Dirty Rectangles Talk Went Swimmingly!

A shot of me, mid lecture at last night's Dirty Rectangles meet up as captured by local tech-o-phile Jason Cobill.

Monopolatte Now Open

I took the time yesterday to pop into Monopolatte on the day of its grand opening to drop off a copy of Roll'n Bump for the patrons to enjoy.

If you're familiar with the independent game scene in Ottawa, you've likely heard of the Dirty Rectangles. The Rectangles are a group of indie game developers who are keen on promoting creativity and a healthy sense of community amongst game makers in the Capital Region. Every month they hold meetings and invite speakers to give presentations and local developers to show off what they're working on. You can probably see where I'm going with this. This month, I will be giving a talk entitled: "Lessons from the Tabletop, How board games can inform video games" exploring good practices in board game design and how they can translate over to the digital realm. For more information you can check out this post on the Dirty Rectangle's site. I'm pretty psyched and hope to see some of you there!

Meeple's Republic Outdoor Board Gaming Picnic!

Saturday June 15, the girls from The Meeple's Republic will be hosting a pot luck picnic at the McNabb Community Centre park from 4pm to 8pm. Bring food to share and board games to play OUTSIDE! You can check out their site for more info!

Ottawa International Game Conference 2013: Impressions from the Show Floor

Last week marked the second annual Ottawa International Game Conference which I had the fortune of attending. The OIGC did things a little differently this year, including setting up a 'show floor' style area where developers from the Ottawa region and neighbouring cities could come and show off their games. I think this is awesome and I wanted to do my small part to encourage this showcase of tallent by sharing a little about the cool stuff I saw with all of you. I would like to apologize to all the developers I didn't get around to visiting as I also spent my time at the conference mingling and attending talks. That being said, click through to see some of what was on offer at the OIGC 2013!

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