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

NEW FILE

Click to download. (45MB)

I've uploaded a PowerPoint Show file with the audio embedded into the show. I tried to recreate our timings, but I will warn you, it's not always perfect.

[edit: I've now zipped up a package to include the audio, and should now work for everyone. However, it doubled the file size, so apologies.]

I discovered the college podcast “thunderbird six” recently.

In Episode 43, the guys from Log2N, who won at last year's FuturePlay festival for Innovation, discuss what they learned about how to make a festival award-winning game.

After our various experiences with making games for festivals, I think these guys are spot-on, and this podcast is definitely worth a listening for those interested in developing festival submissions in the future.