I have added learning this speedrun to my list of awesome things I need to do before the year is over. It's not too hard to do and is pretty incredible.

If I had more time, I always thought getting pretty heavy into speed running would be a fun thing to do. I imagine the joy of finding a new faster way to beat a game would be pretty incredible.

"Jonathan Blow is an independent video game developer best known as the creator of Braid. He’s been developing a new game called The Witness with a team of 3D modelers, programmers, and architects since 2009. It will be released when it is done, hopefully in late 2013. He’s interested in pushing gaming to its full realization as an art form and his talk is about the unique and exciting properties of the medium of video games, and ways in which forward-thinking designers are pushing the medium."

Creative Mornings is a really awesome thing that happens in Portland. A few months ago they got Jonathan Blow to give a talk and I was signed up to attend. Then I forgot to set the alarm in my calendar and i slept past it. I still chalk that up to a really unfortunate moment, I mean how often do awesome people in video games talk in Portland?

Incredibly interesting personal tragedy aside, Creative Mornings has posted Jonathan's talk on YouTube and I thought it was well worth sharing. Jonathan talks about the advancement of video games over time and how money has been made from them. He talks about social games, like candy crush being "The new bad TV." Totally dig his premise and it gave me quite a bit to consider as I contemplate making my first set of games.

What did you think of his talk? Do you think Candy Crush and Farmville are the new bad TV?

http://creativemornings.com/talks/jonathan-blow/1

Capybara Games just released a new trailer for it's upcoming game Super Time Force. The trailer uses hand drawn time lapse to work its magic. The trailer spends quite a bit of time explaining how the time travel part segment of the game works to create a single player co-op experience. You should watch the trailer to see it for yourself but the idea is you play the game up to a point and rewind time and teleport in another character. What you have done up to the rewind start point is saved and you can start afresh with the new character playing alongside the other.

Super Time Force will initially release as an XBox exclusive. Heres hoping the exclusivity window isn't too long!

" In a remote desert, an unidentified object falls from the skies. A research organization known as G.E.R. has tracked and found the mysterious meteor: a capsule of organic material that brings an unknown life-form to our planet from the depths of space. Here begins the story of this impossible being, as it attempts to escape and survive on this strange, hostile world that we call home."

Paradise Lost: First Contact is a stealth escape game where you play as an alien attempting to escape a hostile science base. The Kickstarter video looks incredible and I seriously encourage you to check it out. I really dig the gameplay they show off in the video and enjoy the Half-Life/The Thing vibe of the game. The team has quite a lot to show of the game and are planning on a release December 2014.

They are two days into the Kickstarter and have already raised 15k of the 70k goal. I wish them well because, this game needs to be made! Paradise Lost: First Contact is planned on launching on Mac, Linux and Windows.

If you checked your Battle.net game downloads lately you may have noticed that Blizzard recently made its classic Super Nintendo game Blackthorne available as a free PC download. If you were curious about checking out this Blizzard classic, now is your chance.

I played Rock N Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings but I haven't tried Blackthorne yet. What are you thoughts on this one? Interested in checking it out now that it's free?

Hope they release the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans for free. Haven't played that game since I had a DOS machine.

https://us.battle.net/account/download/

Or download it direct here:

http://dist.blizzard.com/downloads/blackthorne/5e1a0ce1d84e3ee3005dd26181e14a2f/Blackthorne-Setup.exe

Blackthorne is Windows only at this point.

After the rocky Witcher 2 DRM rollout issues it seems CD Project RED is ditching DRM completely for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I laud the move and in a nice set of events they are taking time to take shots are DRM in general and offer some great rationalizations as to why DRM is a bad thing for people that buy games.

The issue of DRM being appreciated by gamers is pretty over and done, but it seems some companies are holding fast to a very old policy of treating paying customers badly. In the video CD Project RED states that they are in the business of making life long customers and some people may lack the funds or ability to become paying customers at at some point down the line might pay for the game when it becomes possible.

When I first watched this video I thought "yards need a fence to be viable." Then the music kicked in.

Have a Happy Halloween everyone.

Nice break down of the first Doom game story in a little over a minute. Doom was the first game to ever scare me because of its graphics and use of sound. The original Doom story was re-booted in Doom 3, which changes the original Doom narrative but keeps the blood, guts and carnage.

"Games make us ANGRY. Who hasn't come down to the wire in Street Fighter IV, toe to toe with some jerk named "ryukiller4eva", and suddenly you make a stupid mistake and KO, you are done. What do you do? Take a deep breath, slam your controller against the wall, try to pull it into two pieces, scream? Experiencing anger while we play video games is very real, but why does it happen, and does it help us? There are physiological reasons, emotional reasons, and psychological reasons for our anger, and your crazy drive and steaming ears just might help you succeed. Watch and learn why video games make us so angry!"

Interesting break down from Game/Show of why video games can make us so angry. Whereas I think "video game anger" can be pretty unfortunate when it is aimed at people, being angry at a game has let me to do better at it.

Oh and as an aside, I paused the video at the start and Jamin had an interesting face, thought it worth sharing.

http://i.imgur.com/z7GmZnm.png

"Confederate Express is all about exploration, fighting enemies, and making your way towards the main goal: trying to survive while delivering a package. Packages vary by size, weight and fragility; which makes every delivery a unique experience, ranging from a quick 15-minute tasks, all the way to a challenging journey throughout various events and locations. The more difficult the delivery, the greater the rewards: mercenaries, gear, weapons and ultimately - greater challenges."

Confederate Express has already sailed past its Kickstarter goals but if you want to get early access to it, funding it at the $25 level will get you in. Nice to see the Indie game scene enter the strategic turn based strategy realm.