Confessions of a Quirky Christian Artist

Let me clarify that I'm referring to "story" in the most common sense that most game players perceive as story. (that is: cutscenes as opposed to world design, mechanics and other intrinsic communication ques.) I'll go into what I think future storytelling in games should look like after the critique. The video game industry. So here we are. 40 years old. (give or take) For some perspective, let's look at where the movie industry was at 40… making films like Gone with the Wind. What do we have that compares? To be fair, our industry has bigger technological and logistical hurdles to leap than the film industry did. Yes, cameras, film, sound and color all developed and put them through their growing pains. But within ten years they had created the formula for the medium that is still used to this day. They took the linier story telling of novels and plays and put them together with the power of music and editing to create a new experience that transcende...

For the previous parts to this series see 1 , 2 , 3 , & 4 . I think that Jesus is special. Not ‘short bus’ special, but ‘distinct in important ways’. Of course this can be said about anyone, and especially applied to any great leader, teacher, or religious prophet. When one uses the adjective “special” to describe a person, there is no numeric or standardized method for determining the validity of the designation. So I’m not here to say that Jesus was “more special” than Gautama or Muhammad, as though the comparison would mean anything. What I want to say is that Jesus displays characteristics that are important and meaningful to me. More important than the characteristics of the Buddha or Joseph Smith. This ought to be expected given my upbringing in a seriously Christian family and a post-Christian country spawned by a long lineage of Christian cultures. Western civilizations have been shaped by the ideas of Christianity for a long time, and as a product of...

A downloadable semi-game on Playstation Network. It's 10 bucks. It's worth it. Made by the same team that made Flow, and it's similar in a lot of ways. It's got an ethereal darkish ambient soundtrack that you add too with notes that are struck as you collect flower petals. It's a 3-D world and you are ... the wind... maybe? you basically fly the camera around and as you pass flowers their petals will blow off into a train of petals that grows longer and longer as you get more flowers. Blowing over glowing flowers will change the environment in different ways, like turning a patch of brown grass to green or moving Stonehenge-like rock formations, unlocking new areas to explore. While this mechanic is a bit odd, it's not really the point of the game. Flower is closer to a painting that you can fly through. It truly is interactive art, drawing the viewer in to participate in a vision. Screen shots really don't do this game justice, as the mood is heavi...

http://www.thefallthemovie.com/ Ran across this movie randomly this weekend. Absolutely phenomenal cinematography and locations. It's sort of like Big Fish in that it's a person telling tall tales which are shown in an amazing style. It's about an early 1900's stunt man who takes a bad fall on the set, loses the ability to walk, and loses his girlfriend to the leading man. He's stuck in a hospital and a precocious little immigrant girl runs across him and he ends up telling her stories as a hook to get her to bring him pills so he can overdose to kill himself. The actress is amazing 90% of the time. She's not so good at displaying fear or sadness, but her conversations with the stuntman are simply real in ways I can't even imagine how they managed to get the script to work. But it does so brilliantly. It took me two viewings to really understand the ways the real world, the state of mind of the stuntman, and the intrusions of the girl were modifying ...

The following is a record of the responses I got from my Examiner article ' Why I'm a Christian 4: Utility ' on the Atheism forum on Reddit. I really wish I could get such an extended conversation on a Christian forum, but I haven't found any that will just let people explore ideas without getting shut down or shouted out or just plain banned. (I've never actually been banned myself as I always strive to follow the community rules. But I see others who bring up points of view similar to my own getting banned.) Anyway, I'm not unaware that one is influenced by the communities in which they spend their time. And even though I am actively debating these atheists it's still surprising how much common ground we share. It's possible that my world view is being subtly bent to the shape of their hammers since they are the only people who will give me in-depth criticism. But let me explain why I keep coming back. First of all, I'm under the impression...