Blog search

12.28.86

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten has announced a new book project with the working title 12.28.86: One Day. For the next two years, he’ll research stories about what happened all around the United States on that date, whose numbers he...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on December 29, 2013 3:53 PM

All-Star XYZZY Reviews, 2012 edition

For two years running, Sam Kabo Ashwell has done a heroic job organizing per-category reviews of the previous year’s XYZZY Award-nominated works of interactive fiction, written by authors of prior award-winning games. This year it took the form of a...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on June 24, 2013 11:20 PM

Interview about IF in Giant Bomb

Patrick Klepek of the gaming-news site Giant Bomb interviewed me last month about modern interactive fiction in general and The Warbler’s Nest in particular; the resulting feature story is now online. The article ends with an exhortation to play through...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on August 7, 2012 5:38 PM

No Show videos online

Speaking of the 2012 No Show Conference, all twelve of its talks and presentations are now online for public enjoyment and enrichment. Visit its presentation page with any Flash-capable browser, and click a talk’s Continue reading button to make its...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on August 6, 2012 1:59 PM

Mammals needed

No long article from me this week; am setting up with a new client to earn money to buy more time to think about games for your pleasure, dear reader. But here a couple of small items nonetheless: Anna Anthropy’s...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on February 1, 2012 10:51 AM

Animated Screenshots / If We Don't, Remember Me

I find it tempting to write that Leon Arnott’s Animated Screenshots is the If We Don’t, Remember Me of video games, but I’m not sure if that’s exactly true. Somehow Gus Mantel’s IWDRM, through its slight and carefully controlled animation...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on January 2, 2012 12:11 PM

Matt Weise on Zelda's succumbing to nostalgia

Matt Weise writes provocatively on the arc of Legend of Zelda games since 1998, which he sees as creative triumphs of daring disruption crashing down into a shameful regression to mainstream pablum: I was at Aonuma’s talk at GDC 2007,...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on December 26, 2011 5:38 PM

The many loves of Stiffy Makane

Adam Thornton has published StiffyMakane.com, a simple website tracking the checkered past of one of modern IF’s most resolutely recurring characters. Mr. Makane originated from the turgid imagination of an adolescent Mark Ryan in 1997. It was not a very...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on May 19, 2011 3:40 PM

An IF name generator, and its resulting "Scurvy"

Here’s an intfiction.org forum thread with folks sharing their favorite bits of output from this web-toy by Juhana Leinonen. The program mashes up the titles of IFComp entries since 1995, creating some surprisingly evocative results; the forum writers had some...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on April 14, 2011 2:09 PM

Announcing: Inform Extensions Search

I am pleased to announce the Inform Extensions Search site, the product of this past Saturday’s procrastinatory toils. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a simple search engine for Inform 7 language extensions. I created this tool because I miss...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on April 3, 2011 9:53 AM

Not knowing "no", in Dragon Age and elsewhere

Alex Feinman writes a very insightful analysis on the cultural assumptions and pressures that caused the “Straight Male Gamer” to feel threatened when his male player-character in Dragon Age received come-ons from other men. Even though the game prominently offers...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 29, 2011 7:34 PM

Chess Boxing: an actual thing done by humans, repeatedly

Robert Krulwich doesn’t lie, which forces me to conclude that Chess Boxing is an actual thing. We start in a ring. There are screaming fans. The first round is 4 minutes of chess, followed by 3 minutes of boxing, then...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 26, 2011 5:17 PM

Dan Feyer Facts

Dan Feyer won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this past weekend. Andrew Greene has collected a list of #ChuckNorrisFacts-style jokes about his preternatural grid-filling abilities, penned by those who were humbled by him in person. A sampling: I once had...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 23, 2011 10:55 AM

Boston-flavored Kickstarter du jour: Children of Liberty

Boston-based Lantana Games has launched a Kickstarter page for Children of Liberty, a stealth-based platformer they’ve been working on for the last year or so. They seek $5,000 to purchase equipment and software that’ll help them finish the work. Beyond...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 17, 2011 12:13 PM

Eitan Glinert on Slam Bolt Scrappers

As a happy little followup to my outsider’s view on watching Slam Bolt Scrappers develop, today on Penny Arcade Eitan tells the same story from his own perspective. So if you liked my article, you should go read that one...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 17, 2011 11:58 AM

The World was Without Form

Jason Dyer explores Will Crowther’s Adventure — the truly original proto-game, that is, before Don Woods got his hands on its source code and turned it into the work that defined computer-based gameplay for many years. I was under the...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 9, 2011 9:52 AM

Maga's illustrated IF list

Love these blurbs by Sam Kabo Ashwell of modern IF works he recommends, as much for their icon-sized spot illustrations as their smart and succinct text. (He also wrote blurbs and drawings for a large collection of SpeedIF games). It’s...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 7, 2011 5:32 PM

Jeff Grubb on Spelljammer's origins

Dungeons and Dragons design veteran Jeff Grub recalls the origins of Spelljammer, an early-1990s D&D supplement that allowed players to launch their faux-medieval fantasy campaigns into outer space. Here is the image I pitched. A knight standing on the deck...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on March 5, 2011 7:01 PM

Chronogamer on Space Invaders

My pal Joe points us at this entry in Chronogamer, regarding the 1980 Atari VCS port of Space Invaders. It caught Joe’s eye because of its explanation in the comments (by “supercat”) of the game’s “double-shot” exploit — a very...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on February 25, 2011 11:49 AM

IF to welcome our new robot masters?

A cogent response by Stephen Granade to the question of whether the victory of the Jeopardy!-dominating computer suggests that modern interactive fiction should move to adopt more heavy-duty natural-language processing in its player interface. Even if you had a perfect...

Posted by Jason McIntosh on February 24, 2011 6:17 AM