Chapter 4, it's happening



Since I get The Escapist in my feed reader, I always have the opportunity to brighten my day with Shamus Young's Stolen Pixels. He recently started a hilarious series in the aftermath of Ebert's "games will never be art" piece starring Max Payne. Obviously, this is an issue I'm close to having blogged about it here previously. Strip #191 featuring "Big Pete" Molyneux is particularly awesome. If you'd rather start with part 1 of the series, click here first.
Last Friday I was invited by Caro Williams to run a game narrative jam with the game design crew she started facilitating here in Madison a few months ago. Turn out was a little small probably owing to the fact that we're at the end of the semester and AERA is around the corner (getting back to work on my poster as soon as I finish up this post), so I had to augment the activity I had in mind. That said, I think we floated some really cool ideas in the conversation that ensued, and as I'd promised in proposing the session I'm re-posting those ideas here.
I was reading in the Escapist about Roger Ebert's most recent rant on how games aren't art. Oh wait, I mean how games "can never be art." I've made my own thoughts on the matter at least moderately clear. Under the circumstances I think I'll just link to this post from Love's creator Eskil Steenberg and drop in this image from Dear Esther as a sort of minimalist rebuttal.