We had a ribbon cutting ceremony at Midway’s new Austin studio this morning. We’ve been building up the studio (starting with Inevitable Entertainment as a solid base) for over a year now. The new office rocks.
Breakfast tacos and champagne…
I love the brilliant Falling Sand game: Falling Sand
This morning I created a “painting” using the game.
I call it The Christian Rifle Association
This is a logo I wanted to use for FireTeam. I couldn’t convince my boss and instead we shipped the game with a super generic graphic design/fictional context. I keep it on my desktop right now as a reminder to stick to my guns when I feel something strongly. I still love it.
Go play this game. Play with all the tools at the bottom.
Falling Sand
Every five years or so, I get a speeding ticket. Yesterday, as I was trying to get around some trolls going 60 in the far left lane, I sped up to the high-80’s/low 90’s. Just as I passed the trolls, I spotted a motorcycle cop up ahead.
He was polite, and only wrote me up for 80. “I’m cutting you a break, downgrading this by a couple’a categories.” Thanks for the break, officer.
Time for comedy club defensive driving, at the advice of my g/f.
MTV Overdrive
I blogged about this recently…basically, MTV got some game designers together for a totally impromptu (and fun) series of conversations at an art gallery in LA called Gallery 1988. (The gallery was full of cool video game-related art, seen in the background.)
Takes a minute to load the Overdrive show, then there are pauses between segments, but it turned out great and was a blast.
If you’re interested, watch the short trailer for this really intense, upcoming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/19/an_inconvenient_trut.html
Then check out how quickly the collective petrochem companies are mobilizing (haha, pun intended) to smear the movie (and the environmental movement).
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/attack-on-gore/
Seriously, check out both links. It’s funny (and sad).
I finally went into Rockhound Cafe for the first time, after passing it a dozen times and making a few cockhound jokes.
It’s on Barton Springs, just east of Lamar, near the old Filling Station.
The food I had was awesome. They use really good bread and greens for their sandwiches.
Also, great music.
Make sure you check out the patio deck upstairs.
Another year, another E3. The best part was seeing friends. Additionally, I got to play some of the games I’m anticipating, including Spore. (The creature editor was tons of fun to play with and felt truly creative.) Assassin’s Creed has great art direction and looks intriguing…like Thief with a more open aggression. (Faster-paced play. Grounded Euro-medieval elements, but also with a whiff of the exotic, via Middle Eastern cities.)
Some pics, starting with me being a greenish goof:
Hellgate London…this game looks coincidentally *identical* to a pitch my team and I put together in 2004:
Some amazing ‘perspective’ sidewalk art that was in one of the main lobbies:
Another shot, featuring (I believe) the artist, Kurt Wenner:
Additional Kurt Wenner link:
E3 Sidewalk Art
I had to fly to LA twice last week, so I knocked out two totally lovely novels.
Monster Island by David Wellington: A zombie novel that manages to both hit the center of the genre and introduce innovative elements. I liked it.
Everyman by Philip Roth: My favorite living author has written another amazing novel, centered around one of the most fascinating, intense topics at hand…death. Highly recommended. (And if you haven’t read the Human Stain, you should.)
