Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

This blog has become a bit more about parenting and gaming than I had thought it would. Today’s post is a plug directed toward a new web site devoted to educating parents about what their kids are playing. It offers features, news and reviews about video games from a perspective that a parent can appreciate. The web site is called “What They Play” and was started by one of my favorite industry editors (along with some friends) John Davison who helped start, and has recently left, the 1Up network and magazines like Official Playstation Magazine and EGM.

In a world where the art forms in any and all mediums are having to defend themselves more and more as a result of poor parenting choices, there are those out there like this site who are trying to help parents make better choices which will both help the children behind those parental actions as well as prevent unnecessary censorship (a la Manhunt 2 and beyond) of the products.

So parents and parents-to-be please check out and use the site…for everyone’s sake.

Ok, so this is a blatant plug for my own site with a not so healthy dose of egotism in there as well, but I wanted to thank one of my favorite weblogs for giving Bullet Points some public traffic. GameSetWatch is a sort of “clearing house” blog site for game industry news, blogs, articles and general tidbits about the work we love so much. Every so often they collect a group of links from interesting, random, and personal blogs and such and post them so people may find some pages they may normally miss or not even know about. For the first time, as far as I know, my site was linked on a recent GameSetWatch post.

So, I wanted to let people know about GameSetWatch to try to return the favor a tiny bit. I wanted to also thank GameSetWatch and Simon Carless (the editor and great supporter of Indie Gaming) for linking my page. I’m honored and humbled to have been up there at all. Now I’m actually worried that people are reading this thing. Goodness.

Here is a quote from their page as a sort of mission statement I presume:

• “THE FINAL WORD: GameSetWatch believes that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. We’re committed to finding and exposing excellence in video games and game writing, whether it be in the indie, mainstream, or other more esoteric sectors. Join us on that journey, won’t you?”

Thanks Simon! (…and thanks to the person who told them about the site to begin with.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Rudy for catching my misspelling. Sorry Simon. It is Simon Carless, not Careless. Though Careless sure would be cool. Also found another link to my site that I missed before from Simon and GameSetWatch.

I meant to send this out earlier, but the IGDA Leadership Forum is tomorrow and Friday. I’m lucky enough to be speaking at the thing and unlucky enough to have challenged myself with a topic that isn’t that easy to talk about. Good job Tim!

We’ll see how it goes. I’m also one of the panelists on a production oriented open forum panel so who knows what that will have in store for us. I’ve even volunteered to do some live blogging on the main page for a couple of the sessions (what am I thinking!). I’ll probably post those entries here as well. My first live blog, how exciting!

A special thanks goes out to CD Shared Design group for watching a dry run of my lecture and providing great feedback. I’m glad the main event wasn’t my first time (despite my personal rehearsals). I took your feedback to heart guys.

I’ll keep you posted on how the event goes. I’m off for another sleepless night…(having fun but can’t wait for it to be done)

A friend of mine at Crystal (Jason Botta) sent me this pretty compelling article from the New York Times about games as art, one of my favorite subjects. This post isn’t meant for me to try to do any convincing (which is ultimately a futile effort Roger Ebert), I’m preaching to the choir anyway I hope. I’m just sharing a pretty mainstream opinion on the subject. He picks on Halo 3, which I won’t turn down, but he uses it as a nice comparison to what could be.

Quote:

• “Thirty-five years after Pong, fans and critics still debate whether video games can legitimately be called art. Certainly, whatever artistic potential that games have, few, if any, have fulfilled it. Halo 3 hasn’t changed that.”

  “Games boast ever richer and more realistic graphics, but this has actually inhibited their artistic growth. The ability to convincingly render any scene or environment has seduced game designers into thinking of visual features as the essence of the gaming experience.”

Click here for the article.

The only thing that I wish he had tried harder on is to site something other than Bioshock as an example of a game that was close to getting it right. He claims the medium still lacks those early “masterpieces” that the film industry created and attempts to make the point that we are close enough to that industry that our rate of growth will be the same and thus we still have plenty of time to “grow-up.” Well, I sure hope he was speaking from an informed place by playing Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, and Okami at the very least. Then I’d trust him to be able to make claims like that. If I ever have the energy for it I’ve threatened to post about Shadow and Ico and I will support my own claims that they are, in my opinion, two of our first works of art. Image that, according to this guy we might be about 20 years ahead of film if you agree with me on that.

P.S. Leave Shakespeare out of this mister.

Yes, he has been grumpy lately. Yes, his GDC lecture was pretty damn jaded. Yes, he hasn’t shipped anything in recent years. But, he IS still Warren Spector and is responsible for some of my favorite games of all time. So I’m continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt…for now.

You have probably heard about Ninja Gold by now (announced Modern Day Ninja game of some kind) which he is doing with John Woo of all people, in tandem with a film it sounds like. But I mainly wanted to share the discovery of his Junction Point Studios blog, written by the man himself.

http://junctionpoint.wordpress.com/

Enjoy…or not.

This is a bit old but I had been meaning to put it up here for those who didn’t hear about it on the 31st. CBS has done a deal with the WSVG to air this year’s tournament. It feels pretty significant to me. Though no time has been announced, the rumor is that it may be in the middle of the day on Sundays. Which is better than the usual 2am slots game tournaments get. If it is up there competing with golf and Tiger Woods, then we know we have hit the big time. Good luck players!

News hit here via 1UP: WSVG on CBS

Finally, after 5 weeks of teaser images the actual teaser trailer for Fallout 3 is here! Needless to say I’m beside myself much more than I should be. Though the bad news is it won’t be out until Fall of 2008! Looks to be an in-engine movie probably using the Oblivion game engine as a base. Though the trailer is slim, I’m still very jazzed.

• Link to the official site with the trailer is here.
• To bring back some memories…The Fallout 1 opening movie.
• Here is a link to the Fallout 2 opening movie as well.

At least there is now hope of one day continuing the saga.