Hi, Paul here. So last week you met our bearded wizard Nic. Well now it is my turn to give you a basic 101 – Intro to Paul. Where do I start? Let’s go all the way to the beginning (queue dreamy fade out/in here). I was born in 1989 – wait, that might be too far back. Ok, basic info. I hail from a small town back in South Africa and moved to the sometimes sunny Gold Coast of Australia where I currently live. I work at Well Placed Cactus with my unofficial title being “That guy with the accent”. So when you hear that guy screaming at the screen after dying 500+ times – that’s me.
http://youtu.be/HwbJFEh5ka0
I am a huge fan of movies and games alike. I think there is a whole lot more to any screen media than just sitting back and watching. To make a really great experience for the audience there has to be something to connect with, and I connect most with characters. I mean when I was a kid I used to watch all my super heroes save the day. Now with games, I can be the one saving the day. Take Uncharted for example. Playing as Nathan Drake is freaking awesome. But it’s not just Drake I care about. Sully, what an awesome old guy. When Sully gets shot I felt goosebumps and a tingle down my spine. I didn’t even realise I cared about him until that event. Good characters make a movie or game so much better. Whether it’s to try create a deep emotional connect or just keep the mood light like Mario, characters can add so much to any medium it is hard to overlook them. Would you play through games if the characters were still cubes?
http://youtu.be/QyI9F_5zq6E
That’s what I try and do here at the cactus. I try adding character to the games we make. Not just through character, but the entire game. Not all games require an actual character, in which case the game itself becomes the character and we work to give it a certain personality that ties in with the game. Luckily with Eggolution we had the chickens to work with. So I tried to give then some quirky movements and not just be your average chickens. We only started animating the chicken towards the end of development. As soon as those chickens were moving it added a whole new layer of life to the game. That is my aim for all future games we make, add that extra layer of life.
Chickens are better than cubes.
Mario looks a bit better these days.
PS. I have been asked a couple things about living in South Africa so I figured I would answer then here quick just to clear things up. I did not live in a cave. I did not have a lion as a pet. I did not go to school on an elephant every day. I lived in a house, had a couple dogs and went to school in a car. Although I think having a lion as a pet and going to school on the back on an elephant would be awesome.
It was a busy week last week. Beer and Pixels was in Club 77 for the first time, it was also the new merged ‘Beer and Pixels’ / ‘Bits and Pieces’ format. Then on Thursday I spoke at a new arts space 107 Projects as part of Television is Dead by Bravo Child.
Beer and Pixels ran really smoothly at Club 77, the back door isn’t too hard to find, so hopefully that didn’t put too many people off but it was more than made up for by the fact we had a private space, the ability to control our own music, and power a plenty for those with games to show.
It was a good turn out too especially with regards to the number of test games brought along. I think for the next one we’ll try to sort out an area for the testing to take place, just tweak the layout a bit. This time a couple of card and paper games lost out by not have a space in the light so we might try to get a list of games in advance to make sure there’s spots for everyone. Speaking of the lights it was also a bit dark, which makes sense in a club but just as everyone was leaving the main lights got turned on and seeing that we’re primarily a networking and testing event we were thinking we might just keep those light on all night next time.
I tried to run local game composer’s music over the PA for the event. Well, I did play the music. The problem lay in letting people know it was special. I don’t want to crank it so people are forced to listen so that’s a problem I’ll need to think on.
I had a great time and I really hope we’re able to keep using Club 77 and grow the event.
Television is dead was a set of talks followed by ice cream and live music with art and whatnot. It was the first time I’ve been to 107 Projects and I was really impressed by the space. It may even be suitable for the big event that I am trying to setup. There was a quite a good crowd and I talked about music in videogames. The night was focused on the future so I talked about the games I think pushed the boundaries and where I think we’re heading. Mostly I was very positive though I did make some fairly dire predictions for the handhelds.
The other talks I saw were on whether videogames are a story telling medium, I won’t get into the details on this because I understand there will be an article published and my third hand account won’t do the idea and justice. Suffice to say it was really interesting and informative, inspired me to setup yet more events and do some research.
There was a talk on 3d modelling and the future of the industry. The stuff we were shown was mind boggling but mostly only possible for huge budget projects. The last talk I saw was on the future of AI which was giving by an industry veteran who is also an aspiring stand up comic; needless to say it was both informative and hilarious.
All in all there’s so much going on in Sydney at the moment in arts and games. It’s an exciting time to be working in the creative arts particularly with technology.
Now I guess I should get back to building the website.
Jack
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