Welcome to XFunc, the
website and professional blog of Tim Carter. This site showcases the work I've done
developing game-based products - for promotion, learning and
entertainment - and various media and interactive projects, and is a place I write out some things.
Here is
a commentary I wrote, which appeared on the game industry
portal Gamasutra, 4 February (making this another of my belated
posts on this site).
Check it out...
Recently, I was interviewed by Michelle Macleod at
itBusiness.ca
for an article on serious games (published 5 Feb).
Read it here...
Bad Project Management
Video Which Satirizes Innovation-Killing Office Culture
(9 Feb 2009)
Normally I don't post links to other stories, but when I saw
this one on
Feldsparia (my friend's blog), done by an astronaut showing
how how the insular, bureaucratic culture of NASA throttled
innovation, I couldn't help it. I've run into this stuff many
times, and it's nice to see someone who gets it.
(However, 1.] the acting is kind of crappy, and 2.] I would
point out that arms folded in front of the chest is not body
language for "I'm defensive" as commonly believed; this is
actually signaled by holding the hands
behind ones back.)
There was also an
NPR story (US public radio) giving background on this video.
I'm still chugging away, working on stuff that reaffirms the
importance of design in game development. To that end, a busy
fall and early winter. Here's what's up... [More>>>]
Far north of Toronto - where in the winter you
often see the breathtaking Aurora Borealis, and in the summer
you can get lost in a vastness of the Bush in the lee of the
great lake Gitchee Goomee, having no contact with the outside
world for months and let deep creativity rise from a percolating
stillness of your soul... Up there is a land few Canadian
urbanites bother to find out about (to their detriment). Gather
around the campfire and listen as I tell you-
(...Okay, maybe I'm painting the wrong
picture for this. Let's start over...) [More>>>]
Ontario Game Commentary
Breaks give Ontario video game industry extra life
(5 May 2008)
I was recently contacted by Darren Zenko, a reporter for the
Toronto Star (Canada's largest newspaper), who interviewed me
for a story he was doing on Ontario's tax breaks for game
developers. You can read the article
here...
Last October (2007) the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC
got in touch with me trying to invite me to an event they
were doing called
Partners In Technology. They had been directed
to me by my friend Bruce Milligan, who runs the serious games
initiative of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in DC
(Bruce is a veteran of Avalon Hill, Microprose and others - I
know him from BreakAway where we worked together). I am the
Canadian serious game designer he knows. So anyway, I flew down,
crashed at Bruce's place (he and his wife have a charming
200-year-old home between DC and Baltimore) and then went to this embassy
event next morning. [More>>>]
I have been up to a ton of stuff that last few
months, but been neglecting my site. Probably I have too much on
my plate now. Anyway, here's what I've been up to... [More>>>]
At the 2005 Serious Games Summit (which I did not report on
on my site), I remember one presenter saying something I thought
odd. He was promoting the making of serious games and said... [More>>>]
At the Christmas party of
Kaos
Studios in New York City over the holidays I told one of the
level designers this: I had always wanted to get into level
design but had never made the leap. But by the end of the
holidays, I was up to my eyeballs in it. [More>>>]
The first (or was it second) TIGC was a really nice little
event. Kicked it off with a presentation on serious games - both
in general and in Canada - and I hope I stimulated something.
Whatever... It was small - and in a good way. [More>>>]
I have meant to write a long piece about the masterful
real-time strategy (RTS) game Ground Control because it had
accomplished something truly fresh (most real-time strategy games
have nothing to do with strategy). I still plan to. But when
Philip Goetz wrote a much-needed exposé of sorts on the sorrowful
state of RTS interface design I just had to write in something
then and there to Gamasutra in support of his position - and also
mention GC... [More>>>]
From my friend Baron von Feldspar, who says it with panache...
A long time ago in a galaxy far far way I, Baron von
Feldspar was a merchant prince who started, with some unindicted
co-conspirators, my own shipping line in the
Spinward Marches. At the
Traveller Wiki Major Heddon has documented some of the history
of
Bowman Trading and Salvage.
I am the one Major Heddon, whom Feldspar speaks of. And yes, I
am guilty of logging some of our old war stories from a long ago
sci-fi roleplaying campaign. I gamemastered most of it (save for
an adventure here or there, in which I actually got to play),
though we also had a unique way of playing - we collectively
gamemastered sometimes (and it worked - though ask me how
later). Some day soon I hope to crack open the Traveller
books again for more galactic romps (though I'll probably adapt my
Fire Zone rules to it when I do).
I love gamemastering sci-fi roleplaying adventures.
They say that only outsiders and tourists call Los Angeles
"LA". I have a friend (well, my writer-uncle's friend) - a
screenwriter (who is, in turn, friends with a bonafide
Oscar-winning screenwriter [won for penning a Clint Eastwood
flick: you do the math]) - who has a much better name for it: the
"Dirty Avacado". It contrasts with New
York's "Big Apple". So I
had the pleasure of staying at his Ventura-area home and driving
around the sprawling sprawl of the Dirty Avocado for a couple
days. [more>>>]
Having returned from the recent Serious Games Summit 2005 I
find an observation buried inside me, something nagging to be let
out. [more>>>]
Sitrep - November 2005
Just a quick note to say: Wow! What a year I have had... [more>>>]
Game vs Movie Production
I have a background in game design and film production, which
is turning out to prove advantageous as the game industry
struggles to slough off an old skin and move into a new mature
phase. People draw many comparisons between these two industries -
and there are many reasons to do so - though there are also many
contrasts that need to be made.
I'd like to highlight a couple articles about this rift.
One I wrote some months back which I'll repost now. I sent it
to Telefilm Canada. (Sometime later Telefilm renamed the phases of
its New Media Fund to reflect proper game development lingo.)
Always the artist, my article compares and contrasts the "spirit"
of the creative and production process between game making and
filmmaking - not so much the hard business structure.
The other is an article by Brian Hook. Brian goes much more in
depth into the business structure of either industries and the
reasoning behind this. He makes the case - a case I have pushed
elsewhere - that game production needs a central visionary who has
the final say over the creative decisions; much akin to a movie's
director. I agree with it, in theory, though I will say that even
in film the faith in director-as-auteur is probably given more lip
service than actual weight. Nevertheless, the film industry's
auteur model is probably one reason why it eventually became such a
significant creative form. (There was a time when films were
basically mere pop entertainment - kind of like drugstore
dime-novels - thus Variety, for example, always called
theatre "legit" [legitimate] and film, well... not legit. Sound
familiar?...) The importance invested in the film director did not
necessarily have to evolve. It was pursued; much to the benefit of
the movie industry and to movie viewers (which, today, comprise
the population at large). Will it happen in the game industry as
well?
Stuart Roch, writing in Gamasutra, has just made an
argument in the mainstream game development world that is
something like one we have
been making for a few years now: that there needs to be a new
model for developing games, one more based on the filmmaking
approach. One that divides game development into three distinct
parts:
The publishing sphere;
The nuts-and-bolts work of running a game company and doing
development;
The high-level visionary work of
designing creative new game concepts.
We at XFunc (myself and my associates) are already moving down this road: we believe in
the separation of high-level creative game design (our
specialty) from the other spheres of the game industry. (I addressed this topic
formally in an article called
The Imagined Game.)
It allows us to focus on pure game design and research without
having to manage a technical or art production company (which is
really a different job altogether) - much the way film producers,
directors and writers don't keep camera shops in their offices.
So it is good to hear that others in the game industry are finally
starting to seriously consider this. [You can read Mr Roch's
full article
here >>>]
That term "game" is such a double-edged sword
(as I have written elsewhere). On the one hand implying fun and
lightness, on the other a term elemental in nature - it best describes what it describes.
The first, dedicated Serious Games Summit - which I attended in
Washington last week - would have been misnamed if it were the
"Simulation Summit" or something similar. Nevertheless, there is a
newfound openness to the idea - floating around the halls of the
Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington DC - that fun leads to faster "knowledge
transference" (a jargon term if ever I heard one); and that what
has been learned in the entertainment world can lead to more
effective (and less expensive) learning in real world fields
of education, military, medicine, et cetera. [More>>>]
New Website, Renewed Vision (15 Oct 2004)
XFunc is pleased to announce the release of its new site and look,
and the renewal of its vision. These things are being done to get ready for some
new upcoming releases
we have planned. We've retained most of our older content as well, but
will be focusing on developing new products, and pushing forward.
Future work in XFunc will follow up on our successes in projects
combining "old school" traditional fields - such as education, mining,
banking, military, strategy - with new interactive and communication
methods. Expect to see projects from us that are engrossing and
educational, interesting and fun. We're looking forward to it!
pl_Industry