In honor of the one year anniversary of the tragic shooting at Dawson College, Danny Ledonne has released a special edit trailer of his coming-soon documentary Playing Columbine: A True Story of Video Game Controversy.
I was interviewed for the film when Danny came to Montreal to spend some time with Dawson survivors. And, I was thoroughly impressed with the mature approach Danny was taking. This is well reflected in the new trailer.
Unbelievable that only a year has passed. Seems like ages ago… Admittedly, I personally got a little more heat that usual given that I’m in Montreal… In some regards, the discourse has evolved in interesting ways, though it mostly wallows in the muck of ignorance (leading to debates in futility).
Oh well. I’m looking forward to the final cut of the film (which I do believe Danny is planning to screen during the Montreal Game Summit later in November)…
For those in games, Japan represents a certain allure and fascination. I’m quite fortunate in that my work has enabled me to visit Japan twice already - most recently for TGS in 2004. And, I am quite excited to be heading back to Japan for TGS (and related events) later this month.
It’s is going to be a busy ten day trip, including:
- attending the Tokyo Game Show itself (along with related meetings and activities)
- going to the annual International Party hosted by IGDA-Japan and Nikkei BP
- moderating a panel session of “import” developers (ie, devs working in Japan who are not Japanese) at the DiGRA conference
- speaking on industry structure and global talent challenges at CEDEC (the hardcore Japanese developer conference)
- checking out the action during CoFesta
Sadly, I’ve yet to plan any cool side/personal activities, like when Gonzalo Frasca and I visited the fabled Ghibli Museum back in ‘04. (Leave a comment with any suggestions.)
In preparation for the big trip, I’ve been doing a bit of “immersion” work, including:
OK, so, perhaps not the most rigorous immersion program, but hey, I can count to ten in Japanese…
In judging the entries from Intel’s Game Demo Contest, I couldn’t help but notice how hard the games were. In fact, several of them (each different genres, styles, etc) would kill me off within the first minute of play - either because I got shot up too easily, or drove my vehicle off the side of the track to sudden doom, etc.
I kept saying, Well that sucks! And then scoring the entry accordingly…
Wondering why these amateur/indie developers felt compelled to make their games so hard, I happened across the blog of Soren Johnson (of Civ fame) where he enumerates the greatest mistakes of game design. The first one being:
Hard-core game conventions: One of the most common pitfalls for a game designer is to fear that the game is not hard enough. This fear often leads to hard-core game conventions … that only put roadblocks in the way of the mainstream gamer who is just looking to have a good time. …
Why is that? Could it be that the line between hardcore gamer and amateur/indie developer is still so blurry that they are stuck in the “creating games for myself” syndrome? Or, do they assume that by making the game hard it means it is good/fun in some way? Or, is it some kind of Dungeon Master superiority complex of wanting to “dominate” the player?
To juxtapose, Wired did a massive cover feature on Halo 3 titled “How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play”. The article outlines how Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios extensively play test the game to iron out the design kinks, remove frustrating points in play, etc. It is about testing for fun/flow, not testing for software bugs…
So, here we have the next installment in one of the best game franchise sof all time with a battery of PhDs banging on it to, in essence, make it easier - or rather, less frustrating - to the player.
Can’t argue with 4 million pre-orders!
