A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Reading the most recent post on Play This Thing, where the writer (not G. C.) refers to the relatively recent Knytt as being the first freeware game they ever downloaded, reminds me of a small discussion I attended at last month's GameLoop. It was about game visuals, and most of the handful of attendees were actively employed as artists for modern video games.

Two things happened there that neatly confirmed the fact that I have moved into a new age demographic among game-players. The first was when the discussion's leader said "I'm going to date myself here, but..." followed by an allusion to Sonic the Hedgehog. This is a game that was published as I was starting college, so I don't automatically consider it a very old game, even though our prickly blue friend is old enough to vote now.

The second occurred when I casually mentioned the art style of arcade game cabinets as part of a larger point, while I was participating in the discussion. Nobody in the room knew was I was talking about - they may have been lifelong gamers, but it was well before their time! They all gazed at me like tell us about the war, grandpa, so I felt obliged to pull together a tiny art-history lesson about it. If you're at all familiar with my recent video projects you can correctly imagine that I took some enjoyment out of this.

Honestly, I'm kind of grinny about this realization, especially since I'm setting myself up to dive deeper into independent game journalism (c.f., c.f.). Having an air of experience isn't at all a bad thing!

I shall be going to GameLoop on Saturday, the BarCamp-style "unconference" for game professionals. I had a great time at its inaugural event last year, and I've been especially looking forward to it since attending Boston BarCamp in April. I appreciate these sorts of nerdly social stewpots, and the combinatorial ideas that can come out of them.

Big fail, alas, on the work-goals I set for the weekend. I will have neither a finished Gameshelf episode, nor completed personal-bizcards. It's for the right reasons, I guess - I got surprised by a surge of Appleseed work this month, and have been putting in one fully billable day after another despite myself, with no desire afterwards to work on anything else. It's what I deserve to have stuffed into my gob after bitching so much about money problems. Here you go, then! Eat up. Oh well; they'll get done in the fullness of time.

And anyway, showing off one's own shit is a secondary reason to go to these things anyway. I go to meet interesting and smart people, and talk about games with them! My own status as a "game professional" status is very in-betweeny right now, but that doesn't mean I don't have a lot of stories to tell. Since last August, I've:

• Gotten serious about a commercial video game project, and then had it die in IP-licensing negotiation
• Launched an entirely new initiative in the online-gaming space, worked feverishly at it for six months, and am now (slowly but surely (but mostly slowly) ) looking for business partners
• Had more cockamamie ideas about new (as far as I know) styles of online gameplay that get me excited, and also reticent, because having some dork blather at you about their AWESOME completely unimplemented game idea is worse than someone telling you about this CRAZY dream they had last night, but anyway
• Revived Jmac's Arcade and the Gameshelf, and became filled with idears about what I'm going to do with the latter and how it will be different from what I've done so far

Yeah, so, it'll be a good time.