game city 5 and other such distractions

Pac Notts originally uploaded by Game City

wow, it's been nearly a year since my last post... since then i've changed jobs at work, joined a roller derby team, broke my wrist (yes those last two are connected...) and there's been another Game City festival in Nottingham, which was just as awesome as last year's! the photo above shows us playing pac-notts - live action running around pacman on the streets of nottingham, controlled by frantic mobile phone directions and a non-GPS enabled custom map back on laptops at HQ - run by the very lovely and very fun people from Pac-Lyon. too many other highlights to write about, especially as i was too busy having fun to tweet half as much as i did last year, but you can see some more about the week (and hunt for familiar faces in photos) here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/nov/01/gamecity-highlights
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/02/gamecity-humanises-gaming
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1520480@N24/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamecityfestival/
http://twitter.com/spugmeistress/game-city


apart from catching up and testing whether this thing still works, i just wanted to check in to say that i'm currently working on restocking both the etsy shop and folksy shop in time for the holidays, and if you want to join the Facebook page for (hopefully more frequent) updates, you can Like OMEGAZOID here :)

free games for free(?!) time

Mario´s Picross (Man!ac 6/95), originally uploaded by Kantenflimmern.

there's been a slight slow down again round these parts due to the usual pre-christmas insanity, but also exciting things afoot in the future of crafty/gamesy/internetty stuff - you'll hopefully hear more soon :)

in the meantime, i thought it might be good to provide some flash game links to distract everyone from the lack of blogging:

Small Worlds is an exploring game. some people have said that it only takes 30 mins to complete, but as someone who is sadly lacking in the basic videogame skill of jumping, i've obviously gotten more value out of it and still have only seen 3 of the gorgeously pixellated worlds that lie through the mysterious teleports.

Continuity is a weird one - it's like they took a really simple game and watch level and turned it into one of those slidey puzzles (which, for the record, i hate. i absolutely suck at them and still haven't completed the ones in professor layton, even with walkthroughs.) it's immensely clever, although takes a while to realise the nuances of why exactly you aren't allowed to go through the wall to the next screen yet, and soon ramps up the difficulty - just wish it had a save game.

but mostly i've just been playing Wii Picross. now i've finally completed Picross DS, and 3D Picross isn't out over here quite yet, this completely free website is keeping me more than occupied - I'm addicted to the daily puzzles and their advent challenge is proving quite interesting this time (is it sad to realise i've been playing this site long enough to remember the last two years' worth of christmas specials?) i bought a book of puzzles recently to carry round but the majority of them are logically incomplete, full of mistakes, or plain broken, which makes me appreciate wii picross even more. have to say i much prefer to use it on the pc than to the wii browser though.

and finally... not exactly a flash game, but i downloaded world of goo recently as part of their 'pay what you want' promotion - at first i was most intrigued by the experiment, and to be honest i still haven't got round to installing the mac version. however, they've also gone on to offer the first chapter as a free demo on wiiware, which *did* hook me in, and i finally got round to realising what i suspected all along: it's ace fun :) highly recommended, and yay for wiiware demos!

i've got the key, i've got the secret

collection of keys, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

it's quite disgraceful that i've been trailing this for over a year, but look, new collection! these keys are taken from various 8bit nintendo games (well, mostly legend of zelda, but one random mystery one in there too) and put on a necklace in order to make cheesy jokes like 'you've got the key to my heart!'. Link would be proud of such a chat up line, i'm sure...

i've always wanted one of the keys from the latchkey project, not only because they look so damn cool, and each one is unique, but also because of the unknown story behind each one - the mystery of knowing that a key must belong to an item that it unlocks and trying to reunite the two. is there a super secret prize at the end of the quest, or is the joy in the journey (that to be honest, i doubt many people have ever completed. but i'm not sure that's the point...)

on the subject of games and puzzles and fun with almost pointless point scoring, i just found out about noticin.gs and it looks awesome. just like with wii fit or singstar - the points/games/rules help give the experience some sort of legitimacy against time wasting, but they're really only a framing device for the real fun - such as shedding inhibitions with friends, interacting with the world around you.

anyway, if you want a key, they're available here:

etsy ($) : gold key necklace, silver key necklace, bronze key necklace

folksy (£) : gold key necklace, silver key necklace, bronze key necklace

hunting ducks

so here you go: you saw the work in progress concept a few weeks ago, and now i can show the final product: the flying duck hunt wall frieze! (on etsy and folksy)

i have to make a confession: flying ducks have always reminded me more of coronation street than nintendo's duck hunt - the NES was just a little bit before my time. but there is perhaps no better amalgamation of videogame sprites with good old real northern life than hilda ogden's trio of ducks recreated in glorious pixel form.

i think it's interesting that videogames are often seen as quite an immature and young industry or artform, and yet we already embrace nostalgia - especially if you're as into 8bit retro pixels as me. obviously there's something in the basicness of it all that makes us yearn for simpler times, when you only had one or two buttons to mash instead of a whole control system to learn, and games were short, straightforward and (in my opinion) often a lot more fun for it. i guess the wii is getting back to that kind of thing, especially as the industry realises that my overcomplicating things, they lost a huge chunk of the casual market along the way, which i guess is why we're seeing a lot more of these vintage titles appearing on things like wiiware.

i don't know if it's for these reasons, or just that he *really* likes ducks, that a friend from the mktweetup group (who, incidentally, makes awesome custom arcade cabinets) commissioned a special single colour duck trio for his very own wall. if anyone else fancies one, get in touch with me via the blog, flickr, etsy or folksy and i'll see what i can do :)

lambs, flowers and girls with guitars on day 3

Night Blooms at The Arcade Exchange - 11, originally uploaded by nottinghamgamecity.

day 3 started with even more gaming of the non-video variety at gambling lambs, a group of lovely people who meet at lee rosy's tea shop to play games together every month. if only MK wasn't so far away...

Playing medieval cards at gambling lambs @gamecity - i am the greater dalmuti!

firstly we were introduced to dalmuti. i realised i'd played it before with standard cards as president (which in turn is based on an old chinese game, dai hin min) but the new deck and setting made it even more fun as the power struggles soon got people into character :)

playing last night on earth: defend the manor house, i am the zombie lord \o/ @gamblinglambs @gamecity

i'd also played last night on earth before (a zombie board game that feels kinda like an interactive movie), but not this scenario. it was fun, but complicated, and we never did really finish the game, but had some interesting storylines come up along the way at least - far more hilarious than expected ;)

we left last night on earth in a mess of inappropriate zombie orgies, won at werewolf and now at @gamecity u panel for a breather :)

more werewolf, albeit in a bigger group and i had to be a wolf this time (which i hate cos i suck at it, amazed i lasted as long as i did...) - we were having so much fun we missed the start of the gamecity U stuff, but decided to go along for the afternoon session with rex who did the art on little big planet, babsy from papermint and robin hunicke who now works for thatgamecompany. not sure what i expected from a games design panel, but it was inspiring stuff - just frustrating that some of them were lucky types who were arty and visual (like me) and still managed to find teams to work with to make videogames despite a lack of technical knowledge (also like me). there had been some previous talk about games as creative, and how children love being creative from a young age, but it seems the barrier to games design is just so much higher than that of art or music: kids can experience either of those and then go and instantly make them themselves , even if it is just a crude attempt at finger painting or banging pots and pans - what's the games equivalent? how do people who have ideas, but not the mad coding skills, get a chance to do anything with them?

with this still on the mind, we went to a curry sessions debate on taboo in games, although it wasn't particularly debateful or indeed audible from where we were sat.

is about to experience flower: night blooms @gamecity :)

robin hunicke came back for the big live art performance of Flower in the exchange arcade. again, not sure what to expect, and on paper/screen it might even sound a little disappointing, but it really was a little shared moment between all involved. flower is a ps3 download game that i'd heard about but not played before - basically you are the wind, picking up petals and, in the words of robin, 'spreading love throughout the world'. one of the things that was particularly cool was how there was no words, no text or dialogue, in the whole thing - reminding me of one of my favourite comics, owly, in both how accessible it becomes to children or people who speak other languages, but also in how it makes the reader/player put their own emotion into the gaps.

Watching flower played big isnt quite like a film, better than video art installation, live dance with petals as ballerinas maybe?

the previous day, david braben and lord puttnam had both talked about videogames not yet reaching the stage where they can make people cry - as if this pinnacle of emotion is a sign of artistic legitimacy - but robin clearly proved them both wrong by admitting (and demonstrating) how emotional the game made her feel. all we, the audience, did was to stand, sit or lie down and watch someone else play a videogame, projected onto wavy muslin, but it was a unique and moving (in an undefinable sorta way) experience. (insert something about games as art, except i think that perhaps the more we go on about something is already blatently real, the more gamers as a whole sound as if we're just on the defensive...)

Also: wind turbines as things of beauty; colour reminiscent of Hero; and nice to see a bunch of gamers chilling out and soaking it in

and on that note, and later than planned, we moved on the 'world of wordcraft' event to see rebecca mayes (of gameswipe fame) play live, and also maybe listen to people talk about games writing too.

i have to say at this point, game city was horrendously disorganised this year, but it did have its benefits at times. flower overran its slot and we honestly made our way over to the gig thinking we were an hour late and would've missed it all, but because practically everyone was at flower anyway (including the organisers), it didn't actually matter. we just bumped the schedule on a bit, and still had time to play fluxx before it started. maybe not the most professional type of thing, but i think the nice community feel is one of the best things about game city.

World of wordcraft @gamecity was interesting: i still secretly want to be a games writer/editor. rebecca mayes is pretty cool too :)

there was a lot of discussion about games reviews, which, coming from ste curran of '7/10 onelifeleft' fame, and started by a statement that games reviews were pretty much meaningless these days, may hint at the slight irreverance to follow

RT @avalix "pacman is *almost* the most rounded video game character in video game history" @gamecity @steishere :D)

being a word geek, editor, zine contributer etc... i have a bias towards critical writing even if i do admit it bears very little influence on the games i buy anymore, but i like non-fiction writing as a creative artform, and was particularly impressed at the ability to put that into a musical construct with not just acoustic guitar but awesome pedal layering too. there may be more along this kind of front in the future...

game city round up: day 1

super special game city squared badge, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

editing complete, work all done on time, out of office on, time to play! @gamecity http://flic.kr/p/7aFiP5

7:19 PM Oct 26th from Flickr

so here we go :) i enjoyed gamecity so much when i went 2 years ago that this year i thought it was worth taking a whole week off work and having the most awesome videogame-based holiday ever!

is *finally* on her way to nottingham for game city :) got up late n had to pack... probably shouldnt have been hama beading at 2am

2:13 PM Oct 27th from txt

tuesday wasn't immensely eventful so it wasn't too bad that i arrived late: the badge i made for the mystery @gamecity tweeter was well worth the last minute crafting.

Hotel is looooovely (esp. considering how cheap it is) but a slight lack of wifi. This may be an issue. Must go o2 shop n get phone online

5:40 PM Oct 27th from txt

hotel was lovely, highly recommended. o2 shop very helpful and got me back online with twitter the next day, yay! \o/ as it turned out, very much needed for the rest of the week...

had awesome fun times at the @gamecity launch do, hanging out with @marmaladegirl n drinking free champagne \o/ can't read twitter tho :(

9:57 PM Oct 27th from txt

so the highlight of gamecity:day 1 was the launch party, which i'm not entirely sure i was officially supposed to be there, but stumbled upon the ticket whilst browsing their eventbrite listings. free drink, free sushi (which i didn't eat, but *did* want to rearrange into space invader sprites as it looked all pixellated with the different types and colours squished in the boxes) and meeting up with random lovely people :) iain claimed the badge as the mystery tweeter who had been so helpful answering questions, and this is how lovely it looked with sparkles and giant origami spaceships from Elite which you can still go and download, print out n make for yourself! (see my efforts here)

is listening to last week's @onelifeleft in her hotel room, eatin a choc dip n playin paper picross :) who needs tv radio or internet? (me)

10:18 PM Oct 27th from txt

videogames: live and musical

it was london games festival this week, and whilst i didn't get to go to much (or to nottingham game city either :( ) i did get to see videogames live kick the whole thing off last friday. videogames live is an american thing where they get classical orchestras to play the themes from well known games in an attempt to celebrate videogames as a proper artform and give a bit of respect to the composers (can you guess whose idea the whole thing was? ;) ) unfortunately, the games with the most orchestral theme tunes seem to be the type of shooty war games i don't really play, so i didn't recognise half of them. super mario bros, and famous blindfolded youtube guy doing the PROPER tetris theme (the orchestra did a really random version in the arcade medley at the start) were probably my favourites.

i chose the final fantasy video to top off the post for a special reason though - the choir singing in it included my friend daisy! yay daisy! she (and the rest of the choir) was awesome, and blatently the best reason for going, although the choir didn't get to sing as much as they should have. videogame music doesn't tend to have many words in it... legend of zelda could have had words to sing along to if they'd gone with the awesome system of a down version but sadly not :(

one other particularly cool bit of the night was them showing this go team video before the show - i *love* the go team, pacman, and silly urban gaming type things, and i hope you all do too :) i also liked the loading screen they put up in the intermission, every show should have one of these! means you can judge whether you can make it to the bar/loo/tshirt stand in time before they dim the houselights again. life needs more progress bars.

speaking of progress - i've started getting back into my etsy/folksy shops a bit after a flurry of recent activity out of nowhere (thank you random buyers!) so i should probably start posting a bit more. i still have some new stuff i haven't got round to taking photos of, so i should unleash these on the world sometime soon. in the meantime, enjoy your shaky cam youtube fest!

wiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

hama crazy, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

just to prove i haven't been slacking ;) a whole stack of mini hama beaded goodness waiting to be ironed - if you look hard you might be able to spot some new stuff in progress!

also, yay! because i finally got my wii set up and working for the first time in my new place and on my new (but very old, and very small) telly. the silly thing didn't have a remote so i had to go and buy one of those universal thingies to tune it in. but it's all working now which is good cos i just bought wind waker from cex - cheaper than phantom hourglass (waiting patiently for christmas) and i never managed to finish it as i bought it for my (now ex-) boyfriend who then ran off with the save file. so yay, a whole new lease of life for all my old gamecube games - smash bros was the first one in, and donkey konga will be getting an outing soon too :D now i just need to find my memory card :s

the other yay! i got it working! is for my new printer - which i got for absolutely nothing off a lovely person from the manchester branch of freecycle :) it's ace, instead of throwing stuff away, people just give stuff to people who don't mind coming to pick it up and take it off their hands! recycling and getting stuff for free is all good in my book. good timing too as i hope to have some zines ready for the craft mafia market in december...

65daysofstatic tomorrow night! woo!

sleepy

my ibook, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

this is what i'm looking at right now. not blogged much the past few days because work has been crazy busy, so i've been really tired, and crafting has pretty much been non-existant. except for the stuff i've had to do for work that is (i'm a children's & youth work volunteer).

so instead of pretty crafty pictures you get to look at my computer. my lovely shiny ibook g4 :) because i've just spent the last hour or so playing about with my links list (psst, over there ->) which i thought i would explain a bit about. friends links are basically etsy/crafty type people i know who have blogs and make cool stuffs that you may or may not be interested in. astareal is my friend ses's new business and she makes gorgeous jewellery and custom made felted dreadlocks. lupin makes lovely little things out of felt, including fake moustache disguises, one of which i bought for my friend jo and unfortunately had to post out before i could take a pic to put up on here. she also makes cool recycled map stationery, which i also bought for my friend sarah, as we are both map junkies. we would love to own some of bombus's decoupaged furniture. i shall save some of the others for a bit of a spotlight some other day when i am feeling too lazy to make anything myself to blog ;)

crafty links is full of the kind of stuff that inspires me. you already know about etsy, but one of my favourite websites is knitty.com for the amazingly cool and *free* knitting patterns. if you've seen me lugging around a red bit of knitting, it's supposed to be this. craftster is a brilliant (but very fast-moving) forum full of ideas and tutorials. instructables is again with the really easy to follow tutorials and instructions, and is more wide-ranging and techy than just craft.

webcomics - i'm addicted to quite a few. it's my early morning ritual to go through them all as i'm still waking up. copper is my absolute favourite, but it's very infrequent so sign up for the email updates. diesel sweeties is probably the most relevant as it's all pixellated just like my craft, but if i had to choose a webcomic i would like to be in, it would be scarygoround. i just spent £40 on SGR books and this t-shirt, which i have been coveting for a while. my geekier compatriots will appreciate the humour (and idealistic but awkward romance) of xkcd.

and now we come to miscellanea. alice, who posts at wonderland, is a minor hero of mine (she stands next to john allison). her blog is all about videogames, the social internet, and she regularly trawls etsy for gaming craft, of which she was kind enough to feature some of my stuff a while ago. she is also going to be at game city in nottingham which i *really* want to go to, if just to see the godfather of tetris, mr alexey pajitnov himself. on a completely different subject, scarlet mist is an ethical ticket exchange - if you ever need a ticket for a sold out gig, or have a spare ticket you need to get rid of, i urge you to check this place out. i absolutely despise ticket touts (especially ebay ones), and this site has come through for me (as both a buyer and a seller) on many an occasion, and it will only get better the more people who use it. orisinal is the best place on the web for browser based games, and disposable media is the pdf mag i used to write and design for (check out issues 4-6 in the archives).

how on earth do you keep up with all these websites, i hear you ask? well that's the other thing i've been playing with today. OMEGAZOID always had an rss feed if you knew to look for it, but now we have a shiny new feedburner link (the little orange thing) to make it easy. if you look back at my screen in the pic, you'll see a program called newsfire that i use - it basically collects all the updates from all my favourite websites into the app so that i can see when people have posted without having to go to the site to check. it's very handy :) and now you can do it with OMEGAZOID! there's all sorts of readers, from downloadable programs, to widgets, to websites that do it for you, see what fits, and feel free to comment if you need any help :) alternatively, if all that sounds a bit too techy for you, you can also sign up to updates by email in the little form.

anyway i think that's far too much blogging for one night, this is obviously what happens when you let it all build up ;)