ericzimmerman.com

I haven’t made any kind of big announcement yet, but I just launched a new version of my site ericzimmerman.com – with a design that is more visual and allows for better browsing of my games, writings, and other assorted works. Right now there are only a handful of projects there – I have my work cut out for me trying to get it up to date!

Special thanks to Rachel Morris – the amazing designer behind the NYU Game Center’s series of posters. She created the site, reworking the original design by Nathalie Pozzi.

Filed under: General

Let’s help Babycastles!

Babycastles is a budding NYC-based independent game exhibition space. If you haven’t heard of them yet, a great introduction is this profile written by Leigh Alexander for the LA Times. Aside from annual festivals like Indiecade and IGF, independent games don’t have many venues for reaching the public, and in its short lifetime, Babycastles has put together a stellar program and a well-earned reputation for doing smart – and playful – curatorial work.

Recently, Babycastles secured an exhibition space in Manhattan that will run for a few months later this fall, and they are raising money for the cause on Kickstarter. Matt Hawkins, who has put together several excellent Babycastles shows, has written a more detailed blog post about this fundraising effort. As of this writing, Babycastles is $1000 short, and only a few days away from their fundraising deadline, so now is the time to support indie games - send in a donation!

And in the interest of full disclosure, I do have a selfish reason for asking you to support Babycastles. Nathalie Pozzi and I will be premiering a new game project in the Babycastles exhibition space in December. But more on that in another posting.

Filed under: Festivals & Exhibitions, General

Indiecade here I come

Prominent independent game festival Indiecade has just announced the conference schedule for their festival this fall. I’ve been tapped to reprise Iron Game Designer, a real-time, real-world game design competition where teams of game designers compete to create an innovative game on the spot, in front of a live audience.

The event premiered at the Games for Change Festival a couple of years ago, where I co-hosted it with Karen Sideman. Now I just have to think about the physical “secret ingredient” that the teams need to incorporate into their designs. (The audience brainstorms a thematic constraint.) At Games for Change, the secret ingredient was blank white t-shirts – which the three teams proceeded to cut to pieces, scribble on with markers, and otherwise transform as part of their games.

My architect collaborator Nathalie Pozzi and I may also be exhibiting a project or two there. We’ve applied for a grant to bring Sixteen Tons to the festival, and we’ve applied for another grant to do a new site-specific game project, titled UNFAIR, specifically for Indiecade. We find out in the next week or two. Big physical projects are expensive to present! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the grants.

Filed under: Games, General, Talks

The beginning of the end.

I am now officially blog-ified.

A year+ post-Gamelab and working on too many game projects to count, a blog seems like a good way to let my peers in the game community know about my ongoing endeavors. Check back for updates on the latest from Eric Zimmerman land.

We’ll see how this thing evolves.

Filed under: General