Last week was mostly us quietly working away on our current projects, with some extracuricular activities in between. Here’s what happened:
Victory Boogie Woogie (SAKE)
- We shipped some new features to Victory Boogie Woogie, most notably a swanky preview mode for players and writers and limited markup capabilities for the latter. Not exactly rocket science but something that warrants careful testing and tuning nonetheless. I’m particularly pleased with the automagic prettification of typography we’ve added with help from typogrify.
- Meanwhile VBW is humming along nicely and we’re getting wonderful player submissions which really challenge the writers team’s creativity. Once again it was a pleasure for me join in on the weekly writers meeting on Friday and hear them talk about what had happened and how they plan to respond to it.
- We’re mid-way now, but it’s really easy to jump in and start writing along. If you’re a Dutchie, do join in.
Ripple Effect (KAIGARA)
- This was the second week of the Ripple Effect pilot so we were following player activity closely behind the scenes. Intercom is proving an incredibly handy tool for us to keep in touch with our player base, which is spread across the globe.
- Meanwhile we continued to make plans for the second version based on the feedback we’d gotten so far. This included playing through a new physical prototype put together by Tim. Poking and prodding, tweaking and tuning, that sort of thing.
- Development also started on extra features which will be needed to allow the game to be rolled out decentrally and scale to a large global audience. These are mostly peripheral to the actual game but important nonetheless.
KANT
Also this week, Alper moved his workplace from Praxis to KANT. Also on Oranienstraße, but with a different crowd in attendance, this looks like a ‘lab’ very much in tune with our own outlook.
Alper’s temporary desk at KANT. I hope they get him a bigger one soon.
Miscellanea
- On Monday, I joined in on Hans de Zwart’s Understanding Media reading group and shared my thoughts on McLuhan’s perspective on games. I’m told it was recorded so look for that shortly. Update: Hans has shared the recording with us.
- On Tuesday, I was interviewed about stories in applied games together with Niels ‘t Hooft at Control Gamelab. The video is up already, note that it’s in Dutch though.
- On Thursday I finally got around to writing another Recess! in which I throw down the gauntlet and attempt to provoke Niels and Alper into some critical reflection on their own preferences in game playing and making.
Bring on week 195!
Niels and Kars on an inflatable couch at Control Gamelab #8.
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The recording of Kars’ exploration on McLuhan and Games is available here.
Thanks Hans!