Yeah I read the whole thing a few days ago actually (Have gamasutra on rss feed)

I really liked the article!

I'll give it away now: the cheese is stacked in the closet. What we expect the player to do at this point is to click on things around the office and hear some funny dialog, until they think to click on the closet door, which opens to reveal the cheese.

Subject M kept watching the screen for probably a minute. Then she asked, "How long are they going to look for the cheese?"

DN? I heard we where in SvD Not seen for myself

Just wanted to say that we just released our horror game "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" yesterday. I have mentioned it in a few post and while not a 100% notgame project, a lot of notgame thinking has gone into it. There is no "fun" gameplay at the core really, there is very little trial and error we have had a holistic / top-down approach where we started with a feeling and then let everything added support that. There are gamey elements in the game and I know Michael disliked a few parts with enemies The plan was to add an easy mode (with no dangerous enemies) but we did not have time. Perhaps we will add it for a patch.

In any case, I think that the notgames thinking has served us very well. What we have tried to do is to put some more responsibility on the player and require them to roleplay in order to be engaged in the game. This has been very visible in comments, as some players are simply unable to do this (perhaps to used to cheap action based thrills that do not require anything?), but quite a lot of people have, seemingly unconsciously, been able to immerse them self. Horror is probably by far the easiest emotion to do this for, but I think it bodes well for the future and I hope to explore it more.

I liked this reddit write up:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/db2d4/my_amnesia_the_dark_descent_experience_last_night/
it shows how the player managed to almost create the experience by themselves.

And we also got a, extremely surprisingly, positive review from Game Informer

Amnesia is barely a game in the traditional sense, leaving the nearly two decades of horror gaming tradition since Alone in the Dark by the wayside and forging its own twisted path.

http://gameinformer.com/games/amnesia_the_dark_descent/b/pc/archive/2010/09/08/horror-done-right.aspx

Here is a link if you are interested:
http://www.amnesiagame.com

A nice read! Gave me some things to think about

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29931/GDC_Europe_Quantic_Dreams_Cage_If_You_Dont_Create_New_Rules_You_Dont_Exist.php

Quantic Dream's David Cage wants games to change. "Look at most of the games you see -- they're defined by who you kill or what you destroy, which is a limitation in itself," he said. Cage laments what he considers a stagnation in most games over the last 25 years, which are based on violent interaction, and the same gameplay tropes.

Quite a bit of good stuff in there. Would have been interesting to see the entire speech.

I liked the essay and I totally agree. I visited Knossos this summer and it was just crowded with people. This is an annoyance when you want to go around look, and it is also something that tears on the ancient remains. Still, I want to be able to explore the places.

I think videogames, like Michael said, could do wonders for this. Various 3D scanning techniques are getting better and better too, meaning you could get a very high fidelity of details in the environments. It also means that you can use the remains as a base to rebuild it like it looked. No more do you have to be satisfied with just replicating how a pillar used to look like. You can replicate entire rooms, and fill them with sounds, physics and even people!

And just like there was no need to have a "find the brick"-game or a ball court at Knossos, to make people come there. There would is no need to add "fun" activities in a virtual exhibition. Focus could instead lie on letting the "players" immerse themselves in the place.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5952/the_deaths_of_game_narrative.php

To the ear of an outsider, this might sound like a pretty diverse scrapbook of experiences, and I'd say this was half right. But there's one element that draws all these titles together under a cozy umbrella. In each game, the protagonist -- my avatar -- is a mass murderer.

Imagine Shakespeare finishing every single scene of all of his plays with a swordfight or chase and you'll get the idea. The dialog might be good, but the story arc is a staccato of identical beats.

Some nice stuff in this article and makes a few good points.

More info:
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6266636/journey-impressions

Perhaps time to get a ps3 It is really shaping up to get some interesting titles.

Onlive, in case you have not hear about it, is a service that runs games for you and sends data i realtime. Pretty much the Game equivalent of digital TV. Here is a quick walkthrough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0CeHuvw1Fw

I was a bit skeptical about issues like lag and availability, but it actually seems to be working quite nice!

I think this can have huge consequences for games as it increase the reach of games ALOT (anyone with TV + box can play) and it would also allow for shorter time based experiences. For example you could have a virtual museum tour for 5 bucks that lets you walk around in a simulated environment for X hours. With normal software you cannot limit time for the consumer like that + it gives much quicker access (no download time, fiddling with installation, etc). What I wanna get to is that this might actually be a big breakthrough for not-games, as I think this might be a more fitting format (because it allows shorter and different experiences).

Of course Onlive comes with issues (like the whole ownership thingie), it is not yet tested full scale (only alpha probably means not so many people are using it as will later on) and it might turn out to not be profitable... yet! I do think this is what we will see more and more of in the future and that it might even turn out to be as common as cable TV in 10 years or so.

What does everyone else here think?

http://vimeo.com/12728602

Interview with Jenova Chen regarding the game.

1st: ??
2nd: Assains Creed
3rd: Half-life 2
4th: Fatal Frame (Project Zero) 2

I am very curious to know the first

I enjoyed quite a bit and really liked that you are being constructive.

There is a bunch of stuff (like the hierarchy in projects) that would be interesting to discuss more, but clock says 3:03 and brain sure feels like it. Gonna try and give some more productive comments tomorrow!

Sounds very intriguing!
I like who they start to say "why" they make the game instead of "what" the game is about.

I think video games have come bit on the way regarding this. For example, early adventure game all had a score, something that is no longer very common. This means adventure game dropped an abstract reward to focus on what really mattered. Still there are other things left in adventure games that are sort of abstract rewards, the main things being in-your-face-puzzles and a story that have a direct goal. What I mean with the story is that almost all adventure game have a story where you are set out to accomplish a certain goal, either some detective story or a save-the-world kind of affair. I cannot come up with any graphical adventure game that does not have this kind of layout. However, you need to look no further but to Interactive Fiction, and both puzzles and goal based stories have been dropped. So it seems like there is some progress on the dropping reward front, but most (all?) is outside of the mainstream.