Archive for Videogames

Bubbles…

There’s this odd sort of bubble that happens when I have relations in town.  Everything gets cut off in favor of the visiting family, almost like we go into some sort of strange social quarantine.  I absolutely cannot produce *anything* either artistically or literarily and spend my entire time playing haus-frau, puttering about, picking up toys and scraps of paper, cooking, entertaining.  Creatively it’s like someone has hollowd out my head, like that little bit of brain that makes me look at everything a little sideways has been temporarily excised and stored in a jar.  It’s like the day after drinking, the habitual noise and picture show that goes on in my head all the time is temporarily shut down and I cannot make *anything*.  I can’t even talk about anything properly.  Ideas, concepts, thought processes are all sidelined, derailed, missing in action.

*shudder*

As much as I love my family, I am ever so happy when they go away.

Working it!

I’m blowing the entire weekend (which, admittedly means about 6 hours kid-free total) on these two game proposals.  I’ve pretty much been a proponent of episodic game content since….  Well, I started pitching episodic title concepts way back in 1999.  It’s not an easy thing to, generate new content on a consistent, ongoing basis.  I know more than a few studios have attempted it, and what I want to do, release content on a weekly basis, like the TV studios do, is probably doubly hard.  Telltale has almost managed it, Valve has gone the much safer route of releasing the “Episodes” for HL much further apart.  I think, though, that I have a plan.  And I think it will work if I can just get all my ducks in a row and present this thing properly, get someone else to see the potential that I see.  It’s like assembling a three legged stool.  There are multiple elements to this plan (well, to the “BIG” plan anyway) that involve working cross-media.  Broadcast, Game and Internet together as a complete IP product.  NBC is moving this way, what with how they are exploring additional content for Chuck and Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy.  I’m seeing it come together in bits and pieces, and in the next, say, five years this plan I have will come to pass.  I just really want to be the one to do it, rather than pulling a “Rodney McKay” and saying HEY THAT WAS MY IDEA!