I have been done the honor of being asked to be a panelist at the Gamesauce event next week, the one-day special that immediately precedes Casual Connect up in Seattle. Now, I know, for a number of you out there, the whole guest speaker thing is either old hat and you’re sick of it, or perhaps you’re just too busy to even attend anything other than GDC, or you might even just not care.

See, I’m not there just yet. I’ve been a card carrying member of the industry for about fifteen years now, but until more recently most of my gigs have been at smaller companies, startups, freelancing behind teh scenes, triage (OMG our lead artist went to burning man whatarewonnadooooooo!) type positions. So until about two years ago my name never showed up anywhere, and if I listed the stuff (with a few exceptions) that I’d worked on, people would have scratched their heads and said Hunh? Or possibly googled me to be sure I wasn’t some sort of delusional gamer groupie.

So getting asked to be on a professional panel is nice, it’s validating in a way. And it does sound, presuming there’s a good run of Q and A, like it might be fun.

So if you’re up in Seattle, or attending the Casual Connect conference, come on in to the Gamesauce event as well and say HI. Its got some great presentations, some excellent speakers there, and it looks like it might be a whole lot of fun at the same time.

www.gamesauce.com   www.casualconnect.com

So I know it’s a bit on the late side, but The Force Unleashed finally made it into the family repitoire. We have a passel of gamers in the family, granted not everyone prefers the same games, but we all watch, and kibitz.  Oh * man* do we kibitz.  We made the decision early on that all media had to be a public event, and so have kept all the computers and videos in the living room, where everyone can access it and everyone is allowed to offer advice and help one another out. 

Stay with me, the backstory makes sense eventually.

My youngest son, known to teh Interwebs as Thing03, just touched 4 1/2 and has spent his time recently trying to finish Lego Star Wars #1.    So I know he groks the gaming environment and the kind of puzzle solving process commonly used in games.

Nevertheless, I was surprised when he picked up the controller for Force Unleashed and polished off the first mission like he’d been working on it for weeks.

YES!  My child is a game playing GENIUS!  Somebody call MENSA!

Then he turns to me and says “Mom this is just like Lego: StarWars”

Good Lord, he was right.
Don’t get me wrong, overall, Force Unleashed is a much more complex game, you have the ability to modify your characters, you have the ability to add bonuses or change gear to give you an advantage in different types of terrain or for different mission set, and, of course, Force Unleashed has a custom storyline (and some kissing) but the basic game play elements are remarkably similar.

Both games have the standard 3rd person action game camera and movement sets (walk, ,jump, attack, use (the Force).  Both games are action puzzlers, granted Lego StarWars is a side-scroller and Force Unleashed is in the round, but getting through any level requires you to attack enemies, solve physical puzzles in both the platformer-y sense of “how do I get way way up there” as well as the, “what do i need to open this door” sense.

The levels are short, clearly defined, and even the boss battles follow the same paradigm of “you have to kill this thing more than once to beat it”.  In fact the games are so similar in logic that a 4 year old is able to parse the similarities and use them to his advantage to kick the a** (for at least one level anyway) of s game he’s never seen before.

God help his P.E. Teacher 🙂