#enteagd

[enteagd]

Improving this prototype a bit. Got some ideas, but scared of just ripping off devil daggers? We’ll see.

[enteagd]

Milestone time! Just hit 1000 followers and haha what are you all even doing. I hope you continue to enjoy my dumb attempts to make games happen.

[enteagd]

The latest from Niall Taylor (@nialljtaylor). Games Designer / Artist / VGA -. Manchester

E3 Livetweet and Drinking!

Hey folks in case you are wondering, we're all tweeting along to E3 and drinking while we do it! Imma get drunk, come ask me questions about game, follow all the people I retweet (who are also on tumblrs but I won't out them if they don't want)

There will be cursing, like, a lot of cursing, and we're definitely gonna be needlessly mean about every game.

Come join us! Maybe it will be like the sims 4 and we'll laugh so hard we die. 

[enteagd]

I put a new website/portfolio together, would love some feedback on that. I've made more games than I thought huh.

[enteagd]

UPDATE

I've been fairly quiet on this blog lately - I've primarily been concentrating on mostly non visual stuff, including

Various design and mechanic docs for Nice Face stuff

Super exciting stats and maths for Nice Face stuff

Learning gamemaker

Building a university project in gamemaker that is extremely non-tumblr-friendly when it comes to uploading the gifs (srsly tumblr plz fix that)

Writing essays

I made a Twine game for the Naked Twine Jam.

I mean if you're interested in a report on how we can use animal farm to predict future revolutions and then trick kids into thinking a certain way about it then I'll happily post it but...

..I don't think ya'll are.

Hopefully, I'll have a ton of stuff to reveal in the coming weeks and months. Nice Face Games will be announcing our new title, so I'll be recruiting alpha testers, lets players, reviewers, and anyone else who fancies helping us make it as good as it can possibly be!

Cheers!

[enteagd]

Ghost In The Machine

(This is a thing I'm working on, and I'm not really sure if its my favourite thing I've ever wrote or just fake intellectual nonsense. Regardless, there are tons of Gone Home spoilers throughout. )

  Ghost in the Machine

The Significance of the Supernatural in Gone Home

  Gone Home is a game in which a young woman, Kaitlin, returns home after a year abroad to her family’s new home. Already unfamiliar with the layout, things take a turn for the worse when she finds the old building completely deserted, with nothing but a cryptic note from her sister, Sam. What follows is an unexpectedly creepy, surprising and thoroughly compelling story, as the player tiptoes around the house, examining objects and rifling through drawers to piece together just what happened to her family.

In the run up to Gone Home being released, theories of what had happened to Sam and her family were rampant. The most popular, of course, was that the house was haunted by some sort of malevolent presence, and that Kaitlin and the player were walking into a deathtrap. This rumour was quickly debunked by the game’s writer and lead designer Steve Gaynor, who stated in no uncertain terms on his twitter feed that people expecting a ghost were not getting one, and were going to be disappointed - even going as far as hiding an easter egg in Gone Home itself, referencing the theory.

This didn’t, in fact, do much to deter the ghost theory. Indeed, it was generally accepted that while the house may not currently contain a ghost, it was still entirely possible that one had been present at some point.

This is where this article comes in – just what is the significance of the ghost in making Gone Home the great game it is? I would argue that the ghost, whether you believe it exists or not, is a central part of Gone Home’s core narrative, and is the key to proving that games are a medium worth studying by all academic disciplines. The author is dead, and Gaynor’s intent is no longer a factor in analysis.

(Needless to say, spoilers abound after this point. If you have yet to play Gone Home and wish to experience it properly, read no further!)

Throughout Katie’s exploration of her family’s home, she is beset by ghostly happenings. Doors creak, pipes clang, and lights flicker. None of this should be scary – the house is littered with official documents explaining exactly why the lights do this – but such is the quality of the environment you are immersed in that you cannot help your blood running cold, catching your breath as you scrabble for the light switch.

Experiencing these pseudo spooky goings on is crucial to understanding the journey of Sam and Lonnie. Brought together by a mutual love of video games, their friendship and relationship evolves alongside their crusade to solve the mystery of the haunted house. Lonnie is drawn to Sam due to her fascination with “the psycho house”, and Sam responds in kind. As they begin to explore their feelings for each other, the “ghost” acts as a catalyst and as a crutch. Ghost hunts allow them excuses to hold hands, and bumps in the night help justify them sleeping close.

There is no ghost in Gone Home. This is because the ghost has been gone since Sam left the house.

With her upcoming creative writing scholarship, and Lonnie shipping out for basic training shortly before, the two girls realise that what they have can’t last for much longer. Lonnie tells Sam that they should spend one last night together, and to make it the happiest of their lives.

On that final night, the girls engage in an act more significant than they imagine. In a secret compartment under the stairs of the psycho house, they draw a pentagram, light candles, and proceed to perform an exorcism, intending to finish what they start and remove the ghost from their house and from their lives.

However, this exorcism represents so much more. The girls are exorcising the thing which brought them together. They are forcibly removing the intangible presence that helped them to explore who they were and what they wanted from themselves and each other.

In exorcising the ghost they are exorcising their childhood, exposing themselves to the harsh realities of adulthood.

Lonnie leaves for basic training, with a heartbroken Sam sobbing in the attic. The game takes a darker turn at this point, with a large number of players ascending into the attic expecting to find Sam had taken her own life. However, Gone Home makes a much more powerful and poignant point.

Out of town Lonnie realises, with the clarity of vision discarding her childhood has given her, that she can’t leave Sam. That, as an adult, she can make that choice. She calls Sam, asking her to run away with her. Sam, unburdened of her own childhood, of everything holding her in the psycho house, writes her sister a note.

And leaves.

There is no ghost in Gone Home, but for Sam and Lonnie, the ghost that wasn’t there defined them.

[enteagd]

Art Jam 2012/13

Inspired by various "jam" websites, I have decided to put together a list of themes to work through this academic year alongside my other studies. I will put together a fun list of themes taken from various websites and attempt to create a piece of artwork based around it. I am not setting a rigid time limit, but am going to try for one a week!

Here is the list, and if any of my artist followers want to join in, that would be awesome!

 Disney Character Re-Design

 Rider and Mount

 David vs Goliath

 Alice In Wonderland

 Wild Wild West

 Noah's Ark Rejects

 Greek Mythology

 Voodoo Witch or Shaman

 Favourite TV Show/Cartoon of the 80s/90s

 Man-Eating Plants

 Elemental Weapons

This should take me through the first semester and into the second, but I reserve the right to add additional themes if I think they are cool!

[enteagd]

Develop: Impressions

I was intending to live blog this throughout the week, but what with one thing or another (Brighton is insane fun, chain chatting at panels and booths, delicious takeaways) I never got the chance.

There were many, many highlights of the conference, too many to cover over one single post. Therefore over this week I will be slowly churning out my take on the various things I experienced. This will include chatting to the various indie developers in the showcase competition, including the near legendary student devs Digipen (Portal), the new MS OS Windows 8, and in particular the tablet version (throw away your android, its that good) and my personal highlight, the work done by the charity Special Effect.

If you were at the conference or expo, or just fancy asking my opinion, I am still in total "enthusiastically talk to strangers about games" mode - lets get chatting.

Hot topics of the panels included: Indie marketing and funding, kickstarter, smart tv gaming, and importantly to me the role of education in game design and development. A topic list can be accessed HERE if you fancy chatting about something specific!