The Big Post With All The Panels On It

Well, I've literally just arrived back from Escapist Expo, in case you were looking for an explanation for why there's no Zero or Extra Punctuation this week. It's 'cos I spent all last week in North Carolina being handsome and wonderful. Here's proof!

My Favourite Game (click here for video)

This was the first panel I was on, and the first panel of the expo, in which I, Graham Stark, Jim Sterling, Gavin Dunne and Cory Rydell discuss our favourite games. Watch as I get a bit too into talking about my extremely predictable choice.

QA With The Escapists #1 (click here for video)

With the microphone situation slightly improved, the first day closed with a basic Escapist Q&A with all the above names as well as Paul Saunders, Moviebob, Chris Pranger and Dr. Mark Kline.

Fanboyism (click here for video)

Things got heavier on my first panel of the second day as I rejoined Jim Sterling - with whom I was developing a curiously natural stage chemistry - as well as Paul, Bob and Dr. Mark to discuss fanboyism and why people are shit.

The Hour of Love (click here for video)

And here's the big one, the Hour of Love with me and Jim (and also, from half way onwards, a slightly hungover Moviebob) are forced against our will to think of something positive to say about entities suggested by the audience. I was pleased and astonished that no-one brought up that pony thing.

Other videos of other panels will be posted when the Escapist puts them up. In the meantime, I'm going to have a long sleep. Right now, on this keyboard. oesaf,.s;///////////

24 Hour Panel People

 

So things have been very busy lately partly because of the above and partly because of some things I've been working on on the quiet that I should be able to provide less vague news on very soon, but the Escapist Expo is just weeks away (specifically 2 of the buggers at time of writing) and there's still time to register, North American peeps! Also there's a facebook page you can join now, and I've been provided with a list of panels I'll be taking part in over the weekend of 14-16 September. Presumably there will be other panels that don't have me in them, but this is my blog so they're not my responsibility. Let's have a look-see:

Fanboyism

Time: Saturday, 12:00 P.M.

Location: King’s Landing

Panel: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), Bob “MovieBob” Chipman (Escape to the Movies), Jim Sterling (Jimquisition), Mark Kline, PsyD (Clinical Director, HRS, Inc, Columnist at The Escapist), Paul Saunders (Writer & Producer at LoadingReadyRun)

Description: Fanboys. We all know one, and some of us may even be one. Like it or not, “fanboyism” is a massive force in nearly all social circles, either online or as part of your local gaming group. But what’s the impact the phenomenon really has on our culture? Escape to the Movies host Bob Chipman and Jimquistion star Jim Sterling tackle the issues alongside Dr. Mark Kline, and Paul Saunders from LRR.

Hour of Love

Time: Sunday, 12:00 P.M.

Location: King’s Landing

Panel: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), Bob “MovieBob” Chipman (Escape to the Movies), Chris Pranger (No Right Answer, Media Sandwich), Jim Sterling (Jimquisition), Mark Kline, PsyD (Clinical Director, HRS, Inc, Ask Dr. Mark)

Description: Hour of Love sets out to answer one important question: what if some of your favorite gaming critics were all put in one room and only allowed to say nice things for an entire hour? Dr. Mark Kline moderates as The Escapist contributors must all swallow their bile and think about nothing but rainbows instead.

How to Review Games

Time: Saturday, 1:30 P.M.

Location: King’s Landing

Panel: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), Bob “MovieBob” Chipman (Escape to the Movies), Susan Arendt (Managing Editor at The Escapist), Jim Sterling (Jimquisition), Graham Stark (Director & Producer at LoadingReadyRun)

Description: Reviewing videogames looks easy, but it takes more than just playing something and writing about it – especially if you want to keep an audience entertained. Learn the art behind the entertainment as the minds behind Zero Punctuation, Game OverThinker, and Unskippable discuss the tools they use to take games apart.

My Favorite Game

Time: Friday, 12:00 P.M.

Location: King’s Landing

Panel: Janelle Bonanno (Business Developer at The Escapist), Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), Cory Rydell (Critical Miss), Gavin Dunne (Miracle of Sound), Graham Stark (Director & Producer at LoadingReadyRun), Jim Sterling (Jimquisition)

Description: Everyone has that one game that they put on a pedestal. The one game that you measure all other games against.  The Escapist contributors talk about their favorite games and why they will always compare new titles to the one game that provided the perfect mix of character, story, and skill challenge.

Q&A with The Escapists

Time: Friday and Saturday, 4:30P.M.

Location: Kings’s Landing

Panel: Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), Bob “MovieBob” Chipman (Escape to the Movies), Susan Arendt (Managing Editor at The Escapist), Jim Sterling (Jimquisition), Graham Stark (Director & Producer at LoadingReadyRun), Cory Rydell (Critical Miss), Gavin Dunne (Miracle of Sound), Chris Pranger (No Right Answer), Mark Kline, PsyD (Clinical Director, HRS, Inc, Ask Dr. Mark), Paul Saunders (Writer & Producer at LoadingReadyRun)

You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. If you’ve ever wondered how Yahtzee learned to talk so fast, why MovieBob hates Michael Bay, why Jim is banned from Konami events or if Gavin really is that bad at Call of Duty, now’s your chance to ask. Escapist staff will be pulling questions directly from the audience, so be ready to be curious.

Return of the Sequel 2

Time: Friday, 3:00 P.M.

Location: King’s Landing

Panel: Susan Arendt (Managing Editor at The Escapist), Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, Bob “MovieBob” Chipman (Escape to the Movies), Chris Pranger (No Right Answer), Graham Stark (Director & Producer at LoadingReadyRun)

Description: Every year, it seems like there’s more and more sequels out there. We’re told that merely putting a “2” at the end of a game’s title increases the chance for monetary success, but the cost is a shortage of original concepts, settings and ideas. Yahtzee, Movie Bob, Chris Pranger and Graham Stark headline this all-star panel discussing the preponderance of sequels and their influence on movies, games and culture.


That's your lot, so make notes in your diaries, attendees. I'm quite looking forward to all this, the topics sound like I can get a decent gush on, and that second one in particular should be quite the spectacle, I think. Mighty good fun this convention season lark, right readers?

No involvement by Brian Cox

What time is it? It's Let's Play Manhunter time! And apparently the reason why it took so long is because Gabriel couldn't play it for more than ten minutes at a time without falling into some kind of trance.

EDIT: And here's the second part. I'm now of a resolution to not upload any videos longer than an hour, because it feels cruel to hog more than the average person's lunch break.

A Promising Post

Oh look, another post on this blog that exists only so the blog doesn't go unupdated for another lengthy period. I'm afraid all I can do for right now is make promises that stuff is in motion. There'll be another Let's Play once Gabriel has levered himself off his fat arse to record some game footage, 'cos it's his turn.

One of the reasons I've been quiet lately is that I have been working pretty solidly on the Mogworld audio book. At time of writing I've recorded all the way up to page 181 and have been trying to get at least some recorded each day. Hopefully I'll have more news on that sooner rather than later.

I guess I've been in a bit of a creative malaise since I released Poacher. My technique for learning a new programming system is to just make a big project with it and pick things up as and when it becomes necessary, and Poacher was that project for Game Maker. And now I'm all to grips with it - I'm realising that a lot of Poacher was pretty shockingly programmed compared to the techniques I've picked up by this point - I've been groping around for a new project to seize my interest. I've a few ideas, a few prototypes, but none have really kicked in yet. And I still get new ideas all the time. I'm disturbed by how my mind keeps turning to Puppies Hugging Things. Maybe it would work as a sort of Binding of Isaac-style room-by-room fighter except from a side-on perspective OH THERE IT GOES AGAIN.

Part of it is that I'm now of a mind to stop faffing about and make a serious go at turning my solo developments into an actual source of income, so I can at least justify the stupid amounts of time I tend to sink into them. What with Steam and tablet/mobile devices it's never been a better time for the small one-to-five-dollar solo-developed indie game to get around. I've been making eyes at this Game Maker Studio thing, lately. It would, however, mean having to get around my non-existent business sense.

Nothin' much

Just a quick update to indicate that I've stuck Jam on the sidebar over there to the right, if your eyes can bear to be separated from this sentence long enough to glance at it. The book's now available to preorder from TFAW.com. Also Amazon and Amazon.co.uk, but they haven't got the box art set up yet, lazy buggers.

Also, since someone asked, no, Jam won't be out by the time of the Escapist Expo. You see, the Expo is in September, and Jam comes out in October, and October is the month that comes after September. Sorry about that.

Future Snores

Time for another Let's Play with me and Gabriel, in this case, 1989's Future Wars, an early game by Delphine Software (of Another World and Flashback fame) that they probably hoped everyone would have forgotten about by now. Here is a quote from our commentary: "Why, that's the biggest another monkey's butt I've ever seen". Why not try to guess what the context for that was, then watch the video and see how close you were?

So there's that. Also I thought I'd mention something that I've been banging on about at the end of Zero Punctuation for the last few weeks, and that's the planned Escapist Expo in September.

Yes, my colleagues are organising a game convention get-together fun times scenario type thing in the city of Durham, North Carolina, where the Escapist offices are based. I've been there once before after I did the GameX convention a while back but it'll be nice to see how massively it's changed since then. I'll be attending along with Graham and Paul from LRR and MovieBob and several other of my Escapist chums, so this presents American readers an ideal opportunity to hang out, get copies of Mogworld signed or perhaps murder me while I've been foolish enough to make my whereabouts publicly known for a brief period.

It's on the weekend of September 14-16, 2012, and here's the site again with more details. Make a note, assassins.

Hugo Girl

It's Let's Play time again with Gabriel's choice of game being Hugo 2: Whodunit, probably the most forgettable of an already pretty obscure adventure game trilogy. On this occasion I'm experimenting with just throwing up the whole video in one big lump to see if anyone really cares that much.