Taught class earlier tonight, which went far better than last week’s. Began by going over everyone’s homework assignments, which was to design a game based upon a past experience. Heard some interesting (and revealing) ideas. One was based upon time travel, so I ended up describing a single player/multiplayer game I created using the Tom Clancy license that used time travel to achieve the effect. Next I went over the various facets of character, which included an overview of prominent game characters, from Pac Man to Laura Croft (I feel stupid for not including Tony Hawk). Then I continued with my overview of the history of video games: covered the rise of Nintendo, the Tetris debacle, the advent of the Game Boy, the early struggles of the Sega Genesis, how Sonic the Hedgehog came to be (I feel doubly stupid for forgetting to mention that he was originally a cat), Mortal Kombat, and the Nintendo PlayStation. Plus I gave out copies of a game design document I did back at Ubi Soft, Rayman Online Chronicles, for reference. Despite the fact that they were never produced, I feel the games are still pretty solid, and have yet to see any web games that come close to what I came up with, even three years later.
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Occasionally on the train ride home, I’ll see this old back guy who draws people’s portraits and then tries selling it to whomever he just drew. They always say no and he always gets really angry about it (he’s sort of an asshole, btw). Tonight he tried drawing me, but I got off before he could finish, thankfully. This was also the first time I’ve seen his work up close, and going by what he had, he’s really not that good. Not that he can’t draw, he just did a poor job capturing my image (my nose was way too big).
