Category Archives: miscellaneous

So it’s been a crazy September to this point, and it’s been tough finding time to blog. But with the mad rush of work, at least temporarily, in the rear-view, I find myself relaxing at my first GDC. I’ve made it to Austin, and I’m now sitting in Ballroom B with a couple of other stragglers waiting for the first session, a lecture by Chris Crawford. In fact, Chris is right now sitting about 10 feet away typing on his MacBook Pro, probably finalizing his talk.

It’s a little odd; I’ve read much about the man, and even watched one of his talks from many years ago on YouTube. But I’ve never seen him in person. I’m looking forward to his talk on Interactive Storytelling, [More...] Read the rest

So what, I couldn’t stand my state-issued license plate. Never could remember it to save my life. I know it’s hard to believe, but this was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about a new one, and it was available. I think I was actually surprised to learn it was still available, although in hindsight, I realize how additionally nerdy it is to admit that.

The puzzled looks I get, of course, far outnumber the acknowledgements.

In fact, I hadn’t had any acknowledgements, tacit or otherwise, until about a week ago. I was walking back to my car after a meeting and saw from afar an envelope under my wiper blade. Naturally, I thought it was a parking ticket, and was [More...] Read the rest

I’ve been away from the blog for a little bit now, as I’ve been in super crunch mode at work lately. I’ve been away at meetings all week, and I have a huge grant due tomorrow evening…which means I’m looking at an all nighter on this last night before submission. It got me thinking about what to best name this crunch time, when I came across this little gem on the net called “Cereal Killers”, a blog with spoof cereal box artwork. Some great stuff there, including “Hellfire Blazin’ Bran”, “Sugar Frosted Skulls”, “Shredded Feet (with Frosted Toes)”, “Rice Kreepies”, and of course, the aforementioned “Cthulhu Crunch”.

(Honorable mention to “Tinkles” [Who peed in your cereal this morning? [More...] Read the rest

Not terribly related to adventure gaming, I realize, but it’s something I feel needs to be said. I don’t do a lot of game playing these days, preferring to spend my spare time on developing, but recently I had some extra time and I thought I’d spend it trying to catch up on some old, unfinished business. That business, unfortunately for me, was Doom 3.

Okay, all snickering aside — yes, it’s an unabashedly vapid action FPS game, and a relatively aged one at that — I had purchased it some time ago, played it for a few hours, and shelved it, not entirely because I wasn’t enjoying it but because of other games and commitments. And since I have the tendency these days [More...] Read the rest

Okay, yeah, this blog is primarily about adventure games, interactive fiction, and indie game development, almost exclusively from a Mac/PC desktop perspective. I’ve never been a console gamer myself, unless you go back to my Atari 2600 days. I already spend too much time in front of my computer, and I’ve always felt that if I bought a console then either (a) I would spend even more time not doing important things, or (b) it would just end up collecting dust in the TV cabinet.

I don’t even know very many people who have consoles (or most haven’t told me). I’ve yet to even see an Xbox or Playstation 2/3 in person. And the only time I’ve ever seen a Wii was at an indie [More...] Read the rest