Balthazar Auger

Likeliness for a media backlash and general racial and religious controversy around this game: 100%

Likeliness that many people won’t get past the first level of interpretation when playing: 100%

Actually, this looks only like cheap provocation, whereas September 12th was a little more nuanced in its delivery of the same message. Its just too easy to interpret this game the wrong way…

Update: The story ended up pulled from IndieGames.com, after generating a storm of negative comments and racist flames. I think it managed to stay up for, what… two, three hours? I guess my 100%s weren’t that off.

Anyways, you can still follow the controversy over at the Something Awful forums.

The reason I’ve been away from the blog lately is because I was attending the Paris GDC event, held at the “Coeur Défense” conference center. Let me tell you about it a little!

(more…)

A recent article by Soren Johnson states:

However, a more important (and actually true) first is less often mentioned – CivRev is the first Civ since the original to be designed and programmed directly by Sid. Every line of game and AI code (and probably quite a bit more) inside the game was written by Sid himself, for all three versions: 360, PS3, and DS.

I believe it’s great that just one man (even if it’s “just” Sid Meier) is able to program the game for three platforms at once. It is almost as if he acted like a modder of his own game.

Also, if you take in consideration the date CivRev was announced, now that we know only one person programmed the gameplay for two radically different platforms (more like two actually, seeing how the PS3 and Xbox are pretty much oversized computers), man, was that fast development or what!

Really, I would love seeing more of this: spend less time creating assets and more time creating gameplay! Please?

via: DESIGNER NOTES » Blog Archive » Sid’s Revolution

The gamma 256 contest was held by the Montreal-based Kokoromi collective in november 2007.

The requirements for entering the event were to submit a playable video game whose resolution had to be equal to or less than 256×256 pixels. The event received many brilliant submissions, amongst which were indie hits Passage, Bloody Zombies and Mr Heart Loves You Very Much.

This has “spatial constraint” written all over it!

(more…)

Space is the most logical constraint to consider after time. It is also one of the most obvious constraints I might talk about, due to its widespread use.

(more…)

Over at Gamasutra:

Take-Two subsidiary 2K Games announced today that developer Firaxis is currently working on Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization for PC, set to be released this fall. A “complete reimagining” of the original Colonization, it again puts the player in the role of one of four European powers seeking to establish colonial dominance over the New World. (more…)

What is the minimal time in which you can create a game?

I’ve postulated before that the total time spent on the production of a game can either be divided in having the idea and building the objects to communicate that idea with.

Lets look into those two amounts of time.

(more…)

Time has long been thought as a negative constraint to game development. Huge, multi-million dollar productions sometimes last for 3+ years and still manage to feel incomplete at the end, sometimes even requiring a patch to run properly. The general assumption is that more time and more money will forcibly yield a better game. However, this is periodically proved false.

(more…)

What is a game? What is a game made of?

Is it built from the bottom-up? Top-down? Can it be without characters, levels, points? Does it need a story? Can it be boring, or make us cry? Does it need to have X or W, Y or Z?

There have been many different approaches to answering this question. Academics, professionals, journalists, and others have their own approach, mostly based upon previous work on media theory or using their field of expertise as a measuring stick.
(more…)

The long hiatus is over, I have Internet access at home once again. Granted, I havent been completely disconnected, since I’m now interning at Ubisoft, but I like keeping my Ubi work and my personal work separated.

I could also have posted from an internet cafe, but, hey, come on!

Newness is around the corner.