So, me and the other mad people at Urustar (with a little help of our friends) are organizing a GameCamp. It will be the first event of this kind in Italy, so, we’re quite excited. The camp will be held in Riva del Garda, within the BlogFest.
Divided into three different meetings, on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th this September, it will be featuring all the traditional BarCamp stuff (open discussions, talks and a friendly environment) plus some other things we are currently discussing.

For example, we are trying to put up a match of Cruel 2 B Kind, the game of Benevolent Assassination by Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost. We have already put up an Italian website, and if you have planned to be in Riva del Garda on those days please let us know, feel free to join up and register right now!
I promise, you don’t have to be athletic or follow complex rules to play. In fact, all you have to do is to be kind and have fun!

So, I hope to see you in Riva del Garda!

Yep, I tried to attend this month Ludum Dare during the last weekend.
I admit it, I haven’t tried it hard enough. I guess I had too much in my head these days, preparing to get back to work and stuff, and then I lost time.
Thing is, I wasn’t convinced about the concept too. Being the theme “enemies as weapons”, I thought about a game in which you need to avoid those creatures and kick them when hidden in their shell to crash them. Something similar to Pengo, but with shelled animals.

So, I started to code the AI routine for these little critters. I tried something simple: they just walk in a random direction until they find an obstacle (an other animal or the screen border, for now). Plus, every 2 seconds, they have 50% chance of stopping and hiding in their shell. They stop for about three seconds, then start moving again.

That was pretty it. At first, I coded the movement routine for one of the critters. When I tried to add more, the disaster happened. All the critters went bananas, some of them flickering randomly through the screen, some others getting stuck against walls, all of them ignoring the collisions between them. I didn’t have a clue about where the bug was, and the time was running out. So I decided to give up and try again next time, and try it harder, with less distractions.

Still, I am no coder, and sometimes this is pretty hard. But if this helps me to learn something, so be it.

So, that’s it.
After having abandoned for a while this tiny little space, I guess I’m back.

Spending some time in Indonesia was totally mind blowing. It is a wonderful country, and I really hope to get back there. Down in Ubud, Bali, I learned how to be less afraid of insects, though I didn’t manage to touch one. I wrote some good concepts there, the places I’ve seen were really inspiring. Let’s see if at least one of the will turn into a game (I have high expectations on this).
Oh, and obviously I made some new friend, which is great, and even helped a pastor celebrate a wedding (long story).

I’m still into Red Dead Redemption. This is one of the best game I’ve played lately, and it’s just H*U*G*E*! Boy, I feel all the times I’m almost finished, and there are still many things to do. And I haven’t event started scratching multiplayer, let alone all the DLCs… Gosh, I feel overwhelmed!

Well, that’s pretty much it for the catch up stuff. Now I’m full of energy and I hope to spend it well and create something good in the coming months. Yay!

If Project Natal will be able to maintain its promises (and premises) could be a really interesting platform to work with and get creative. I’m still doubtful, though, if the lack of a physical controller will really improve the experience of the games we know today. More probably, we will see the birth of new genres and new ideas. This is of course developers’ responsibility, and given how risk-averse the industry currently is, Microsoft should look at indies and try to sustain it. I don’t want to see another Wii-like panorama, where the great controller idea is mostly wasted by lazy majors. Oh, and it seems to be a lag problem, which could sensibly limit gameplay.

Today, in Italy, Microsoft is hosting a closed event to present Natal to a selected group of people. As a game designer and as a guy interested in game studies I tried to be a part of it: aside from this blog Invaders’ Den and Flow are both great places to share some deeper thoughts about the project. Unfortunately, people at Microsoft Italia have decided that my presence was not of their interest. Nor it was the presence of other game bloggers. Pity. Obviously at Microsoft they can choose to invite who they want. But it’s strange, at best, seeing that the invited people are not interested in games. Of course, they have high-traffic blogs, no matter the topic. Quality here loses against quantity. Bad move.

Probably it’s me. Just me.
I’m playing God of War 3, and don’t misread me, I still think it’s awesome. The art, the refined gameplay, the music. Everything it’s almost perfect.
And yet, I just can’t love it. Exactly like I couldn’t entirely love Mass Effect 2 (which I, for now, abandoned). I’m asking more and more why is that. Why I prefer trying to beat an hi-score – old style – playing Geometry Wars 2 rather than immerse myself into a complex and extremely well-crafted world.

I guess I have two answers for this one. The first is that probably my tastes just don’t match with tech-driven blockbusters, and I’m still more curious about clever ideas, non-obvious paths and wacky visual styles.

The second one is that probably triple A titles, with their huge teams, jaw-dropping budgets, high-end technology and stuff are more and more losing their gameness. They just are too perfect. Too elaborate. And often less gamey than other kind of games. They are cold, in an artificial way.

Or maybe, as I said, it’s just me.

Yesterday I’ve read this feature post on BoingBoing. It was written by Superbrothers, the guys behind Sword and Sworcery. Sword and Sworcery is a soon-to-be-released iPhone game which rocked at the last Game Developer Conference in SF, and seems a pretty clever mix of action and adventure.

In their article Superbrothers make a strong point against words in games. They recall the times of the first Prince of Persia and Another World, times where a story was told by the player interaction with a world only.

It is a provocative and thoughtful piece, and I really suggest to go reading it now. I’ve contacted Superbrothers to translate it into Italian, and I hope it will be possible. In the meantime, let’s rock.

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.