I went to the third day of the Gamecity festival in Nottingham, mainly to see Alexander Kohlhofer of
soda/plasticpilots fame speak about weewar which I fell in love with at first sight a couple of months ago. it was great to enjoy a long chat with his afterwards as well! (Thanks Alexander)

In case you havent seen weewar or played it, weewar is a very addicitive multiplayer turn based strategy game which currently has over 20,000 players. see Techcrunch, Kotaku coverage. Its a really nice recent success story and Alexander’s talk was really enjoyable all the more so because he was outlining/sharing/dissecting how they got it right with nearly every slide. He had some very valuable wisdom to impart which he presented in a very humble, well executed way.

In fact it was one of the most polished talks I’d been to in a while and one of the most inspiring things I’d been to all year sitting right next to Brendan Dawes‘ talk for our final year students.

Alexander covered many areas in his talk and referred to the key points in the weewar strategy, as well as mentioning how it came to be.

he said he was (like many of us):

• too busy to play
• stuck in an office
• had nobody to play with

..and he was interested in creating something which would make many people happy instead of just a limited number of clients.

Some of his talk was also about how they’ve dealt with the community building aspect of weewar (tangler), to the challenges of stable infrastructure and growing needs (API access, google apps use, invites mechanism to cope with server capacity), as well as principles of design and ways of listening to users and legitimising their interest and enthusiasm which had resulted in the wiki etc.

I was in awe when i realised that weewar was a two man designed and implemented game, just Alexander and Bert!

Things I picked up specifically in relation to design and etched firmly in my mind:

• you cant get it right but you can improve it all the time
• getting it wrong is okay
• keeping users in the loop
• not to try and shoehorn a game into a browser
• being agile and iterative
• release often and listen

also

• giving users self regulating responsibility (allowing them to make the rules)
• be part of the community and mean it
• dont use players with overly complex systems
• dont have a closed system

I think Weewar was essentially at one point described as a web 2.0 app and thats possibly very apt, that train of thought reminded me of Amy Jo Kim’s Etech Presentation from 2006 which is essentially about
how similar Web 2.0 apps and their features/functionality are to the mechanics and components of games.

Anyhow, needless to say weewar is very enjoyable game with lots of attention to functional detail, go sign up for an invite or drop me an email to send you a game request.

The rest of the day, well the morning I attended a panel discussion about indie games with the indiecade folk, IGF and Gamasutra as well as Channel 4 represented on the panel.

I was briefly starstruck to see Cory Doctorow behind me with his iconic specs, I tried googling him on my phone to see a recent pic to make sure. but then one of the panel members made a comment about indie games / the concept of giving away games for free and mentioned Cory and his books and my suspicions were confirmed.

I went to an ARG talk as well in the afternoon by Guy Lewis Parsons who gave a very energetic talk in place of Dan Hon.
Mr Katamari Damacy (was there with his new game nobi nobi boy) his keynote talk was covered in depth on Wonderland. It was nice to see almost full HD from the the PS3 on such a large cinema screen.

Procrastination is sticking a pencil up your nose amongst other things in this great animated film by Johnny Kelly. I missed a screening of this at the London Animation Festival earlier this year, and now the internet has made my wish come true. Enjoy

New T-shirt designs from Steve Nishimoto, coming soon courtesy of 2K by Gingham. When you get the urge to purchase a new tee, it’s worth consulting Nik’s new blog.

Unfortunately this isn’t a post about the legend that is Mark Morrison, it’s just good news, I’m back on PTN with 5 things from the last few weeks…

1. Poke have recently produced a campaign site for the WWF in an effort to help persuade the government to include emission-tastic aviation and shipping on the change climate bill, if you sign an online petition your name might just sail down the thames on a massive paper plane or boat. Iain has written about this in detail if you would like to find out more.

2. I found an old friend on the internet yesterday, she has a great photography portfolio.

3. I have been enjoying the uber user-friendly stats app extrodinaire aka. Google Analytics since hooking it up on my portfolio site last month, it’s well decent and so simple to add to your site, have a go.

4. Cookie introduced me to Raymond, a great french short film produced by the Mill that will remind you of the Ragdoll.
‘Raymond, a lazy swimming pool instructor, who would like to discover the ocean’s. A team of scientists with a brand new solution offers to help him’.

5. Some friends and I went to NYC at the end of September, it was incredible - here are the pictures which tell the story (well apart from the bits I wouldn’t want to show Grandma!).

It’s just starting to go moldy like a good bit of cheese incase you wondered, I guess we are all just super busy at the moment. This post is simple though, it’s about a great poster which you can buy from the internet. I have put my face back amongst the big www crowd recently so to speak with a selection of my work from the last 5 years. Enjoy!

The London Film Festival is coming soon, October 17th - November 1st. I am excited.

Design studio Dixon and Baxi have uploaded some new work to their portfolio with a familiar bearded face for Nic, Rob, Si and I featured amongst the case studies. Go Model J!

Hallam Foe is probably the best film I have seen this year.

It’s a ‘fucked up british teen movie’, well that was the genre the film was placed in by it’s director David Mackenzie at the post screening Q&A session I attended at the ICA on Tuesday night. Black comedy it is, this coming of age tale adapted from Peter Jink’s novel is hugely entertaining throughout.

The film tells the story of Hallam ‘Jamie Bell’ Foe’s journey of grief after his mothers recent death, a journey which forces him to escape his rural family home and step mother for the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. In the city he continues his peeping tom obsession, his liking for fancy dress whilst perfecting his rooftop climbing skills and romancing his new boss - who happens to be a deadringer for his late mother. The cast is rich, full of great characters, I especially enjoyed the efforts of Ewen Bremner (Spud from Trainspotting).

The sound track feels perfect, well I guess it was always going to when they had access to the Domino catalogue, I brought it the next morning and have been playing it far too much this week, Psapp’s ‘Tricycle’ is pretty special. David Shrigley illustrated credits and intro sequence are another good thing.

The film is released next Friday, August 31st, you should go and see it.