Interview

An Interview with David Brevik – Part 2

Jeffery Klaehn

Jeffery Klaehn: What possibilities afforded by the contemporary gaming landscape most excite you? I’m thinking of technological developments and digital distribution platforms such as Steam (2003) and GOG (2008), which are still relatively “new” in relation to the history of digital games.

David Brevik: It’s an extremely exciting time to be a developer. Being able to create something and distribute it all around the world from your own home is amazing. But because it’s so easy, the market has been flooded with people doing just that. There are hundreds of games a day on mobile app stores, and 30+ games a day on Steam. There is so much content right now, it’s impossible to wade through all of the games. Continue Reading →

An Interview with David Brevik – Part 1

Jeffery Klaehn and David Brevik 1 Comment

Jeffery Klaehn: What led you to launch Graybeard Games?

David Brevik: After working at Gazillion as the CEO for several years, I wanted to get away from management and back into making games. When I was a kid I wanted to be a game maker, not run a business. So after I left, the goal was to create a company where I could get back to design and programming. Continue Reading →

Interview with Chris Klimas

Interactive Fiction, FMV games, and Hypertext

First Person Scholar 4 Comments

Chris Klimas is the creator of Twine, the extremely popular and accessible interactive fiction development platform. Klimas is involved with the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, as well as Unmapped Path, a company that builds narrative experiences for mobile and desktop. We’re extremely grateful that Chris was able to spare some time to chat with us in January 2018. Continue Reading →

Interview with Katja Rogers

Justin Carpenter and Katja Rogers

Katja Rogers is a Computer Science PhD student from the Institute of Media Informatics at Ulm University, Germany. As a visiting researcher at the University of Waterloo, her project focused on the effects of audio on player experience in a VR horror game. Her previous projects involved topics such as NPC design, evolutionary algorithms, persuasive and pervasive games, as well as augmented reality. Continue Reading →

An Interview with Shannon Sun-Higginson

Betsy Brey, Justin Carpenter and Shannon Sun-Higginson

Shannon Sun-Higginson is a Philadelphia-based producer, director, and editor. Her first feature documentary GTFO, about women in the video game industry, was funded on Kickstarter, premiered at SXSW 2015, and has been featured in The New York Times among other… Continue Reading →

Art in Play

An Interview with John Sharp about games and art

John Sharp, Alejandro Lozano

Alejandro Lozano: Before getting into details, let’s start with a definitional question. What is your concept of aesthetic and how do you apply it to games when you connect them to art?

John Sharp: Aesthetics means a lot of things. It can refer to having your fingernails painted or to the visual appearance in visual arts. If you talk about it with animation students, they will talk about the aesthetics of a film and what they mean is the visual style. That is one part of aesthetics, but to me, aesthetics is the evaluation of experience and the value of a work of art. By extension that means some philosophical framework underlying and serving as a guide for both the way you focus your attention during the experience and also the things you value and the things you do not. Continue Reading →