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Sébastien Rouxel: Animator / Character Designer
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE INTERVIEW AND SEE HIS GALLERY 
Media: Adobe Photoshop and Flash, TVPaint Animation, and Wacom Cintiq.

Character Design | Artist Interviews

Grid is the online presence of London designer Ashwin Patel. Very cool posters, print and digital stuff.

Partfaliaz | A selection of illustration and graphic design portfolios

Welcome to another exciting Sunday filled with the best and brightest of videogames journalism, criticism and commentary! We’re a little late, so let’s not dally a second more. It’s This Week in Videogame Blogging!

HOW WE PLAY

John Brindle, the most British brother of the American Midwest Brindle Clan, went to GameCamp again this year and ran a session on quizzical play. Here are the notes and recording of the talk in full.

For the bilingual, L’Arène has posted an interview in French and English with Art Game developer Pippin Barr. (Scroll down for English.)

Paul Haine has a compelling argument: the Wii U is failing because unlike its predecessor, it harbors an antisocial message:

You can see the Wii U being socially divisive with the very first scene in the video; some dick walks into a living room and declares that it’s “time to watch the baseball”, changing the channel without even giving the gamer time to pause and forcing him to carry on his game on the controller’s small screen. It’s a pretty depressing scene; the gamer doesn’t participate in the baseball-watching, nor does baseball-dick care about the videogame. The Wii U, then: two men sitting in a room together, not talking or sharing in the same entertainment. All the warmth and camaraderie of a walk-in clinic.

In a similar vein, Daniel Joseph has a few incisive words, saying that despite its prevalence, we still tend to think of playing games as a private sphere, and that results in resistance when problems are called out.

PATHOLOGISTICS

Plague Inc is used as an information tool by the CDC to educate about disease pathology, but Robert Rath wants to know how accurately it depict this. (As a side note, the man is getting married today. Grats, Rath!)

Over on PopMatters Moving Pixels, G. Christopher Williams chats a bit on building a more plausible apocalypse — to whit, why is Metro 2033 so unhygienic?

And Gamasutra blogger Sebastian Alvarado takes us through the possible science behind Mass Effect‘s Genophage.

YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE

On Big Tall Words, Mark Filipowich discusses how plural protagonism works in Chrono Trigger. And on The New Inquiry, Jeremy Antley explores We Must Tell the Emperor, a tabletop strategy game designed for a single player.

DESIGN MATTERS

Back on Gamasutra, Paul Andrew Mcgee wraps up on on Ludum Dare 26 (theme: minimalism) and comments on how we can say more by talking less.

Speaking of Ludum Dare 26, have you watched this excellent supercut from Sebastian Standke?

On Experience Points, Jorge Albor chats about the “mundane wonder” with the rise of “map games” like MapCrunch and GeoGuessr.

Over on Boing Boing, Peter Bebergal introduces us to the rise in old school Dungeons & Dragons play, as a response to the franchise’s modern transition away from roleplaying to combat focus.

From the recent Let’s Play exhibition in Chicago, Unmanned writer Jim Munroe interviews Jake Elliott while playing the latter’s Kentucky Route Zero.

Elsewhere, Doctor Professor provides us with a useful primer on the male gaze in games.

IT’S JUST BUSINESS

Simon Newstead explores a few reasons for why virtual worlds die.

Touching on the recent firing of Patrice Desilets and the indefinite suspension of 1666, Eurogamer’s Dan Whitehead asks a pointed question: if creators know their best work is going to become the property of publishers, what motivation is there to put their heart and soul into an IP?

Rami Ismail opines that established indies may not be in the best position to promote other independents. Elsewhere, Michael Brough concurs:

[H]ere’s the deeper problem with putting the responsibility of lifting up newcomers on those who are already successful in the field: even if they’re completely willing to take risks on things that might not pay off, they’re only interested in things that interest them. The gaps where things are really getting missed you don’t even see, because they’re not things you personally care about.

THE EXCITING WORLD OF WEB PUBLISHING

First Person Scholars’ Jason Hawreliak interviews Killing is Harmless author and Critical Distance’s 2012 Blogger of the Year, the beardful Australian Brendan Keogh.

Speaking of books, Jamie Dalzell has released his ebook deep read of Dark Souls. And have you picked up the videogame StoryBundle curated by Simon Carless yet?

SIMPLY SHOCKING

Francisco Dominguez of Haywire Magazine suggests the verbs afforded players in BioShock Infinite are so narrow, they reinforce the game’s sociopathy:

This would be why his dialogue is so utilitarian and deductive, always targeted towards a goal. This would be why his distinctive verbs are so narrow: he eats, shoots and cleaves. Even pandas get more agency. Nothing suggests he’s given to pleasurable activities, only the compulsively satisfying.

Fantastic. We’ve solved the ludonarrative conundrum. Now let’s make all our characters callous assholes and let’s never talk Greek again.

Meanwhile, Noah Caldwell-Gervais has produced a wonderful long-form design analysis of the –Shock games, from the original System Shock to BioShock Infinite.

RELATIONAL OBJECTS

On The Border House, Samantha Allen proposes that transitioning is a bit like JRPG grinding.

And on PopMatters, Scott Juster suggests that the story surrounding Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity may be more interesting than the game itself.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO TIP YOUR WAITRESS

That’s it for this week! As always we appreciate your submissions by Twitter and email. And yes, our email submissions form is really working this time. Really!

Also be sure to swing by Alan Williamson’s combined May-June Blogs of the Round Table prompt.

Thanks for reading! We will see you all next Sunday, same CD-channel, and probably within the same rough 48 hour period (we try to be realistic).

Critical Distance

Mark Demsteader is probably one of Britain’s best-selling figurative painters. In 1997 he became a founder member of the Neomodern Art Group founded by Guy Denning. He has held an annual solo exhibition with Panter & Hall in the West End of London since 2004. He is now represented in Daikanyama, Japan by Art Obsession.
Next exhibitions are: Life the gallery, Amsterdam. may 11- 1 june
The Avenue restaurant, St James`s London, 4 June – 13 July
Bunkamura, shibuya, Tokyo Japan. May 29 -10 June

Partfaliaz | A selection of illustration and graphic design portfolios

Game Careers recently had the chance to speak with Susan Gold, professor of game design at Full Sail University and president of the Global Game Jam. Susan joined the faculty of Full Sail University’s Graduate in 2009, after founding the annual Global Game Jam, an experiment in creativity and innovation in game development. With more than 16,000 game developers participating in 2013, Susan is the developer of the world’s largest collaborative interactive video game development event. Susan’s frequent conference talks and consistent outreach efforts has extended the Global Game Jam to over 58 countries, effectively changing the course of game development around the world.

Susan served as the chairperson of the IGDA Education SIG from 2006-2010, and continues to develop tools and resources for educator professional development. Susan orchestrated the Education Summit at GDC from 2006-2010, the Anigames Expo in Bogota, Colombia from 2010-2012, the Federal Games Working Group Summit at Games for Change in 2012, and is helping to organize the 2013 DigiWorld Conference in France. Susan has been consulting with the U.S. Office of Science &Technology Policy with projects like Apps for Healthy Kids, the STEM education initiative and now, the Federal Working Group in Games. Susan got her start and organizational skills as a community activist in Chicago.

In Susan’s exclusive interview with David Smith of Game Careers, she talks about how game developers can benefit from the innovative collaboration at the Global Games Jam: “Being part of your community is so important. Knowing the people that you want to work with in the future, or just having an opportunity to learn from those people. You have a bigger mentorship happening at that time, at the game jam. But more importantly, it’s the relationships you make, the network you create for yourself, as well as the ability to take that game and show other people what you have done. Without a game, you can’t get a job.” Watch the full interview with Susan that follows:

Game Careers .BIZ – Games Industry Career Guidance

There’s a slight change to the format for Blogs of the Round Table: this month, we’ll be extending the submission process over May and June as I’ll be on holiday in June.

Somewhat appropriately since I’ll be sunning it up in the real world and enjoying the Devonshire coastline, our new topic is ‘One With Nature’:

Where videogames once had ‘levels’ like jungles, an ice world, lava world etc. their environments increasingly resemble real-life: players can now explore whole islands or peninsulas and even make their own worlds and ecosystems.

What’s the most convincing natural world you have explored? What unexpected encounters have you had in a simulated ecosystem? What can games do with environments and nature that the real world cannot?

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance and @AGBear with the #BoRT hashtag. Given the length of the submission period, you are strongly recommended to send me an email so they don’t get lost.

Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic.
• Your blog does not have to be in English. If you submit a German piece I’ll try my best to read it; if it’s another language I’ll find someone else.
• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start. Use your common sense.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free. We will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.

Critical Distance

Valerie Chiang is a 19 years old photographer based in Raleigh, North Carolina and Los Angeles. She is a film production major at the University of Southern California. Last two years she has exhibited different series worldwide.

Partfaliaz | A selection of illustration and graphic design portfolios

Dominique Jal is a French illustrator living in Copenhagen, Denmark. He’s worked for 15 years as an illustrator in France and Denmark and is now collaborating with the largest Danish advertising agencies. Dominique Jal has developped various styles for his large formats illustration, portraits, still life or children books.

Partfaliaz | A selection of illustration and graphic design portfolios

Just a quick little rant about backing up your WordPress blog to Google Drive. I love this idea, but at the moment it’s an example of why you can’t always trust what you read in a quick Google search. Dig deeper, my geeks. There are two WordPress plugins that you’ll see scattered around in the top [...]

The post Back Up WordPress to Google Drive? Careful! appeared first on game writer central – game writer thoughts on a game-crazy world.

game writer central

Hervé Schnebelen is a French graphic designer who started in October 2012 a great challenging project: create a graphic experiment every day during 365 days.
This young, inventive and passionated graphic designer deserves your support so I invite you to follow his creative work and share it with your friends !

Partfaliaz | A selection of illustration and graphic design portfolios