It was a great honor and pleasant experience chatting with host of CBC Radio show Spark, Nora Young about Flower and the game design philosophy behind thatgamecompany.

The crew at Spark managed to edit our 30 minutes conversation into be a very condensed information feast. You probably won’t be able to tell that I had bad coughs that day. Applause for the effort went into the show!

I had a great conversation with my friend Anna Knos today on IM. She’s not in the video game industry but somehow is doing researches about games. And by sharing my thoughts on video games and art with her I learned a lot myself.

In short, video game can be Art if you make it.

And here are my lazy IM notes…

Read more >

The development team Tale of Tales is somewhat of a sister studio to ours. They develop games that explore richer emotional themes and content not traditionally found in the current video game market landscape. Most recently, they were finalists in the Independent Games Festival with their game “The Path,” a dark and haunting game that toys with the player’s sense of direct goals and achievements while the story of the game plays with the themes of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

They’ve been gathering quite an interesting interview series, the last of which, we are honored to say, is an interview with our Creative Director, Jenova Chen.
The same TGC concepts you are probably familiar with are explored, but Jenova goes into much more depth about his background and beginnings as a game developer, and I think the dialogue becomes more interesting in lieu of the nature of ToT’s games.

Click here for the interview.

I was going through my YouTube “favorites” folder this morning, and came upon a video I found a couple of years ago.

It's a clip from a documentary titled “Chambre 666,” shot during the Cannes Film Festival of 1982. During the festival, director Wim Wenders set up a camera in this hotel room and invited various directors to come in and discuss their thoughts on the future of cinema. A 1982 Steven Spielberg(post-Raiders of the Lost Ark, pre-E.T.) shares his thoughts.

I get an eerie sensation watching this video. Possibly because the subject he addresses is so similar to the subject that game developers have been harping on for the last few years. And maybe this makes me feel like I'm seeing the future of video games in this weird way, by watching 1982 Spielberg discuss his frustration with the business of film making, but knowing that he would go on to create hit after hit after hit. Did he intentionally or accidentally contribute to the very problem over which he expresses concern? Does he wish he had made more personal films, or did his opinion on this subject change?

At any rate, whether you read into this clip as much as I do or not, I hope you enjoy this interview with someone from what's known as the first generation of directors who were able to study film in college, and went on to change the film industry as it was understood at the time.

Thanks to Brandon Sheffield, features editor of Game Developer magazine. We have another awesome article for students who wants to get into the game industry.

Making the most of U. Time — Academic paths to working in games