The blur that was GDC 2012

The busiest week of my life every year, the Game Developers Conference 2012 was no exception. Even if I wasn’t giving a full slate of talks and panels, and organizing a conference-wide game, I’d still have my schedule full of meetings, conference sessions, and late-night socializing.

Overall, I was happy with my sessions. Richard LeMarchand came out on top of the Game Design Challenge, which this year was “Upgrade Humanity in 60 Seconds or Less” – design a game to improve people’s lives that took a minute or less to play. Constance Steinkhuler, a close friend and the current White House Czar on games, was on hand to deliver the prizes. Here’s a nice writeup on Jason Rorher’s entry – a game that involved tearing US currency into pieces.

The annual Rant Session blazed forward as well, themed on game developer parents holding forth on whatever they wanted. A personal highlight for me was seeing Frank Lantz and his game designer son James rant back to back – surely the start of a game industry dynasty. My own lecture, Let the Games be Games, was a theoretical dive into game design and aesthetics. I was happy with how it came out, but you can view it on the GDC Vault for yourself and let me know what you think.

Lastly, the Metagame returned for year two of massively multiplayer debating about videogames. GDC is surely one of the perfect contexts for the game – and we had more than 3,000 players arguing about games for the week of GDC. Special thanks to our sponsors BBC, Loot Drop, Microsoft, Parsons, and IGDA who made the game happen. And a big acknowledgement to iam8bit, who sold hundreds of Metagame decks and expansion sets in their bookstore booth.

I’m a glutton for punishment, and I have already begun thinking about next year’s conference. It will be the 10th anniversary of the Game Design Challenge, and I only promise that it is going to be a very different session next year… more to come.

Filed under: Games, Local No.12, Media Mentions, Talks, The Metagame

Metagame at GDC 2012

The Metagame is returning to GDC in just a couple weeks. In 2011, the Metagame was born at GDC, where 3,000 players argued and debated videogames between sessions, over lunches and meetings, and at bars and parties at night.

Local No. 12 is running another massively multiplayer Metagame this year, with hopefully even more players. We’ve printed a special set of gold-rimmed cards for use at the conference, and we’re working with the IGDA again to use their headquarters as a home base for the game. So if you attend GDC, pick up your starter deck and play the game.

Thanks to the metagame GDC 2012 sponsors: Loot Drop, BBC, Microsoft, Parons the New School for Design, and IGDA. Full info about the GDC 2012 Metagame can be found here on the Metagame website.

Filed under: Games, Local No.12, The Metagame

Metagame update

The Metagame, the collectable card game about videogames I created with Local No. 12, has been steamrolling forward, carrying Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and I along with it.

Over the winter holidays, we received more shipments of the game, and sold several hundred more decks. A great write-up by Kirk Hamilton in Kotaku, including a video demo of the game, certainly helped things along. (The image above is from the Kotaku piece.)

At the moment, my apartment is shipping central for the Metagame, but if this project continues we’ll probably bump it up a level and use an outside company to ship the decks for us. Sending out hundreds of card decks and posters has not been good for my living quarters.

John and Colleen and I have also been busy working on the next version of the game. Suffice to say that we may have some very cool announcements leading up to the Game Developers conference.

In the meantime, we need to sell decks! Not only so that I can get my living room back, but also because selling our current decks is how we are funding the next version of the game. Visit www.metaga/me and think about getting a Videogame Edition deck – and tell your friends too!

Filed under: Local No.12, Media Mentions, The Metagame

Metagame featured in Cultured Magazine

Michael Brown at Cultured Magazine has devoted an entire issue to the Metagame. Featuring interviews with Local No. 12 collaborators Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and me, the magazine is stuffed with more info than you want to hear about the history and design of the Metagame. You can download a free digital copy of the magazine, or order a hard copy online. Thanks, Michael!

Stay tuned here for more Metagame news, coming soon…

Filed under: Local No.12, Media Mentions, The Metagame

News dump

I’ve been busy traveling and getting ready for the MoMA opening in a few short weeks, so media about my work has piled up a bit. Here are some highlights.

This piece for the Forbes website kindly remembers SiSSYFiGHT 2000, a web game I created in collaboration with Word.com.

An early preview of the Deepak Chopra Kinect game I lead designed for Curious Pictures includes screenshots and videos.

In this Kill Screen Magazine interview about games and art, designer and scholar John Sharp names the work of Nathalie and I as one of his chief examples of game creators working under an art-making rubric.

A Notre Dame blog reports on “Games are not Good for You” – my keynote at the Games, Learning, and Society conference last month.

In Purple Pawn, A thoughtful review of Figment, my new card-game-in-a-book, called “Figment: Irony in a Paperback.”

A featured article in the Macarthur Foundation’s site about digital media and learning focuses on Gamestar Mechanic.

This Australian blog about digital arts references two Local No. 12 games (Backchatter and the Metagame) in a post about playful engagement.

Ayiti, an award-winning game about poverty in Haiti that Gamelab created with Global kids, has been translated into Chinese! Read about it here on the Global Kids website.

Filed under: BackChatter, Figment, Gamestar Mechanic, Local No.12, Media Mentions, SiSSYFiGHT 2000, The Metagame