Who is B-Ma

"What you are really doing with a game is orchestrating an experience, and everything from story to..."

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:22:49 +1100

“What you are really doing with a game is orchestrating an experience, and everything from story to physics is all about sculpting and delivering this experience.”

- Dan Pinchbeck (via notgames)

This is my new bike. Picked out parts and built up by Factory 5...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:46:00 +1100

This is my new bike. Picked out parts and built up by Factory 5 in Shanghai.

Now I just have to wait for it to get here…

Fract.

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:32:11 +1100

Fract.

"I see the same man every day when I leave my apartment. He sits at the bus stop across the street...."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:24:55 +1100

“I see the same man every day when I leave my apartment. He sits at the bus stop across the street. He sits there for hours. Most of the time he seems to be asleep; his head nuzzled down into his belly. He’s bald, and he doesn’t wear a hat. On sunny days, I can see the sweat beading up on his bare head, frying like a pad of butter. Sometimes when I pass by, he asks what time it is, and I figure he’s waiting for the bus, but when I come back hours later, he’s still sitting there, sleeping. I wonder if he’s off his meds. I wonder if he’s supposed to be somewhere. Maybe he slept through his bus, or forgot which bus to take. I wonder if he has people waiting for him somewhere, and if they’re worried. I wonder if he needs some help. But I go back up into my apartment, and save the world in a videogame.”

- Robert Ashley, A Life Well Wasted Episode 5

http://alifewellwasted.com/podcast/

Although I took part in this year’s Global Game Jam in...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:41:00 +1100

Although I took part in this year’s Global Game Jam in Sydney, I was also extremely honored to be asked to serve on the Global Game Jam Theme and Diversifiers Committee. You might say it was unfair of me to participate as a jammer since I knew the theme ahead of time, and I would agree… but I had such a blast jamming last year that I couldn’t resist.

In any case I intended to keep my role on a jam team to a minimum and focus on producing content. This was made easy for me as my teammates were both wizards of their craft and our concept had nearly no art, so a (sort-of) jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none like myself was guaranteed a relatively laid back weekend. Relatively.

The Theme and Diversifiers committee is a group of games people and educators around the world whose job is to figure out what it should be that will serve as the inspiration material for the tens of thousands(!) of people taking part in the Global Game Jam. This process lasted several months as we debated our way to a theme.

I spoke with the guys at The Game Engine podcast during the jam and talked a bit about our thoughts behind, hopes for, and concerns about this year’s theme. My part starts around 25:00. Thanks to Dan, Saul, Paul and Andrew for inviting me on their show.

Speaking of jamming, I’m in here somewhere, stammering...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:06:00 +1100

Speaking of jamming, I’m in here somewhere, stammering away…

The Sydney Game Jam media people did an incredible job documenting the entire weekend.

“The Hedgehog in the Fog is a 1975 Soviet animated film...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:05 +1100

“The Hedgehog in the Fog is a 1975 Soviet animated film directed by Yuriy Norshtein, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. This cartoon is considered the one of the best animated films of all time.”

The name of this site comes from a line late in this film.

Oddly enough, I feel more nostalgic for the game that I imagined...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:55:02 +1100

Oddly enough, I feel more nostalgic for the game that I imagined these early screenshots hinted at than the real thing.

Mirrormoon #GGJ12

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:31:29 +1100

Amazing. As far as I’m concerned this wins Global Game Jam ‘12. Except you can’t win Global Game Jam. Except this does.

Explore a tiny little world with a very strange little moon - itself. Play this now.

santaragione:

MIRRORMOON was created, under the “Team Focaccia” label, by us and Paolo Tajé during the 2012 Global Game Jam.

It’s and adventure game set on a red planet, hope you’ll like it.

Download it here: PC - MAC

For more news and stuff follow us on twitter @SantaRagione and follow Paolo @PaoloMonkey for some more Italian indie experiences :D

This is Noisrucker, our (Glen Forrester, Daniel Baker, and moi)...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:53:00 +1100

This is Noisrucker, our (Glen Forrester, Daniel Baker, and moi) submission for the 2012 global game jam.

You’re a cube on a level, which is also you. You can also see a little you running around on your own surface. You only have so long to live, and the secret to extending your life is actually within your own structure. You have to cut away at yourself and ‘descend’ a level to then move inside yourself to get what extends your lifetime. You can only descend, never ascend, and are forced to continue consuming yourself to exist as long as you can.

Play it here if you are so inclined - but it may be practically unplayable on slower computers and needs optimizing.

Last evening of the Sydney Global Game Jam. This was taken...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:15:00 +1100

Last evening of the Sydney Global Game Jam.

This was taken shortly before I passed out in my chair.

Prepping PCs for sydney game jam (Taken with instagram) My only...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:11:00 +1100

Prepping PCs for sydney game jam (Taken with instagram)

My only experience jamming at the GGJ thus far has been in Shanghai, which was a decidedly different experience - different by at least an order of magnitude.

This was huge. This image was taken on Friday as massive numbers of PCs were imaged for jammers needing computers.

So frustrated to be missing this!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:06:02 +1100

So frustrated to be missing this!

Global Games Project - Malaysia

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:04:00 +1100

Global Games Project - Malaysia:

A short contribution of mine is up on Kill Screen today.

The topic of the piece, a Malaysian folk game based on the local Mancala variant, is SO DAMN OBSCURE that I couldn’t find the exact rules anywhere - just anecdotes and one very blurry video with lots of shouting in Malay - and no one in KL knew what the hell I was talking about.

If you know anything about this, please let me know!

Perhaps as an elementary schooler you were introduced to a Mancala board. It’s long and narrow, often made of smoothed wood, with a series of pits dug in two rows. Seeds, stones, or marbles act as the playing pieces, jumping from “house” to “house” in the various basins.

There are popular adaptations among hundreds of localized variations across Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, but there is no “standard” Mancala game.

A Malaysian offshoot is called Congkak. It’s played throughout parts of Southeast Asia, traditionally by girls, and like many other Mancala games, involves obtaining more playing pieces in your home pit than your opponent’s.

Interestingly, in the Malaysian state of Terengganu, this traditional offshoot has its own more obscure variation, Congkak Gergasi Wanita, in which the pits are houses and players carry playing pieces in baskets. It means “Women’s Giant Congkak.”

Garden Chess this ain’t.

Julius Von Bismarck’s Top Shot Helmet...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:17:42 +1100

Julius Von Bismarck’s Top Shot Helmet - http://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/

The idea of viewing yourself from outside yourself is nothing new, but the idea of controlling a third-person avatar is sufficiently commonplace now to make this kind of work subtly familiar.

science: Human blood at 400x magnification, by Eleanor Farmer.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:50:05 +1100

science:

Human blood at 400x magnification, by Eleanor Farmer.

artificial line patterns [real-time computer graphics,...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:01:00 +1100

artificial line patterns [real-time computer graphics, topography] src 2008 - by Benjamin Weber

http://bw.nu/

thecreatorsproject: Jackie Chan vs. datamoshing = this kung-fu...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:07:58 +1100

thecreatorsproject:

Jackie Chan vs. datamoshing = this kung-fu explosion of a video.

http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/thap.html Triggerhappy is...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:44:00 +1100

http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/thap.html

Triggerhappy is a gallery installation whose format will be familiar to anyone who has encountered that early arcade game, Space Invaders combining an absurd quest for information with an old-fashioned shoot-em-up computer game. In this, it accurately reflects, and comments upon, the electronic environment in which we live, work and play. “In effect”, the artists say, “triggerhappy becomes a folly. A self-defeating environment looking at the relationship between hypertext, authorship and the individual.” They cleverly recontextualise existing representations and subject them to active manipulation on the part of the viewer, who becomes an unwitting participant in a meaningless game of “info-war”.

Michael Gibbs. 1998.

“[In Trigger Happy] ..It is crucial that [Thomson & Craighead] don”t merely combine the two visual elements - space invader iconography and theoretical text - without the more spiked combination of two purportedly antithetical modes of attention. They use the thrill of actually playing the game to complicate further the theoretical point being made as you try to kill the “death of the author” text before it gets you.”
Dave Beech, Art Monthly July/August 1998.

“In the web environment, as in that of Trigger Happy, the reader’s focus on text seems constantly and thoroughly aborted, perpetually distracted by the prospect of more specialised, more scintillating, more apropos information. Thus, in the midst of this play on hits and clicks, Trigger Happy is gesturing towards the basis of a future information economy, where attention, precisely because of its scarcity, may become a central commodity.”

@TheRadix’s Star Fox clone, made in one week in Unity, and...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:02:32 +1100

@TheRadix’s Star Fox clone, made in one week in Unity, and my favorite thing of today.