Gamasutra interview with Susan O’Connor

There’s an interesting interview over on Gamasutra with Susan O’Connor, who has written for a number of major games, including BioShock and Far Cry 2. There’s a wide range of stuff in there, including her personal background and some observations about the industry, but what struck me as especially notable for readers of this blog were her comments at the top of page 3 (too long to just quote here), in which she talks about managing how much of a gameplay conversation is about conveying gameplay mechanics and how much is about story.

More Flash Progress

Some more images from the game in progress, showing gameplay power-ups. The winged sandal speeds up play, but gives a score bonus; the staff of Hermes arranges the letters in a sorted pattern, making them easier to use; the Gorgon’s head just freezes them all in place, which is also useful, though less good than the sorting.

(Some game design notes from mid-project, in case anyone is interested, and for my own future reference.)

Continue reading “More Flash Progress”

Learning and Games and Learning Games

Did a bunch more work on my Greek teaching game the last couple of days. (No new screenshots, though — most of the changes have been improvements to the complexity of gameplay, but not visible in a shot.)

I’m sure my ActionScript is annoyingly naive and that I will hate it once I’ve done a few more projects. I’m so used to Inform, and being able to envision exactly what I need to write before I start typing anything, that it’s novel to go back to a context where I have to laboriously piece out how to do something, figuring out each step in turn. (Well, it could be worse. There are a lot of basic universal programming concepts that don’t have to be figured out from scratch.)

At the same time, it’s awesome finally to be able to construct my own Flash game. I’ve played so many of these things over the years that it’s like I’ve been mutely listening to a language and am now finally able to try speaking it back.

I’m still futzing with the gameplay.

Continue reading “Learning and Games and Learning Games”

Jay Is Games opens a competition for IF

JIG is running a competition for short IF games with the theme of “escape”, designed for play and judging on their website. This is a cool opportunity to showcase IF for an audience of casual gamers (some of whom are already IF fans but don’t follow the community regularly). And there are some nice prizes for the top-ranking games, as well.

Entries are due Jan. 31, 2010, with a three-week judging period to follow.