• Non-Andean Bird

    Hours Categories Gamemaking
    Comments 10 Comments

    Some of you long-time blog readers may recall a little public project of mine called Andean Bird.*

    But that is not what I am writing about. Instead, I wanted to call your attention to this!

    That’s a prototype by Michael Wilson, who writes

    Hello there. I enjoyed your playing with your ‘Andean Bird’ prototype three years back, which was a concept I’d wanted to explore myself but never had time. I was sad to see that you didn’t continue the project. However I’ve recently had some free time to learn XNA, and I’ve made a 3D bird flight simulator that is perhaps a spiritual successor. It still needs some elements to be a playable game – sound, a ‘flight path’ to follow etc – but the simulation mechanics are working well.

    Read More “Non-Andean Bird”

  • Metaplace.com farewell party and concert

    Hours Categories Game talk, Music
    Comments 6 Comments

    To say goodbye to Metaplace.com in style, there’s a party scheduled at noon tomorrow January 1st, probably running all the way until the lights go out at midnight. Please come on by and hang out!

    I am also going to do one last, final farewell concert, after some users asked me to. It will be at 2pm Pacific (or Metaplace time) in The Stage, and I will embed it here as usual.

  • A turntable for Xmas

    Hours Categories Music
    Comments 14 Comments

    …means reading those crazy crazy liner notes, full of pretention and affection.

    …means finding Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and Steve Martin as a wild and crazy guy.

    …means wondering why my wife had so much Barry Gibb when she was a young teen. And uh, Crystal Gayle?

    …means laughing over the albums that we gave each other on CD this year that suddenly we can also play on vinyl.

    …means marveling over the 25 cent stickers on them, remembering being broke in college and tracking down obscure stuff in bins in used record stores.

    …means blasting Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.

    …means rediscovering our classical and jazz collections.

    …means, unfortunately, hours and hours and hours of “ripping” the vinyl, because the romance of the record will probably only last another few hours. 🙂

  • Metaplace.com closing

    Hours Categories Game talk, Gamemaking
    Comments 100 Comments

    Today we announced that the consumer-facing Metaplace service, the one you all know as the user-generated worlds website at Metaplace.com, is closing on January 1st. There’s a FAQ and an official letter on the site.

    The reason? Well, it just hasn’t gotten traction. I have many thoughts on why, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t go into all of them right now. It is a sad day for us here, and I know many users are going to be very disappointed by this turn of events.

    Metaplace Inc isn’t going away – in fact, we have some pretty exciting plans. But those plans are best shared on a future day.

    If we have to sunset the service, we want to do it right. So for the next two weeks – come visit, and enjoy and celebrate all of the amazing creativity and work users put into their worlds. We’re providing a way for users to grab the data that makes up their worlds. We’ll be opening a website for the community so that you don’t lose touch with your Metaplace friends. And we’ll have a big party on the last day – because Metaplace.com will not go quietly, but with the sound of meeps and music and laughter.

    It was a wonderful world full of wonderful people, and I will miss it more than I can say.