But given the breadth of the gaming world I can't help but obsess over the following question: which system should I buy? I already have a Wii, a DSi, and a PS2. My main criterion: which system offers the best ratio of FUN to COST OF OWNERSHIP ( Read more... )

The following is an excerpted and slightly edited version of my reply to a thread entitled "Why do people like RPGs?" on the Penny Arcade forums. I didn't get many responses (except for someone claiming that "the core mechanic [of an RPG] should be actual role-playing"), so I'm reposting it here. I'm interested to hear the thoughts of the (many) ( Read more... )

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This past week I participated in 5-in-5, along with a number of current ITP students and recent alumni. The challenge:
Do a creative project every day for five straight days, starting Monday, July 28th 2008

Projects must be completed in a day, so they need to be as compact as they are creative

Each project needs a name and documentation posted by ( Read more... )

I made a game for the TIGSource Procedural Generation Competition. It's called Legend of the Tomb of Fate, and you can download it here: Python source for Mac/Linux or Windows executable. There's a little bit of discussion about the game happening on the TIGSource forums.

I've posted more information here, but here's the basic gist: it's an old ( Read more... )

Penny Arcade? Persona 3? Last 10 levels of Etrian Odyssey? Which should I play?!

(Not to mention Paper Mario GC, Phantom Brave, and Pikmin, all waiting patiently on the shelf...)

Oh, Skies of Arcadia. You and I have such a complicated history! I bought you almost two years ago, in an attempt to squeeze some role-playing goodness out of my recently purchased GameCube. We breezed together through the first ten hours-remember those sweet days?-and then we got stuck. We got lost in Ixa'taka, and then later above Valua. We ( Read more... )

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A smelly man at Target sold me Professor Layton and the Curious Village about a week ago. He smelled really bad, like emergency bad, and I've had a moral crisis over the past week wondering if I should have alerted his fellow employees, or his supervisors, or the local health board-anyone in a position to break the news to him gently, to shuffle ( Read more... )

Sick; sicky sick. What started as a petite cough on Wednesday progressed through somnambulatory achiness on Thursday, on its way toward today's full-out hippie virus music festival (east stage: post-nasal; west stage: my bronchioles). In the meantime I've been too dazed to do real schoolwork, too listless to engage in meaningful leisure activity ( Read more... )