LOSTGARDEN

I’m writing this on the long flight back from Project Horseshoe 2008. The last bittersweet night, we stayed up till five AM playing games and talking about games. The conversation shifted from the slow death of games as we knew them, to fresh games that will change the world, to the little tips we use to thrive each day. There is something distinctly surreal about chatting quietly with such an intimate knowledgeable group during the […]

Hola. Amigo. First, isolate the group I just stumbled back from Project Horseshoe, the amazingly intense game design think tank set in the deep wilderness of Texas. Ah, Texas. Armadillos sporting leprosy and overhanging trees dangling with dozens of wiggling arachnids were amongst the more colorful wildlife lurking on the isolated ranch where we stayed. There is nothing more endearing than having a conversation about virtual gods interrupted by a friendly eight-legged fiend swaying two […]

I attended a unicorn convention in Texas this past weekend. I always tell people that the role of ‘game designer’ is really a mirage left over from the days when there were one person teams and we needed a term to described the person who mashed together the messy creative gunk inside a game. Nowadays, we have specialists: Level designers, producers, creative directors, AI programmers, UI coders, writers, artists and more. Few companies seem to […]