In the summer of 2012, Kyle Moody was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. This is the story of how gaming helped him to cope with his new condition. By Kyle Moody Every two hours I prick my finger, scrape the blood off with a test strip, and then record a number in a book.…
Illustrator Matthew Nava provides insight into the design behind the truly intuitive game, Journey. By ANNATRUUS BAKKER Matthew Nava came to hear about the Journey project in his first job interview with thatgamecompany back when Flower was still a work in progress. Jenova Chen, thatgamecompany’s creative director, asked Nava what he thought “an online multiplayer…
The caffienated nature of NY Comic Con: Loud, nerd cheering, boisterous as a stadium huzzahs. Hot, sweaty cosplay. Skinny guy in a Sonic costume, posing on a motorcycle long as an SUV. Completely energetic dancing girls in the booths, so peppy, they could fly like a 60s comic book hero. None of these visions had…
Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander. Polygon’s Chris Plante. Giant Bomb’s Alex Navarro. AOL’s Libe Goad. CNET’s Dan Ackerman. About.com’s Charles Herold. These smart folks are just six of our 25 lauded Circle members. And they appear in our first New York Videogame Critics Circle Web program, this time about the potential pluses and minuses of the Wii…
This week, I was invited to preview the Creatures of Light exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. The well-researched exhibition, which opens on March 31st, was presaged by a smart and elegant press conference. There we sat, surrounded by the kingly, fossilized dinosaur giants of eons past. Up to the stage stepped Ellen…
Alexander burned the midnight oil while writing Serious Same 3
I’m taking this time to write about a newly launched project that’s been in the pipeline for quite some time. It has little to do with our Critics Circle, except to say that I always urge our members to be creative and independent-minded and outspoken. Plus, I need to explain to you why this space…
As Zynga prepares for its IPO, I often wonder about the future of social games. Social games are most often thought of as Facebook games, and they’re the most addicting form of media I’ve ever seen. That includes games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Social games are free to play – initially. But after…
It was all the common words I could think of: awesome, deep, exciting, thrilling even. Cliches, yes. But they were also words that resonated. If you eschewed most of the game demos as I did (heck, you’ll see them all at E3), the 25th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was the most important to…
This week, I spent much time exploring the north shore of Oahu. Although away from playing games, I kept thinking about what part in real life would make a creditable videogame. This is something I’m with which I’m plagued: I walk around and wonder, “Could this be a game? Could that be a game?” Hence,…