Interview

Art in Play

An Interview with John Sharp about games and art

John Sharp, Alejandro Lozano

Alejandro Lozano: Before getting into details, let’s start with a definitional question. What is your concept of aesthetic and how do you apply it to games when you connect them to art?

John Sharp: Aesthetics means a lot of things. It can refer to having your fingernails painted or to the visual appearance in visual arts. If you talk about it with animation students, they will talk about the aesthetics of a film and what they mean is the visual style. That is one part of aesthetics, but to me, aesthetics is the evaluation of experience and the value of a work of art. By extension that means some philosophical framework underlying and serving as a guide for both the way you focus your attention during the experience and also the things you value and the things you do not. Continue Reading →

Interview with Brianna Wu

Software Engineer, Game Developer, Feminist Warrior

Alexandra Orlando

On November 1st and 2nd Brianna Wu visited University of Waterloo as part of the HeforShe campaign to talk with students and professors about women in tech initiatives, Gamergate and feminism in the games industry. I was able to steal her away from her busy itinerary to discuss the role of academic institutions and publishing in the tech world, as well as some of her missions while she is here in Waterloo. Continue Reading →

The Power of Imagined Worlds:

An interview with Austin Walker

Felan Parker 2 Comments

Austin Walker is everywhere these days. As a game scholar, an independent critic, an occasional game designer, a Twitch streamer, news editor at Giant Bomb, and soon as editor-in-chief of Vice’s recently-announced gaming portal, Austin has been a paragon of thoughtful, incisive commentary and discussion in gaming culture. He also makes a podcast about tabletop roleplaying games called Friends at the Table. Continue Reading →

Interview with Christopher Park

CEO of Arcen Games

Christopher Park 1 Comment

One of the things that frustrates me with a lot of games that I play is when I see somebody have a cool idea and then they kind of nudge the idea, you know? And they’re like, “that’s nifty, now moving on” — it’s like whoa whoa whoa wait a second here. We tend to try not only just to fully explore whatever the idea is, but, if we’re given the chance and there’s a lot of community support and therefore post-release content is a thing that can happen then we’ll just keep on trucking and explore every permutation of that idea. I find that really interesting because those rabbit holes can go, just, I’ve never found the bottom of one. Continue Reading →