Yesterday, I gave a talk at UC Berkeley about character development and player identity in story-driven videogames. You can listen to a full recording of the talk and subsequent Q&A session here.
The PowerPoint presentation I used can be downloaded from here, but it’s not 100% necessary. Without the PowerPoint, it’s just a one-man podcast where a group of people laugh every twenty minutes for no immediately discernible reason. Which may have its own weird charm.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the talk. I enjoyed giving it.
Uh, the link to the audio isn’t there. At least for me.
dude, there’s no link to see anything, help me here
Yeah, same for me.
I just pixel-hunted the entire post for a link to the audio and didn’t find one.
Also, I thought you had an incestuous relationship with your sister until you explained it on HAWPcast.
Whew.
Yup, it looks like you forgot to put the link to the audio in. I hope you notice this soon, I really want to hear that talk.
And there it is. Thanks. Awesome timing.
Yeah, sorry about that. I’m a moron.
My firefox crashes every time I try to load it. Gonna check for updates. If there are no updates I guess I can’t listen =(
Oh so you enjoy “giving it”, huh?
Thanks for posting this. It was an interesting listen.
I’m gonna make a new video with the powerpoint added in and funny pictures of anthony, and dicks.
Oh, phew. The lecture IS on iTunes. I was worried I’d be tethered to my computer if I wanted to listen to it. Though Mēvio should be happy I watched their entire Air Wick commercial before realizing that…
I really enjoyed this talk. No offense, but sometimes in your rev rants and and on podtoid you sound a bit like a broken record, repeating that no russian sucks and far cry 2 is awesome, etc. But amazingly, when you are giving a substantial amount of time to explain and elaborate on your points, they make more sense. I took less objection to some of them anyway.
And yeah, I may have just called you repetitive and annoying, but I listen to podtoid and your rants, and read your blog posts and editorials, because I appreciate your, as well as dtoid’s, somewhat intellectual take on game discussion, and in general, I enjoy hearing your opinions.
Sendspace? I am disappoint.
Here’s a link for to see the presentation for those of us that don’t have powerpoint. http://tinyurl.com/yfujjfw
Thanks for this link. Didn’t have to wait for the power point to load for over 20 minutes. Quite convenient.
i lol’d at 1:14:55 and the last few seconds.
i really really enjoyed this, very insightful and thought provoking.
Very interesting talk. Thanks for posting this up.
I really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing it.
Hey hey, just wanted to let you know that I found your analysis of utility and agency in games both fascinating and actively useful.
Now it’s my turn to come across as a massive nerd: Outside of my day job I run a classic pen and paper RPG in which Chekov’s gun is fairly rigorously adhered to. Even though you were talking about a different medium I found myself taking more than a few mental notes to apply to my own circumstance with regards to creating a feeling of investment and value for NPCs. It’s not a subject that is often tackled this directly, so , well, thanks for that.
Also, you should totally see if you can get an Ubisoft sponsorship deal. Or at least an advance copy of Farcry 3.
Anthony, I used to think you were just some guy talking about video games, but I can’t imagine you haven’t thought about these topics a staggering amount after listening and posing my own questions. Amongst many other things, I’ve been working on mathematical equations for balancing RPGs recently and it’d be interesting to talk to you about that, just to see if there’s any non-mathematical angles I’ve been missing and, maybe, just to strengthen my arguments.
E-mail is fine if you read this and are interested.
Hi there!
I’m a new listener to the HAWPcast and just wanted to mention that I really enjoyed this talk a lot! You made some great points.
I now have a burning craving to play FarCry 2 though…weird, eh?
=P
I’d just like to add that the bird collosus will kill you very easily if you stand on the platforms and don’t move or, jump at it but fail to grab on.
Other than that, a good talk.
This talk makes me feel like I knew nothing about videogames.