video games – Page 10 – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling

Homer in Silicon on Scarlett and the Spark of Life

This went up while I was traveling, so I’m a little late to post, but here are my thoughts on an iPhone graphical adventure with a lot of charm and polish.

Homer in Silicon on Life Flashes By

My take on Deirdra Kiai’s latest work. Though my column doesn’t go into this aspect, the making of “Life Flashes By” is also pretty interesting — it’s Kickstarter-funded independent work, and Deirdra has some cool posts up about it on her blog.

ETA: ~~This was up, and then GameSetWatch seems to have taken it down again. Don’t know why. Presumably it will come back again at some point.~~ And it’s back.

Talk at GDC 2011 AI Summit

I’m going to be speaking at GDC’s AI summit again this coming year, this time about the behavior and conversation modeling on a project I’m working on with Richard Evans and Andrew Stern. (Session write-up here.)

Last year was a great time, and I’m looking forward to this a lot — thanks again to Dave Mark and Steve Rabin for organizing the summit.

Homer in Silicon on Fable 3

Over here. There were a lot of things I did like about the game (awesome loading screens, some hilarious side quests, more memorable characters overall, Stephen Fry), but I was seriously disappointed in how it handled its moral dilemmas, and that’s mostly what I talk about.

Contribution on Echo Bazaar

I’m delighted to say that I’ve contributed some guest content to Echo Bazaar, and it is now live in the game. EBZ is a favorite of mine, and so is their excellent, interactive narrative theory-rich blog. Likely more to come.

(To quote the EBZ feed about where my content appears: “Nocturnal fever: @emshort’s first foray into the Bazaar now live for fortunate and Fated scholars of the Correspondence.” If this is excessively cryptic, it is possible that you have not yet encountered the prerequisites for this storyline.)

Homer in Silicon: “Making Mr Right”

My editor refers to this week’s column as “ever so slightly outraged,” which suggests that I don’t really have this whole outrage thing down and need more practice with the flecks of spittle.

However. It is about a game called “Making Mr Right,” which I really really did not like. I don’t know exactly what the makers were trying for, but I suspect their response to my complaints would be along the lines of “it’s just supposed to be fun,” or “it’s just a game!”

But the trick about working in an artistic medium is that you typically wind up saying something whether you mean to or not. So it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and think about what that is.