Video games industry analysts are fond of comparing the games industry with film: both are splashy, highly visual and visceral, both cost a lot to create/market/distribute, and both compete for people’s entertainment dollars and time. When news hit a few years ago that the video game industry had overtaken the film industry in revenues, we [...] Keep Reading

November through January, in both 2012 and 2013, were rough times for me. Those same three months, a year apart, had me crunching harder than the breakfast cereal Cap’n. A typical day went like this: Wake up (barely) at 10 or 11am. Open the laptop next to the bed. Work from bed. No shower, no [...] Keep Reading

Are you like me? Do you love the look of stuff made out of trash? If so, feast your eyes on today’s Spellirium Minute episode, which reveals a little more of the source material that i provided to the game’s artists to achieve that junky-fab trashpunk aesthetic. The Mystic’s house and the city of New [...] Keep Reading

“Trashpunk” is the term i’m co-opting to describe the aesthetic in Spellirium. It stems from “cyberpunk”, which describes not only an aesthetic but an ethos, and “steampunk”, which drops the ethos to describe only an aesthetic. (But what an aesthetic!) Today’s Spellirium Minute talks about the visual references that informed the trashpunk look of the [...] Keep Reading

There i was, sitting alone in my office. The government funding had been spent, and the quality of the work i had commissioned from a hastily-assembled team was just not up to snuff. i didn’t like the way Spellirium was looking or playing. i had no money or time to finish it. And i didn’t [...] Keep Reading