Bitter-sweet: Man Discovers Depth Through the Screen of a Nintendo 3DS

George Kokoris has posted a short article over on Kotaku describing his first encounter with the Nintendo 3DS and how it introduced him to binocular depth perception... Oh and how that made him cry.

Paying Gun Manufacturers by Buying Games.

Here's a video from The Idea Channel on the morality of buying video games that license the permission to use facsimiles of real guns from gun manufacturers. I like the 'no right or wrong' take of the video on the subject, simply pointing out that real money is being given to real weapon manufacturers for the use of these virtual replicas, just like driving your favourite Ferrari in Forza or Grand Tourismo results in licencing fees to Ferrari, so to does firing rounds of an A-K 47 or P90 in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. So, what do you think about that?

Personally, I haven't really thought about it. I mean, I knew that realistic guns in games bearing trade markings etc. were licensed from the companies that manufacture the real things, but I never made that money trail link between me, the consumer, and Colt getting a licencing check from Activision.

I'll be honest with you, as a huge fan of shooters, I'm not thrilled to think about this. I like my shooting virtual, and don't love the idea of helping to fund real gun manufacturing.

When it comes to matters of gun control and gun ownership I don't pretend the issue is simpler than it is, I mean, I know no amount of legislation is going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and that, ultimately, bad people are to blame for bad things, but it's hard to argue with the simple logic that it's hard to perpetrate a gun crime without a gun and I wouldn't mind a world with less of them. So, I guess I'll be thinking twice before I open my wallet to a game featuring licensed weaponry from now on.

Video from The Idea Channel
Found via Kotaku.com

Meeple's Republic

I wanted to give a shout out to Ashley and Ka of Meeple's Republic who I met last weekend at Game Summit. They got a lot of eyes on Roll'n Bump on Sunday and helped steer a number of people over to the Mrs. Tiggy Winkles booth. (Thanks again so much you two.)

Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's Now Carrying Roll'n Bump

Greetings from Game Summit! I had a surprise visit from my publisher this morning, who, on a whim, decided to pop in to check out the show. Oh, ya, and tell me that all Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's stores will be carrying Roll'n Bump! In fact, if you are at the show and want to pick up a copy for yourself, the Mrs. Tiggy Winkle shop here in the convention marketplace has plenty of boxes.

Empire Approved!

Everyone loves Roll'n Bump!

Not the Only Board Game at the Jam This Year!

This year was a little different at the Ottawa Global Game Jam site. How? Well, our game, Heart Rate Speed Date was not the only non-digital game!

Game Jam 2013: Day 2

Well, ok! After scrapping Friday's false start, things, finally, coalesced today as we started throwing up mechanism ideas based on a theme idea we had passed up on last night.

Oh, so, speaking of theme. The whole shtick with the jam is that you only find out the theme you'll have to incorporate at the start of the jam after the keynote video. I couldn't share it with all of you until today because of the six hour time difference between us and the farthest jam site in Hawaii (this is the GLOBAL Game Jam, after all). So, the cryptic as hell theme this year? An audio clip of a beating heart! Ya, I know. Thankfully, teams are free to interpret this any way they like. Much of a team's creativity shines through in its interpretation of the theme.

So, blah blah blah, what the heck did we come up with?

Well, we decided to create a game that riffs on the theme by being about matters of the heart while, also, getting your heart rate up. It's called Heart Rate Speed Date, and it's all about playing cards down as fast as you can in a race to match speed dating aficionados with their best possible matches! Check out the pics!