By Harold Goldberg
Our New York Videogame Critics Circle meeting on Sunday at Piragua Gallery in the East Village was full of news and good vibes.
Alais Murillo from Microsoft talked about joining the Circle as a volunteer to raise funds for our nonprofit. We need her and we’re glad she’s on board.
Marc Anthony Rodriguez, the COO of VoxPop, talked about the products this locally based indie games publisher has released – and its plans to engage college students in games programs across the nation.
Luis Aguasviva told the story about NPR getting in contact about a brilliant story he wrote for Pop Matters about Cuba’s first independent video game. It was the first Cuban game Luis has played; there aren’t many, and Luis goes into why.
Senior intern Kimari Rennis, who joined us when she was just 14, attended our meeting a few days after she graduated from NYU’s Game Center. In June, Kimari will begin a six-month internship at Disney’s LucasFilm in their games division. Until then, she’ll be catching up on games she hasn’t been able to play – due to college. We all wish Kimari the best, and we know she’s going to rock it.
Karila Warner and Ronald Gordon talked about mentoring a version of our journalism in games class at Bx Start. If you visit there, you’ll see a special wall dedicated to student writing from the class.
We also discussed a plan we have for panels at a Long Island convention this summer with Luis and Circle member Jordan Minor.
After opening a bottle of wine that Reggie donated for the group, I brought up a point about our next New York Game Awards. Should we continue hosting it ourselves or go back to having an MC. The results we mixed, and this matter will go to our full Circle membership for more feedback.
Thanks to members Brady Langmann, Sherri Smith, Luis Aguavivas, Imad Khan, Adam Sidiqqui, Whitney Meers, our guests Alais and Marc Anthony, and, especially, all of our valued interns who attended. We had a great time talking games!
Journalist/author Harold Goldberg is the founder of the Circle and the New York Game Awards. He is games critics for The New York Times.
