Category Archives: Life

Games, Life

Playing the Witcher 3 again

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So, I got a new graphics card (970 GTX) to play through the Witcher 3 again with higher graphics qualities…

But upon installing it, I was reminded that I could import my save game from The Witcher 2:

Screenshot 2015-08-27 15.06.57

Having played through 3 once already, I know there’s a simulated save game import through a barber shaving interrogation scene, but I thought… ah hell… I should prob just replay 2 so I can remind myself what the story was about and have a more meaningful experience with 3. I remember thinking that there’s all this mention of Yennefer that really didn’t make sense to me when I played 2 way back when, but now having played 3, I could appreciate mention of her like people who’ve read the source books…

I don’t have much space on my HD, though, so I had to uninstall 3 to make room for 2. Then I got this:

witcher 2 decision

 

Jeez. Ok. What the hell… Might as well uninstall The Witcher 2, install The Witcher, and start completely over!

I do remember The Witcher relatively well, having done a review of it for E-Learning, but I never played through the Enhanced Edition.

But, you know, then I thought: there’s probably some good mods that’ve come out since The Witcher was first released… And lo and behold:

witcher.rise of the white wolfHurrah!

So, last week, I finished The Witcher with Rise of the White Wolf. The Enhanced Edition seemed like an improvement, but it was still pretty clunky. Combat takes some getting used to, characters clip and stutter like crazy in cutscenes, and there’s something seriously wrong with how Zoltan looks…

Anyway, this week and next and maybe longer, I’ll be playing The Witcher 2 (with mods). And hopefully in October I can finally do my second comprehensive playthrough of The Witcher 3. Maybe by then there’ll be some good mods for it, too.

*Knowing what I know now, it seems crazy that no one in The Witcher mentions Yennefer explicitly (though, interestingly, there are little tidbits here and there of the Wild Hunt and a tale of a witcher and a sorceress being in love, etc.). And, wow, Triss totally took advantage of Geralt’s memory loss… Making me rethink what choices I want to make in 3 next month…

 

Humorous, Life

My AirBnB experience: 9 different places in 9 weeks.

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For the most part, my AirBnB experiences have been really positive. So far each one has had at least one thing wrong with it, but often getting to meet someone new or seeing a different part of the city or having other really nice amenities easily makes up for it. Better experience and/or cheaper than many hotels, and, as with hotels, if you spend more you get a nicer experience. Still, this post is a listing of those nigglings.

Once I got to LA in September, I decided that I wanted to live in a bunch of different places to check out different neighborhoods before committing to a place more permanently. My appointment at Pepperdine is for this school year, which is about 8 months, so the plan was to check out different places for 2 months and then sign a 6-month lease. At the time, this plan also made sense because I knew I was going to be gone for 3 weeks at a couple of different conferences in October, so why pay rent for those 3 weeks?

Continue reading My AirBnB experience: 9 different places in 9 weeks. →

Games Research, Life

Depression Quest is the most important game I’ve ever played

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[This article originally appeared on Critical Gaming Project as part of the “Critical Exemplars” features series.]

Whenever I’m defining what games are with new students, usually, someone mentions that games must be fun. I love it when this happens because it’s the perfect entryway into getting students to start thinking critically and reflectively about games and gaming. The discussion requires clarification on what “fun” means and whether games really have to be it. I usually argue that if we treat games as an expressive medium like film, we can apply the same standards of criticism on them. Not all films must be fun (think Schindler’s List), so why should all games be fun? In the last year or so, my go-to example to challenge this existing definition of games is Depression Quest (DQ) (before that it was usually Hush).

Depression Quest is an amazing game.

Continue reading Depression Quest is the most important game I’ve ever played →

Games Research, Life

Announcing: Reed Summer Game Jam

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rgj

Join Mark Chen ’95, game designer & researcher—and friends—for a month-long game jam on the Reed College campus this August 1—23

Part workshop, part lab, part on-going brainstorm and creation space. During the Reed Game Jam you will:

  • Gain an understanding of the game development process:
    • Idea generation;
    • Writing a game design document;
    • Testing mechanics for both digital and tabletop games.
  • Learn about current state of games in academia &
  • Participate in hands-on research activities.

The goal? Produce at least one Kickstarter-ready game.

The Jam (in Psy108) will be open from Tuesday—Saturday extended hours; closed on Sunday, and open 9—5 p.m. on Monday.

INTERESTED? Email Brooke Hunter (hunterb@reed.edu) for the application link.

Deadline to apply Tuesday, June 25, 2013

So, here’re my August plans! Huge thanks to Brooke Hunter at Reed for making this happen.

This is primarily for Reedies, but others are welcome to apply. It’s basically a Maker space kind of set up. A bunch of smart people dropping in when they can to collaborate on game-related projects. I’m taking donations for food, transportation, etc. 🙂

Life, web 2.0

Ballard Writers Collective

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I recently joined the Ballard Writers Collective, and now I’m webmastering for them and doing freelance web work for local authors.

They’re a great group, led by Peggy Sturdivant, who, among other things, are exploring non-traditional forms of publishing, firing ideas in my head about how to find workarounds to the semi-broken academic model.

Many of the authors need web and new tech help. It’s easy and enjoyable for me since most of the work is WordPress related, but I forget sometimes how difficult it can be to enter the digital space, having basically been a cyborg my whole life…

Academia, Games Research, Humorous, Life

IAmA This guy who did his PhD on WoW

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I did an AMA on Reddit about my WoW dissertation after someone found it and posted a thread about it back in 2011, but apparently I never archived it, so here you go:

IAmA This Guy who did his PhD on World of Warcraft

(the best comment: “Do you find it odd that you are still a virgin?”)

and the original thread that found my dissertation defense videos on YouTube:

This Guy did his Ph.D. dissertation on The World of Warcraft

Life

oh wow. it’s been 10 years

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since I started blogging using a blogging site. (actually hand-coded a travel blog in 2000 while my bro and I were biking across the country)

Games Research, Life

Somehow I’ve become a good alum

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So, a couple of weeks ago, I hung out with 5 Reed College students, hosting a week-long “externship,” a new program Reed is trying this year. The basic idea was to let them job shadow me for a week before Paideia.

CameraZOOM-20130110155818063

When I was originally approached about this back in October, I had just finished my postdoc position at UW, so I told Brooke, the career services person, that they’d basically just be hanging out with me at an internet cafe designing, reading about, and playing games. She still thought that sounded interesting, so I wrote something up and posted it:

Continue reading Somehow I’ve become a good alum →

Games, Life

That’s a lot of games…

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For the past 6 weeks, while keeping appointments, applying to a few jobs, following research project leads, etc., I’ve mostly been playing digital games. Attempting one or two sentence descriptions/reviews…

FTL: Faster Than Light – A gem. Roguelike meets Space Alert is an odd description but sort of makes sense. IMHO, best game of 2012. I played this in September (got early access as a kickstarter) but threw it in this list since it’s so good. 59 hours.


XCOM: Enemy Unknown – The atmosphere of the original mixed with simpler 2-actions-per-turn mechanics, almost like a board game. Almost reminds me of Incubation, which btw is a really great tactical puzzle game. 130 hours.

Divinity 2 – Action RPG with lots of quests but not much decision making. Combat is engaging and challenging on higher difficulties, but. ultimately. it’s mostly a grind, like Kingdoms of Amalur. 70 hours.

Dishonored – Stealthy play through. Love the art design. Game was so-so. ~20 hours.

Defender’s Quest – Tower defense meets RPG. I kickstarted this for the artwork. I wish there was a branching storyline with interesting decisions and less grind. 46 hours.

Cthulhu Saves the World – I love the humor and the attempt to minimize the grind, but man… I just couldn’t do it. 42 minutes.

Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, episode 1 – I kickstarted this one, too, mostly due to their previous work on the indie King’s Quest fan game. Episode 1 is really quite good. Longish wait times between screens, though. Reminds me of Still Life (the really good first one, not the meh second one). Erica Reed, like Victoria McPherson, is an FBI agent tracking down a serial killer. ~8 hours.

East Side Story: A Carol Reed Mystery – Odd 1st-person adventure game featuring photographs using Photoshop’s watercolor filter. One in a series of games. Unfortunately, I found it really quite boring and the artwork more quaint than edgy. No relation to Cognition. Didnt’ finish. ~1 hour.

Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes – I’ve got this love hate relationship with Nancy Drew games. Each one has needlessly time-consuming travel elements (the town map that you drive around in is cool, except that you don’t actually get to drive and just point at a location–after tediously hotspot searching with your mouse–and wait, wait, wait). The voice acting is getting a little tired (same woman for like a bazillion games whose voice is starting to sound pretty old), making me hope they recast soon. But still… I like the NPC interaction (though I wish it had branching dialog). The Haunted Carousel, btw, had the best, almost Planescape-like, dialog. ~8 hours.

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel – The very first scene has possibly the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard, killing the game. ~15 minutes.

Captain Morgane – I liked So Blonde, but this game felt like a step backwards, actually. Bizarre choice to give the main character a French accent (while the rest were mostly English) yet not know any French. Three art styles mashed together (lovely manga/comic-book-inspired illustrations for the cutscenes and backgrounds, dated low-poly character models during the main point-n-click adventure game, and bizarre super-deformed animation during mini-games). Sometimes humorous writing, but really weak intro and ending. ~8 hours.

Clover: A Curious Tale – I like it a lot. Reminds me of the later and much shorter Android game Quiet, Please! Unfortunately, I got stuck, and, apparently, there are no walkthroughs for this game. I would have thought this game would’ve been more popular… ~3 hours.

Dirty Split – Wow. I love the retro 1960s art. Short but fun game with good voice acting. Free! ~3 hours.

This puts a too-small dent into the backlog I have. Seriously. I think it would take another two months to get through all of the games on my list. Starting December, however, I’ll be ramping up research projects and game design, probably reserving only about 20-30 hours a week for playing instead of 50 or so.

 

Academia, Art, Games, Games Research, Life

And that’s the end of that chapter….

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Yesterday was my last day at UW as a postdoc with the LIFE Center, the Institute for Science and Math Education, and the Center for Game Science.

I’ve decided to pursue a few research projects that I think would best be done while not distracted by a day job.

Namely, I’ll be reviewing an ass-ton of free game making tools, while also playing around with game interface design and some simple game design in the process. I’ve gathered a list of over 2 dozen free tools out there covering all sorts of game genres: adventure games, RPGs, platformers, interactive fiction, etc. My hope is to 1) get back into game design, practice art, try out some ideas, 2) produce a document/series of blog posts that is useful to a k16 educator who wants to incorporate game design into their existing courses (whether that’s English, social studies, math, or whatever) but doesn’t know which tool is appropriate for their needs, and 3) get ready to teach a course on game design in the spring at Pepperdine. What’s great about this teaching gig is that it’s primarily an online course (with face-to-face meetings bookendings), so I can stay in Seattle.

Anyway, I’m also hoping to play a ton of games, as I’ve accrued quite a backlog over the last few years. Look at my Steam profile. Most of those games I haven’t played yet.

First up: the remake/sequel to X-COM, named… XCOM!

Yes, that X-COM. The game that I used to wake up at 5 in the morning some days to play before classes while a senior at Reed College. The game that I used to stay up til the wee hours for. It was the only time in my life when I could be totally fine with 5 hours of sleep per night for weeks. The game that started my love affair with the turn-based squad-based tactics genre (Jagged Alliance capturing my heart in later years). What’s funny is that at the time, I felt like nobody knew what I was talking about when I described these games. I always wondered why the creators of the original X-COM moved onto smallish projects, thinking they were underdogs, not capturing people’s attention. (Anyone remember that email tactics game?) And now, sort of out of the blue, X-COM is getting a massive, big budget remake. Looking forward to it. I hope Julian Gollop is getting props.