Six Flags New Orleans is an amusement park in New Orleans, Louisiana, which has been closed since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The park is located in Eastern New Orleans, in the Ninth Ward of the city off Interstate 510. The park first opened under the name “Jazzland,” opening in 2000 and operated by Alfa…
Blast from the Past: Traveller.
A fabulous game resource. It’s nowhere near as lovely as the Near Star Map from 2300AD (partially pictured below) but it’s still amazing.
Horror – Sids Story
I wanted to write a quick horror scenario which would fit in with pretty much any game and I figured that it couldn’t just be a magical teleporting serial killer, like Jason, Freddy or Leatherface. Inspiration for this one is “Sids Story” from the Captain Britain trade paperback. http://www.rambles.net/capbrit_88.html http://marvel.wikia.com/Captain_Britain_Vol_2_4 Summary: A local homeless man…
Digital Games can be Social Experiences
Professor Mark Durkin from the University of Ulster suggested: “For customers, the constant and often simultaneous use of laptop, MP3 player, smart phone and TV, especially by our young people, has serious implications in terms of attention and focus, he says. “Of note is the fact that such stimulating multi-tasking makes the necessary recovery time…
Here’s forty shillings on the drum, For those that volunteers do come
I’ve been on a little bit of a Napoleonics obsession recently. Part of it starts from reading the Bernard Cornwell ‘Sharpe’ novels and then following up by downloading the entire collection of TV movies from iTunes. At £14.99 for 15 episodes (each 140 minutes), it’s a bargain to me. And I’ve loaded them on computer,…
NINoWriMO – Northern Ireland Novel Writing Month
I’m taking part in a fiction-writing collective called “WriteWeekly” but this has some relevance as well: Blick Shared Studios, Malone Rd, Belfast 7-9pm, Thursday 4th, 11th, 18th, 25th November 2010 Suggested donation: £1 Every November (Novel-writing Month), Studio NI hosts a series of get-togethers to help participants write a 50,000 word novel in a 30-day…
Frontier fiction: The Emotion Elective
AMARA would always marvel at the human capacity for self-deception; the ability to believe something even though the facts were plentiful for the contrary, even though nothing but faith supported the hypothesis. For some humans in the North, there was the ability to abdicate all responsibilities to an unseen mythical power. Around Kumbu, this was…
Frontier: Foreword, History of Mbaye Schools, page 23
[I am taking part in a weekly writing task with some friends. The first seed for this assignment was the opening line from Dune by Frank Herbert: “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”] The pump would need repaired. During the wet seasons the housings had…
SyncNI: Exclusive on Galactic Racer by WeeMan Studios
NI-based game development studio, Wee Man Studios just gave SyncNI an exclusive on Galactic Racer! Click through the graphic for the exclusive. Due for release, later this quarter.
Once, Twice, Three Times a Detective
Dolgion Chuluunbaatar of Gamasutra writes about non-linear adventure games: As I was on vacation, I picked up my sister’s copy of Sherlock Holmes stories, and quickly I got caught up in the really really beautifully narrated and well thought-out plots. As I had my phase of obsessively playing the classic LucasArts adventure games, the very…
Current Inspirations
Portal – for the non-violent nature of it and the neat teleportation physics puzzles. And removing half of the stupid ways to die. And for this. Mirror’s Edge on iPad – for the simple swipe-based mechanics, showing us a new way to do a simple platformer. For showing us how to convert a FPS for…
Games in Education
I believe that my playing of games has contributed positively to my development as an individual. Traditionally advocacy for gaming has included the development of teamwork and leadership skills, understanding of competition, resource management and also a greater appreciation of geography, politics, religion and ‘alien’ cultures. Games, especially tabletop role-playing games, have been used in…
BLOC54 – GameStorming
Equally useful for the development of tabletop game ideas, this method was used tonight to brainstorm some ideas for videogames in our local game development cluster.
Yellowcon 2010 (Warhammer 40K Tournament)
Warhammer 40K Tournament (Yellowcon 2010) Sunday, August 29, 2010 from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GMT) Stormont Hotel 587 Upper Newtownards Road BT4 3LP Belfast United Kingdom REGISTER HERE 1750 point tournament. Prizes for winner & runner-up. Access the rules pack which will be necessary for you to play in the tournament The first game…
The Fun Theory
When designing games I tend to think about what will make the game more ‘sticky’. At the start, I can usually enthuse someone about a game by talking to them about it. You’re the consummate salesperson for your game and design and in theory no-one can sell the concept like you can. To get people…
8 Bit Demakes
This article describes 8 bit de-makes – remaking some of todays popular games in 8 bit and 16 bit forms. Some of them still look amazing such as Little Big Planet and Mirrors Edge. All of them are great but these two – you can see why I like them – they’d work really well…
Runnin and Jumpin genre mash
Earlier this week, we had a meeting of local iOS developers and we segued into a conversation about the development of game ideas ahead of a ‘gamestorming’ event we have planned for next week. We talked about the development of game ideas and there was a look at the Mirror’s Edge game in the context…
I would not have played if…
From Wired: A federal judge is allowing a negligence lawsuit to proceed against the publisher of the online virtual-world game Lineage II, amid allegations that a Hawaii man became so addicted he is “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.” Smallwood…
Review of 20 non-video games at Gamasutra
Gamasutra has an interesting set of articles on real-world game design. [Game Design Essentials returns with an extensive review of some of the most interesting non-electronic games, from traditional cultural games like Chess and Go through pen-and-paper role playing titles like Call of Cthulhu, European games like The Settlers of Catan, and much more —…