I must say Portal 2 left me incredibly cold. I constantly felt like the game was telling me what to do, what to think, what to see. At some point all manner of incredible things happen and I was just standing there, thinking: "Would you like me to do anything while you're busy showing off?"

Jeroen, I'm surprised to hear you voice this particular criticism of Portal 2 given your recent update to Dinner Date which removes the need for the player to interact at all (as a sidenote I thought your press release couching this update in purely positive terms like "adding"/"recognizing"/"expanding" was very funny+clever).  I'm curious what the distinction is for you between the way Valve has handled this tension between interaction & non-interaction vs. what you're doing (& are interested in continuing into your next project from the sound of it).

Ya congrats Thomas & team!  Great seeing you get so much acclaim at the IGF, well done

I must upfront admit that the visual/audio form turned me off a bit, but I thought some of the reactions the character game were wittily thought of.

Hey thanks for checking it out & sharing your thoughts, Jeroen   Incidentally, I picked up Dinner Date a few weeks ago and very much enjoyed it.  I was surprised by how much I identified with the character -- not in the sense that I felt sympathetic to him or that his thinking matched my own, but in the sense that I had the feeling of being very much "in his head" -- and it being an uncomfortably crowded place for our two subjectivities to process the evening alongside one another.  Also, as an experiment in storytelling the combination of stream-of-consciousness and the magnification (or celebration) of mundane gestures (lighting a cigarette, playing with a piece of bread in soup) is a rich combination and again an immersive experience.  So, well done & the attention it's getting is well deserved!

It shows a strange thing in this competition, however - the only thing Amnesia and Nidhogg have in common is that they are interactive - you may as well compare a electronic 80s band with a chamber orchestra. Yet they are pitched for the main prize. In judging them surely taste in type is more important than a comparative taste in excellence.

Yeah, it's hard for me to understand what kind of claim a jury would be making by awarding one of these games over the other.  Perhaps, as in any committee, it's more like a bunch of individual claims being made at cross-purposes & then aggregated

Oh and congrats Thomas on all the Amnesia nominations!

My game "A House in California" is a finalist as well, which I'm super thrilled about!  I haven't been to GDC/IGF before so I'm looking forward to that experience.  I'd love to meet any folks on this board in person if you're attending!

'The Cat and the Coup' is great - I got to play it & meet Kurosh at the Meaningful Play conference a few months ago.  'Dinner Date' sounds quite interesting; on my list to buy soon

Howdy!

I have been meaning to dig into this forum for quite a while - I'm glad for the opportunity to interact with y'all and explore the theories+practices of video game development as artistic theories+practices & not strictly industrial/professional/technical.  Both kinds of exploration are useful to me but there are already so many forums for the latter

My name is Jake Elliott & I live in Chicago.  I'm an artist & work with software art; about a year ago I started seriously making video games which has become my medium of choice.  My games are mostly concerned with interpersonal relationships and the playful+distracted state of mind that many people call "daydreaming."  They're mostly (5) available on my website: http://cardboardcomputer.com/ and a couple smaller ones are only on Kongregate.

The most widely-played game I've done is a character/text-driven platformer called "I Can Hold My Breath Forever."  Just a few days ago I released a new point+click game called "A House in California," which is thematically centered on family, nostalgia & distortions of memory.

Nice to meet you!