Spencer's Blog

Moxie Interactive’s 2013 Trends Report

David Spencer — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:46:33 +0000

Thanks to the students that came out to the Moxie Open House event last night. In addition to studio tours, impromptu portfolio reviews, tons of good eats from Willie’s, and the usual Moxie hospitality, they shared their annual top ten list of media trends. You can check it out here:

Moxie Interactive’s 2013 Trends Report

Enjoy!

Nine Dollars!?! Really!?!

David Spencer — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:02:42 +0000

OK, I need to start by saying hooray for The Hub v2.0. Much improved. But today I rushed down for a burger, and boy was I disappointed. NINE DOLLARS is a lot of money for a little (really dry) palm-sized burger on a lackluster bun, with grocery store freezer quality dry fries and a small syrupy (hard to imagine it was brewed and not from a mix) iced tea. I thought I read “grain fed Angus”, but I dunno. Very high on the list of worst burgers I’ve ever eaten. If it weren’t for the fancy animated GIF I’d want my money back. Hey wait a minute, I made that GIF.

I was going to
Write my review in Haiku
But I’m just too sad

Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses

David Spencer — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:41:07 +0000

If you missed it last summer, you’re in luck. It’s coming back. Start saving now for the nerdiest date-night ever.

Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
June 6, 2013 - 8:00 pm
$45.00 – $125.00 plus applicable fees

http://www.cobbenergycentre.com/event/legend-of-zelda-symphony-of-the-goddesses/

http://zelda-symphony.com

Global Game Jam 2013

David Spencer — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:50:43 +0000

All ITGM students are strongly encouraged to attend Global Game Jam (cough cough you’ll be shunned, shamed and possibly banished to Outer Mongolia if you don’t). Good things happen when you participate in industry activities. The timing is never good. Just figure it out. All of your ITGM professors are trying to minimize the impact by juggling assignment due dates to better accommodate your participation.

January 25-27, 2013
Southern Polytechnic State University

Click here to get started!

Generate 2012: Sept 28 & 29

David Spencer — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:16:40 +0000

generate
A 24 hour art challenge

10am September 28th thru 10am September 29th, 2012
SCAD Atlanta

Think you’re tough? Are you a creative mastermind? Do you think you have what it takes to pull off artistic wizardry under impossible deadlines? Of course you do: you’re a SCAD student! And it’s that time of year again. Welcome to Fall quarter. Don’t start pulling all-nighters right away. Oh, except for this one.

Click here to visit the Generate blog

GDX is Coming!

David Spencer — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

But you already knew that, didn’t you?
Click here to learn all about it.

Have you entered work into Entelechy? That’s en-ˈte-lə-kē by the way. Don’t believe me? Have a listen.

SCAD Student Finalists at IndieCade!

David Spencer — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:27:53 +0000

For the first time, the work of a talented group of SCAD students has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 IndieCade independent game festival. The festival happens October 6-9, 2011.

From the festival website: “IndieCade’s 2011 finalists continue to raise the bar on quality, innovation and diversity. Indie developers continue to amaze us with their creativity and resourcefulness as they redefine the video game platform and expand our minds through play.” The festival is open to the general public as well as industry professionals.

The project, titled Black Bottom Parade, was created by a multidisciplinary team, representing 4 majors and spanning 3 campuses. Congratulations to these students:

Bianca Gee – Art (Junior ANIM)
Erin Hanlon – Art (Junior ITGM)
Jonathan Justice – Game Design (Senior ITGM)
Daniel Plemmons – Game Design (Senior ITGM)
Charles Trippe – Programming (Senior VSFX)
Yuki Yamada – Art (Senior MOME)

Click here to see Black Bottom Parade and the other finalists.

A Flock of Sea…monkeys!?!

David Spencer — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 01:34:54 +0000

I walked along the avenue. I never thought I’d meet a girl WITH SO MANY FREAKIN’ BROWSER OPTIONS! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. So the browser wars are over, and now scores of new browsers will emerge (born incestuously from the same handful of open-source code-bases, the dirty hippies) and live standards-compliantly ever after? Where’s he going with this? Well if you haven’t stumbled upon them yet, you should probably have a look at Flock and Seamonkey. While you’re at the Flock site be sure to watch the video – clever After Effects work. With the Web Developer add-on for Firefox, the dev features in Safari and Chrome, and the rise of tools like Seamonkey it seems the browsers are sick of waiting for the Dreamweavers of the world to provide next-gen web dev tools, so they’re evolving them on their own.

So, intrepid students, you’re saying “but is it really the browsers, or are the languages themselves where the real (r)evolution is happening?” I’m not sure you’re all actually saying that, so I recommend you read this article on HTML 5.

As for me, I’m working on my own browser, and I’m calling it Terminator. Cuz I’m all 80′s like that.

Blizzard Casts Level 80 Backstab on Your Aura of Anonymity

David Spencer — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:15:12 +0000

But everyone flipped out. So they changed their minds.

Blizzard recently announced in their July 6 update on upcoming changes to the forums that they were implementing their Real ID system on the user forums for WOW, Diablo, and Starcraft II. This would have meant all users exposing their full real names in their posts. Wow indeed. To quote the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Eva Galperin, “Blizzard appears to have subscribed to the colorful Greater Internet F***wad Theory“. Their rationale was that this change would help rectify the “unpleasantness” happening in the forums.

Three days later they posted this July 9 change of heart update. Marshall Field’s department stores told us “the customer is always right”. My own dear mother frequently reminded me “you don’t get if you don’t ask”. I applaud Blizzard for adhering to the “every voice matters” language in their mission statement. And I applaud their users for speaking their minds, voices muffled by the very Cloak of Shadows they so vehemently sought to protect.

“Reality is broken…” Jane McGonigal, TED 2010

David Spencer — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:00:17 +0000

As part of my ongoing efforts to encourage you to use your superpowers for good not evil, I offer this little news blip, from the 2010 TED Conference:

“Reality is broken,” says Jane McGonigal, “and game designers must fix it.” At the TED 2010 conference Jane talks about how to work out real world problems in gaming spaces and how gaming can change the world. “We all need to tap into a collective sense of urgent optimism—as well as the ability and capacity to act now—to make the future.”

Wired.com’s Kim Zetter recently spoke to Jane about the role games play in inducing happiness as part of their TED 2010 coverage. You can read the full article here:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/jane-mcgonigal/

About Jane:
Jane McGonigal takes play seriously. She studies the power of games to impact the real-world — and she creates games that do just that. A pioneer in the field of “alternate reality gaming”, her previous projects include The Lost Ring, World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and I Love Bees. She is an expert on applying game design and game theory to real work and real business, and has consulted and developed internal game workshops for leading technology companies in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.