Well, it was only a “long” weekend because I took Friday off. And while I don’t have personal days yet, it was totally worth it.

CSCC, the school Girl graduated from, was having the Downtown Digital Arts Festival, which I found out via Brenda Brathwaite’s blog. Brenda is on the IGDA board and has worked in games for years. I first became aware of her via the IGDA Sex SIG, where she posted and ran things while working on Playboy : the Mansion, and her book Sex in Video Games. I was excited, because I’d been reading her words for several years, and pow! she’s coming to Columbus. It’s not everyday that you meet someone with their own Wikipedia entry.

The local contact, Ian Schreiber also worked on the Playboy game, and is an adjunct professor at CSCC. While I was pretty happy to have a chance to meet Brenda, meeting Ian was a big thrill as well. And not just because he told me that the local IGDA chapter wasn’t defunct, which was pretty much cool news in and of itself. It’s just nice to know that there are people who are as interested in games as you are who aren’t so far away. Sometimes it feels like Ohio (and the midwest in general) is a desert of video game development. It isn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily change the way it feels.

I went to a workshop they were doing about impromptu game design, and we played and modded Sissy Fight 3000, which was interesting, and enjoyable. One man, Max Ink a local comics artist, brought his daughter to the session (she’s interested in game design, evidently). It was fun, and it was nice to be with people closer to my own age, when I didn’t expect that at all. It was fun and exciting, and not the sort of thing I normally do.

Ian hosts a board game group that sound friendly and approachable. They play tonight, and every Monday. I want to go soon, and play some of the board games I never get because it’s possible we’d never get them (and actually play them) unless we know in advance they are fun. Girl and I, for instance, just played Carcossone on XBLA, and then only because it was a free download.

I probably won’t go tonight, but I want to make plans to go soon. I need to scout out for some parking (since it’s on CSCC’s campus) and work up the nerve. I think I used most of mine up last week.

I know I’m probably not going to be entering the video game creation world. Not as a designer or writer, and my programming chops aren’t there. I’m good at what I do, but I’m almost forty years old. I’ve made some decisions about my life, and I like those decisions. I still want to be a writer for a living, and that’s possible. And I may make some indie games and have fun with that, unless lightning strikes I’m not looking at a career change. But I can learn and I think I’ve got something analytical/theoretical to add, and I have a vision of what I’d like to see. This blog is my way of communicating that, and approaching people who might listen and who can teach me what I need to know.

Anyway, after all that talk of game design, and playing a card game which we modded, more of the same was on the menu for later that evening. I’m an official tester for Corvus Elrod’s card game Renown. Friday, we played our first game. I’ve given him my feedback on the game, which basically boils down to: “It seems like fun if I understood it better.” So I’m gonna work on the latter, while he tweaks it a bit, and we’ll keep playing.

I have some hope that once I understand it better, I may take it to Ian’s board game thing, and get some broader feedback. I have another thought, too, but I’m not sure about it yet. There is this rather large gaming convention here in Columbus a couple months from now…

The rest of my weekend was pretty typical of late. We played a little Rock Band (not so much, since the failure of our Rock Band Guitar controller), and a little Okami. I’m not sure how I feel about the Wii port of Okami. Perphaps I can say that I thought it’d be more fun to draw with the wiimote. Girl is much further along than me, and she’s at the point she can travel via the mirrors by drawing an “X” on them. It took me 10 or so tries to get it, and even then it wasn’t repeatable. And I know I was drawing things that looked like Xs, but it wasn’t recording them as Xs.

One of the problems I had with Okami the first time around was the different kinds of circles, the wind swoosh, and the occasional confusion over which one this attack should be. After doing one of Girl’s mini-games (to get her the ability to use the mermaid pools, because the spiral is more easily recognized for some reason than the X), I know that it’s just as hard to keep that right as it had been before. But other bits of the drawing are actually harder. And again, this seems to be more of a recognition issue than one of making the marks — making the marks is just as easy as I had expected.

It’s just not really fun. Which is kind of sad, really.

I still haven’t played much of the game. I don’t even have the wind power yet, so this comes from jumping in later, and trying some things. I will try them later, and give a more detailed report then. But this thing has Girl so frustrated, she’s talking about being done. She played the PS2 version almost 3 times through, and she’s about halfway through the game, and ready to give up.

I’m almost done with my revisit of Psychonauts. I’ve made it further than I had before, and am close to finishing it (if not getting 100%, as I’m missing some brains and lots of other small items). It’s still fun, which is nice. It’s also nice that I can still play it, even after several years of owning it. I have several games like this that I play again and again. That, however may be a thing of the past.

But that’s a post for Wednesday.