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This is an interview I had left over from a feature, and it seems a shame to waste it. It’s with a Mac developer, James Brown, who is the entire staff of Ancient Workshop and it’s about Mac gaming.
To the tune of: Belle and Sebastian – Funny Little Frog
The Frog Prince
Tell me about you. I worked in the mainstream games industry for 10 years (including stints at EA & Lionhead) but recently went indie. I have a game called Ancient Frog which is currently out for the iPhone and, in expanded form, iPad. Internally I also [more...]
To the tune of: Money, Money – Cabaret
The Money Farm
Buy a PC Gamer-approved product every day this week and you get reward points. You’ve levelled up, now you’re a PCG Ambassador, so you get a PCG fan kit. Meanwhile, your health insurance is incentivising you to walk as it’s worried about your heart rate, and a tobacco firm is incentivising you not to read The Guardian because of its coverage of cancer risk. You get an achievement from the local council for not giving money to a tramp, and your eyetracking device is giving you bonus points for reading every line of an advert (but not the small print). It’s a nightmare and [more...]
This is a new music-shooter from the chap who made Rez, Tetsuya Mizuguchi – it’s operated through Microsoft’s new Kinect motion-detection system and is meant to convey the sound-colour linkage of synesthesia. Sadly, as it’s colour-oriented, I’m aware that I’m probably never going to be able to enjoy this, in the way I couldn’t enjoy Space Giraffe.
I sincerely hope that this is all in-game footage – mainly because I can’t believe that it could all be rendered and because I’ve been hoping for something that’s a graphical leap forward, not in terms of quality necessarily, but in terms [more...]
To the tune of: Nina Nastasia – Our Discussion
As an MMO reviewer, I’ve felt both privileged (at occupying a niche few are equipped to explore) and also terrified (at a reviewer’s complete inability to perceive the whole game). As Quintin Smith found last week, and Ed Zitron found previously, reviewers, no matter how professional, can’t just hop back into an MMO when it’s been updated and hope to review it. Especially not, as those two found, when the audience they think they’re talking to isn’t the audience that actually reads and responds to the article. Here’s a putative structure for [more...]
To the tune of: The Element’s Song by Tom Lehrer
It’s 2010 and my jaw is hanging like it’s been wired open. I can’t believe what I’m watching on screen. The wise-talking pensive scientist / special operative who’s been fighting robots and aliens and stuff at my side, is… singing. And, in the deep darkness of the far future, in the lab of my one-of-a-kind spaceship in uber science-fiction action-game Mass Effect 2 what he’s singing is… Gilbert & Sullivan? Particularly a parody of a Modern Major General.
It’s 2007 and I’m munching on a buffet at Bioware’s offices in [more...]
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