Anti-Episodic

I've got some deeper ruminations on episodic development/content and digital distribution coming, but in the meantime, here's a link to an analyst's look at episodic development. It's an interesting read, and the author comes to some different conclusions.

GDC 2006: Awards

The awards show this year gave me a lot of hope for the future. As usual, the Independent Game Festival provided much inspiration with diverse designs and fierce creativity.

However, it was the more "mainstream" Game Developers Choice Awards that illustrated an expansion of our perception of what games can be. Four games swept the awards: Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, Nintendogs, and Psychonauts. Not coincidentally, three of those games (Guitar Hero, Colossus, and Nintendogs) were also honored for innovation.

New designs, non-game play, beautiful atmosphere, (good) humorous writing, and so much more. Congratulations to the winners. As Chris Hecker said: "Games are f**king awesome!"