Yesterday I’ve finished Heavy Rain.
It’s still here in my mind, in a quite deep way. A lot of people complained about the core mechanic of the game being that of quick time events, which ultimately brings players to the dark times of Dragon’s Lair.
But I kinda disagree on that. First, because basing a game on QTE will not necessary lead to the boring button-guessing dynamic of Don Bluth’s lasergames.
Secondly, because I’m starting to feel that Heavy Rain is not much about pressing the right button at the right time. Indeed, the real game starts when you finish it the first time. Then, the true core mechanic shows up. It’s all about exploration. Exploration of a non-physical space, but of sides and possibilities of a story.
Which, I think, is a quite interesting exercise.

I really love not only the new Flixel website, but also the way it links to the rival flash library Flashpunk (and it’s linked back).
This kind of development doesn’t need harsh competition, but fair play and love.
Kudos to Adam and Chevy.

[For my italian friends, I talked about the two libraries on Flow]

Global Game Jame has ended, and I’m pretty satisfied with it. I learned a lot (as usual) and got to know a lot of nice people. ELIOS Lab guys are working on pretty interesting stuff, and I sincerely hope to work with them on a shared project some day.

Meanwhile, thanks to the words of Rudy (one of the great coders of our team), I will learn something new during this year. LUA is a scripting language used by game designers working in the largest game development teams, so it’s a good shot for me. I will learn LUA through Löve 2D engine, which is a new framework pretty good for fast prototyping. This will be a big achievement, if I will succeed.

Let’s see what happens.

So, Steve did it and the iPad (which is winning right now the “worst name for an electronic device” award) is finally here.
Out of the hype and out of the lots of critics, which appear to me as a part of an already seen scheme, I hereby state that this is going to be an interesting game changer.
In a couple of months the device will be out, and I’m ready to bet, it will be a huge success. Yes, even without a built in camera. Yes, even without e-ink screen. Some people say that it is just an oversized iPhone/iPod touch. And it is, indeed. But the whole is always more than the sum of its part. And an iPhone with a 10″ display could be a tipping point product.

This thing could be great to enhance the experience of reading a newspaper or a magazine, as you can see, right now, with the NYT application. I strongly believe that it is possible to take advantage of the iPad features to enrich the experience of the news, not only through movies or big photos, but even putting people inside the news through interactive infographics and explorative environments. This seems to me the right place to experience something like the great Play the News.

Now, onto games. I was really disappointed in seeing just another FPS and a racing game as a showcase for the device. Apple should look less to EA and the big giants and more to indie developers, which have already understood one simple concept: touch devices aren’t PSP or NDS, they need to completely reinvent the game dynamics, taking advantage of the multitouch capabilities. As for the iPad, I see this thing at the center of a table, with four people controlling the device togethere. It’s a huge space of possibility (and think about social games as Farmville). And it could be more, if only it will be possible to connect and play with other iPads/iPhones.

So, these are just two simple examples. And more will come, I believe.

From the 29th to the 31st of January I will be at Global Game Jam, here in Genova.
What is GGJ? Imagine an event conducted at the same time in several cities of the world; participants will form local team and are given a theme. They have 48 hours to deliver a complete game describing that theme.

I never did something like that. Now, thanks to Elios Lab, a pretty neat serious game research team based here, I can. I hope to do a good job.

If you are interested, you can look at the twitter stream here. And if you can’t come, but still want to follow the event and see what’s happening, you can watch the video stream here and even join a chat. So, see ya next friday!

Believe me, playing videogames on this thing is really a fulfilling experience.
I totally ♥ it.

Well, I think I’m going to need an XBox 360 to play Bayonetta.
My favorite review is here.

Two thousand nine. It was for me a year of transition. Lots of stuff happened, not entirely positive; I closed some chapter of my life, then started to build new ones. I really can’t say if this was a positive or negative year: a lot of seeds were planted, and now there’s a hard work ahead to make them grow and see what happens. But I can at least point out what went right and what went wrong, just like in videogames postmortem.

What went right:
Late graduation. Ok, It was definitely too late. Six years ago, when I got back to university, I thought I will just take a bachelor degree. Then I was convinced to go on and complete the whole five years. The graduation was brilliant, and I even won an award for the best final thesis, which was about game design applied to website development.

A month in San Francisco. This was by far my best trip. I loved San Francisco, and I met a lot of interesting people, like Elan Lee and the Sf0 group. I even managed to test Cryptozoo with Jane McGonigal, which was not only fun, but really enlightening.

A new life. This was the big one of 2009. I started living with Marina, and that’s the best thing ever happening to me. Sometimes it could be difficult, but, luckily, we are managing to make things right. And we have this huge tv set with videogames. That’s just great.

Building Urustar. This is hard, mostly because I never have been an enterpreneur, and I’ve got lots to learn every single day. But this little project is slowly growing, and I really hope the new year could be the one where me and Marina consolidate this thing and become a good game company. We’ll see.

Invaders’ Den. I always dreamed to build a games magazine focused on critics and game studies rather than simple reviews. It’s surely a niche project, but through the FriendFeed group I found a lot of nice guys willing to help me. I hope this one will grow in the next year, because I really love it.

Ian Schrieber’s game design course. I’m definitely not one of those who think that game design is just practice and not theory at all. In this year I’ve read so much, and Ian’s online class was the thing helping me to summarize everything I’ve learned and put it to use. I would like to thank him, because in this job you should never stop learning.

What went wrong:
Money balance. Maybe it’s the crisis, maybe just the fact that I had to spread my time among some different activities, maybe I just haven’t done enough. Bottom line, this was a clearly forgettable year from the economic point of view. I guess it’s normal when you are starting something, but this is the point I need to improve the next year.

This blog. I started writing in english to get connected with game designers from all around the world. There is a strong community on Twitter I really would like to reach. But I wasn’t capable to keep this space updated and to hook up people I want to talk to. Probably this will require some more energy and work.

Urustar website. We started building it with the best intentions, but it’s still insufficient given what Urustar wants to be. It is still a start, I guess, but it clearly needs a deep and well thought redesign. Probably we should even switch to English as a main language, because of the next disappointing thing.

Italian response to games. This was really really tiny. Whereas in the northern Europe and in the States games are under a big spotlight, and there are a lot of projects and funding to develop meaningful interactive experiences, Italy seems still lost in finding the meaning of the web and possibly how to control it. The value of game design is still mostly unrecognized, and this make the domestic one the most difficult market for Urustar to operate in. That’s why I’m thinking to aim Urustar services to an international audience.

I guess that’s all. Now, let’s start working on 2009 part two: 2010.

Man, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is nasty!
No, seriously.
Are you thinking that super guide will destroy all the challenge in a game?
Think again.

This is one of the most difficult games I’ve ever played. It brings me to the Donkey Kong Era. And still, it’s tremendously entertaining and really, really funny. Especially in multiplayer. It’s really a remarkable job, it sounds like a statement about all the chatter around casual and hardcore gamers. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is intended to form a bridge between people who (almost) never played a game and hardcore gamers. But it surely will pose a hell of a challenge even for the most determined gamers.

I’m just loving it.

So, apparently EA has finally bought Playfish.
And the giant of electronic entertainment is in social-facebook-whatever games business at once.
I just hope they will let people at Playfish (which makes good facebook games, exploring the implication of social interactions in a network of friends) free to continue experimenting.
The last thing the industry need is just another blind money machine. And plus, the rules in social spaces are pretty different than the ones in the big AAA market. I hope they will treat people with respect, and not just like walking wallets. But I’m not entirely optimistic on that.