#gamehugs

[playerattack]

ICYMI: Game Hugs Podcast - Episode 03 – Nick Vanzetti (ESL Australia)

Game Hugs is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of video games, a weekly podcast with an Australian flavour hosted by Guy “Yug” Blomberg. In this classic episode, Yug chats to Nick Vanzetti from ESL Australia, a man who lives and breathes eSports.

Read more: https://www.playerattack.com/news/2017/04/10/93616/icymi-game-hugs-podcast-episode-03-nick-vanzetti-esl-australia/

[playerattack]

Game Hugs Podcast - Episode 41 – Skaidris Gunsmith (Beta Bar)

Game Hugs is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of video games, a weekly podcast with an Australian flavour hosted by Guy “Yug” Blomberg. This week, the spotlight is on Beta Bar’s Skaidris Gunsmith, talking gaming events, arcade cabinets and brand new card game, Suddenly Drunk!

Read more: https://www.playerattack.com/news/2016/10/17/91932/game-hugs-podcast-episode-41-skaidris-gunsmith-beta-bar/

[playerattack]

Game Hugs Podcast - Episode 39 – Phil Larsen (Prettygreat)

Game Hugs is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of video games, a weekly podcast with an Australian flavour hosted by Guy “Yug” Blomberg. This week, he chats to Phil Larsen from Prettygreat about working on smash hit mobile games like Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride and Land Sliders!

Read more: https://www.playerattack.com/news/2016/10/03/91545/game-hugs-podcast-episode-39-phil-larsen-prettygreat/

[playerattack]

Game Hugs Podcast - Episode 37 – Amy Potter (Leaping Tiger)

Game Hugs is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of video games, a weekly podcast with an Australian flavour hosted by Guy “Yug” Blomberg. This week, Amy Potter, co-founder and COO of Kiwi gaming location-based tool Leaping Tiger!

Read more: https://www.playerattack.com/news/2016/09/19/91305/game-hugs-podcast-episode-37-amy-potter-leaping-tiger/

[playerattack]

Game Hugs Podcast - Episode 36 – Bradley Jolly (DYoshii)

Game Hugs is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of video games, a weekly podcast with an Australian flavour hosted by Guy “Yug” Blomberg. This week, Twitch streamer and Monster Hunter extraordinaire – Bradley “DYoshii” Jolly!

Read more: https://www.playerattack.com/news/2016/09/12/91139/game-hugs-podcast-episode-36-bradley-jolly-dyoshii/

[angeldrogyne]

Hey guys you should really go check out GameHugs, a LetsPlay channel made by me and my buds. The first video was just uploaded, and we’d really appreciate some views, likes, etc. Subscribe for future vids and become a fan today! :)

[gamehugs-blog]

Rollcage - a flight and a crash

I talk almost all the time about how I like to play around with games - test them from the inside out, to try and get somewhere I’m not supposed to be or break the physics or whatever. I just enjoy prodding about - I like the feeling of being slightly, inoffensively naughty that goes along with it and I like seeing what lies beyond the limits built up during a game’s creation. I don’t know where this compulsion began exactly - probably it’s just a pretty boring expression of pretty typical levels of interest - but I do remember quite clearly a few early instances where it came to light, one of which was with Rollcage. Rollcage is one of the many futuristic racing games that never quite caught on like Wipeout or F-Zero, but they tried their best. They all had their own little twists - in Rollcage the vehicles had four massive wheels and with enough speed they could drive along walls and ceilings, tumbling upside down without a problem. It was fast and slick and fun.  

The track Daytona was my favourite. Or at least, the one I remember the most. A very simple track, just a loop really, green and hilly with an optional detour along the sand beside the sea. I spent a long time playing this track in time trial mode, messing around with the destructible buildings which were a really neat idea at the time if pretty inconsequential during play. If all their support pillars were destroyed they collapsed down into giant boulders that I liked rolling around on the beach. But that’s not the thing. The memory is pretty clear … the track’s last bend is littered with speed pads. Hit all these just right - right, centre, left, centre - and I’m almost flying already, barely in control. The track rises up in the final stretch before the line. It’s a jump, it’s supposed to be dramatic, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be quite like this. I straighten up. 500kph. Gripping the controller tightly, I squeeze down hard on both shoulder buttons at once, firing two turbo boosts simultaneously. The speed counter rockets and so do I. Flying … Airborne, out of control. Out of the track. It doesn’t even look like a track any more, certainly not a place, not the coastal cliffs I was supposed to be racing through. From this height all pretence of a world, a reality, disappears. The surrounding land is filled with great blank holes. All solid walls are revealed as just these odd, folded two-dimensional shapes placed in front of each other. It’s all set dressing with no substance, an illusion that only works from one low angle. The whole track a series of flat inward-facing planes floating in a weird wide space infinitely blue below and orange above. I cross the finish line but the time’s not important. I race back around, launch myself up above everything again. Again, again. The flight is most of the fun, really, it feels like I’m straining at the edge of the game’s limits with the speed and the height of it. A great sensation, as though I might break free entirely with just a little more effort. But that half-second sneak peek behind the scenes is what drives me round again, a base intrigue to see out of bounds. 

*

It was around this point in time I think that games became more important to me than before. Not just distractions and slightly more than a hobby, they were a bigger piece of my life than that. There’s lots of reasons for that which come from me, but I think this was one of the reasons which came from the games themselves. I began to see them differently. No longer as solid, indelible objects, but as things with edges and gaps and weaknesses. Probably a transition most people went through. A slight change in attitude, beginning to analyse things rather than just accept them. Growing up, I guess. That wasn’t the end, though, it didn’t shatter my perfect fantasy worlds or anything like that - it intrigued me, drew me in even more. These things were flawed, with their quirks and accidents of design, and I wanted to see everything behind what was presented to me. Just for the hell of it, or to try and figure out why things were the way they were. I realised that people had made these things, I wanted to see how and why.  Perhaps the time before that transition is why we’re usually quite lenient about the games we played as children. I know when I was younger it never really crossed my mind to question the game itself. Nothing was too hard or badly designed, it just was. I held the controller on its side to play Solstice on the NES because somehow it made more sense to me that way with the game’s isometric viewpoint. And that’s just how I played the game, all there was to it. Well, I changed, and games changed too. With early 3D worlds there needed to be a lot of trickery and a lot of stagecraft involved to sell the environment as a reality. I’m glad these two changes intersected for me, and my desire to see beyond bounds synced up with the existence of games which allowed such revelations due to their technical limitations. I remember Rollcage most strongly in one static image - me hanging too far above the track, able to see the cracks between everything below me and the edges of the space it all floated within. Almost free. I’ve kept pushing and prodding at games all my life. It’ll never be quite that same as that picture in my head, but I still feel a thrill every time the curtain lifts a little and I catch a glimpse of something backstage that I know I wasn’t supposed to see.

by alex

[gamehugs-blog]

Hotel Dusk - living a lenticular life

I can’t use the word dusky even once here. Police me. I need it, oh how I need it.

The allure of a video game is that it lets you be in two places at once. It’s not so much an escape as a sort of quantum state, an entanglement. It isn’t just that your imagination is transported elsewhere, but your entire physical experience is multiplied. You exist in a video game world just as you do in the physical world. Often this dual existence plays out as being stationary and in motion at the same time. Passive while active, loud while quiet. Running across rooftops while sat in a chair, shouting at dragons with a mouth that has been closed for hours, firing a rocket and kissing a robot. It is a remarkable superpower, to exist twice at once. In 2007 when Hotel Dusk came out I had just moved from one of the world’s busiest cities to a house on a crossroads amid green fields. You could see the stars. I’ve grown up in a landscape that changes every day, people scurrying back and forth and a thousand places to go. A city is a living thing and you learn to expect the commotion and the movement. A sudden life of plants is another language. It evolves and moves but I can’t read it. One page looks much like another to me. At that time I felt disconnected and cut off and like I was living in a static world. Days melted together into a long string. Although I lived in this world of sky and leaves, I lived in another world, too. It is a restaurant, it is a dusky (dammit) bar with soft elevator jazz and the smell of whisky and maybe smoke. It’s a brown place filled with grey people and it is slow. Hotel Dusk  is small. There are only a few guests and you get to know them well. Time is divided into discrete segments and you can only do so much before it moves on again.   Of an evening I would go down to the restaurant, sit at the table, eat Rosa’s rib-eye with hash browns. Sit and eat and wait or think. Afterwards I walk around the room, looking at pictures on the walls. There’s only a couple of tables and they’re all empty. If I leave there are things to do but I don’t have to leave. You can walk around that room forever, if you want. Later at night I visit the bar, have a drink with the bartender. I take a sip of bourbon, and maybe I take a sip of bourbon too. The ice rattles in my glass and I can feel the heat and the cold at the same time. Both of these things happen but I can only taste one of them. It’s lonely but I’m not alone. People keep interrupting. To escape I would go outside and look up at the moon and feel like the only person in the world. I would sit at the bar and look at the empty glass and feel the same. The door creaks open and someone comes in to talk but I don’t really want to talk, I just want to sit. There’s an investigation to do but sometimes I just want to ignore it and hide away in the bar. It only strikes me now, looking back, I think the two lives resonating like that amplified my experience. I felt melancholy and it echoed. An empty house, an empty restaurant. My two lives added up. Wandering around small rooms, you can leave but there isn’t really anywhere to go. See when I started writing this I thought to tell you how playing Hotel Dusk was me trying to grab a piece of the old city I’d left behind. An urban place with people, seductive and stylish and created. It was supposed to be me choosing a place that was deliberate over the haphazard arrangement of my new surroundings. A way to get back a little of what I’d lost. But that’s not what was happening, my friends. In the end the hotel bar and my own house, my two lives, were complimentary. I wasn’t loud and quiet or running and standing. I was sitting and drinking and sitting and drinking. Waiting and waiting. Throughout life I think you find places that have a significance, because they are containers for thoughts and action. The architecture of a place gets imprinted on your memory when it matches just so with how you feel. Perhaps Hotel Dusk is where I feel most cut off and alone because of that.

  by ger