Aside from the fact that I sold the van (aw, sad) not much is going on. The weather in Eugene is simply ideal, so I’ve been wasting time with a basketball in hand. I’m fine operating in freelance - but having all this latent energy makes it hard to resist the temptation…

…the temptation to start work on another video game. The people who’ve been playing my first game, The Jackyard, have been very complimentary despite the fact that they’re complete strangers. I’m astounded.

I’ve posted one more critical assessment of said project below, since I’m more of an Egoist than Egon Schiele.

Near the imaginative end of the spectrum is The Jackyard. Richard Hofmeier does a great job of exploiting and frustrating the expectations of the literal gamer. The game is full of obstacles that aren’t puzzles to be solved, art images that simply exist for their aesthetic qualities, and a coal-colored palette that is deeply integrated with its equally stark musical score. The world that Richard has produced is an artifact for our exploration and understanding, by prodding at artistic expression through the language of game. Determining how and if his work achieves what it is trying to do is your work as the player. So temporarily put aside your preconceptions (or not) and give The Jackyard a go.

This extremely generous review is very meaningful for me, personally, because before I wrote my first line of code, I was enjoying the detailed insight of The Artful Gamer: An online account “in search of the poetic and lyrical in video games".

Admittedly, we’re on the same team - as believers that video games have a lot of underrated potential as a device of art or narrative. Of course, there are several blogs in operation that evaluate the relationship between games and art, but I like his style: starting with a valid question, and subsequently looking at specific elements to find meaning.

Here’s a quote, from October 2007:

“…if designers allow themselves to survey a broader emotional scenery, they hand over the interpretive responsibility to the audience instead of hoarding it for themselves. This is the pinnacle of creative achievement, in my opinion - because it stimulates the audience’s imagination and allows them to feel in ways that were not necessarily intended by the author. This is a truer ‘depth’.

Making meaningful games is not so much about making games that we ‘like’ or we find ‘entertaining’ necessarily (since feeling angry or depressed doesn’t fit into either of those categories very well) - it’s more generally about finding meanings that accord with human experience. Engineering, tweaking, and re-design all come after we allow our imaginations to roam freely.”