BradOFarrell

There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of...

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:29:00 -0400

There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?

itsvondell: i dont want to write this project presentation so...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:13:20 -0400

itsvondell:

i dont want to write this project presentation so instead im just doodling mindlessly

itsvondell: colchrishadfield: Almost time to leave Station....

Mon, 13 May 2013 02:42:11 -0400

itsvondell:

colchrishadfield:

Almost time to leave Station. Hard to express all of my emotions, but mostly gratitude. I came here on behalf of so many people - thank you.

thank YOU

cantripgames: This is a little mini-animatic I just made based...

Sat, 11 May 2013 09:41:11 -0400

cantripgames:

This is a little mini-animatic I just made based on KC Green’s rough storyboards for the Story War cartoon. Lindsay and Alex are gonna translate it to a proper animation storyboard this week and then they’re gonna start animating the dang thing.

We’re recording Medusa and Gremlin’s lines on Monday. This is happening.

PS, here’s what Fairy and Goblin look like when properly animated:

Y’all are gonna love Fairy and Goblin so much. Lindsay and Alex are gonna voice them. So imagine Lindsay and Alex as treasure hunters with super powers. Get hyped.

I’m so happy about my job right now.

fishingboatproceeds: Hey, bro, cool story. DFTBA sells a bunch...

Sat, 11 May 2013 08:32:00 -0400

fishingboatproceeds:

Hey, bro, cool story.

DFTBA sells a bunch of shirts, and we market to ugly people and nerdy people and small people and big people and pretty people and we’re doing okay and plus we don’t need physical stores with LITERALLY THE WORST MUSIC EVER CREATED BY HUMANS PLAYING AT EAR-BLEEDING VOLUME SO THAT ALL OF YOUR PURPORTEDLY COOL AND BEAUTIFUL EMPLOYEES ARE MADE DEAF BY THEIR WORKING CONDITIONS.

So that’s another way of doing it.

Also I hate your jeans.

Story War was created specifically with the idea of making a game that is appealing to everybody. When making the game I tried to imagine (and actively tried to recruit for playtesting) the most extreme examples of people who would not play board games and I tried to make a game for them. I figured that people who DO play board games will buy my game either way because it’s so good and I don’t need to fine tune it to be more accessible to them, I need to fine tune it to be more accessible to people who aren’t them.

I think I was successful on that end because the people who are most excited for my game often mention that they have never been excited about a board game before.

Last night I was hanging out with my roommate and we were talking to a friend of his who is going through some serious health problems and she talked about how she’s been actively cutting all negativity out of her life and replacing with positivity because she, horrifyingly, doesn’t even know how much life she has left. Later in the conversation Kickstarter came up and I asked her if she knew about Story War and she exploded and said “I DIDN’T WANT TO BE WEIRD ABOUT IT BUT I PLAYED YOUR GAME WITH [roommate]’S PROTOTYPE DECK AND I’M OBSESSED! I don’t even like board games! I told my sister I want to just play it with her to distract myself from all the dark stuff going on in my life right now.” and we were at a bar next door to my apartment so I ran upstairs and got one of my last prototypes and let her keep it.

Taking things that appeal to me and figuring out how to make them appeal to people who aren’t like me so that they can enrich their own existence is really important to me and anyway yeah fuck this bucket of dicks.

itsvondell: cantripgames: Can you believe we didn’t notice?...

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:54:29 -0400

itsvondell:

cantripgames:

Can you believe we didn’t notice? Can you believe nobody noticed? Can you believe nobody who reblogged the box art noticed? Can you believe we did side by side comparisons to argue over things like his cheek being slightly off model.

and

we

…

We already sent the box out to printers but we literally have to “stop the presses” to fix this detail.

We are so stupid. I cannot believe we made a whole game given how stupid we collectively are.

The good news is we noticed it now instead of a month from now.

The bad news is that we are stupid.

im so embarrassed

363,000 dollars.

Video

Thu, 09 May 2013 02:18:50 -0400

frezned: itsvondell: cataquacks: voiceofwind: drvideogames: ...

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:55:00 -0400

frezned:

itsvondell:

cataquacks:

voiceofwind:

drvideogames:

oh fuck off

Did they set the goal to $10 so they would get the money no matter what

Is this what happened

hahahah oh jesus christ

this is literally a kickstarter for them to…make a podcast? an endeavor which is virtually free??????

GOODBYE

personally i am just interested to hear what a $17,000 podcast sounds like

People asking for money for something they think people want and then the people wanting that thing giving the money to the people asking for it and a third group of people getting real mad: part 2.

Also you don’t wish a podcast and then it happens goddamnit! Even if hosting costs were free (it costs this american life hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in hosting costs alone ira glass tells me every now and then) it takes effort to make a podcast, and if you’re putting effort into a thing you are well within your rights to charge money for other people to benefit from that effort.

And they’re not even charging money! The goal was $10! They’re like “hey, we want to make a podcast, do you want to support us” and everyone’s like “yes, we do” and then after the guaranteed successful kickstarter they’re releasing these podcasts as pay-what-you-want.

Like this isn’t even “ughhh people are funding such a dumb, shit thing”; the PA guys have a proven track record of entertaining content. Their D&D podcast series was fantastic. This picture is “look at this business having some success”.

I do not know what you all are finding objectionable about this beyond a maximum level of sour grapes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I was going to write a blog post about it but Tom just wrote it for me. I think part of the anger comes from this weird idea that Kickstarter is like this precious resource for indie artists - which is a false premise.

Big companies using Kickstarter hurts indies about as much as it hurts free range eggs to be sold in the same store that sells baseball cards. Different folks are gonna buy different things.

Crowd funding is the model of the future and hearing people vaguely complain every time it’s used effectively is already getting tiring.

(Also yeah the Penny Arcade podcast was great.)

thedailywhat: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains Ever...

Wed, 08 May 2013 05:42:00 -0400

thedailywhat:

What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains

Ever wonder what detrimental effect the Internet may be having on your brain? The Epipheo YouTube channel animated an interview with author Nicholas Carr, who argues that constant Internet use is harming our long term memory by over-stimulating and dividing our attention and that could be threatening our very humanity. To combat this, Epipheo recommends taking some time each day to unplug from the Internet and focus on a singular task.

This is why I ‘quit’ tumblr. … well … in a sense… Not so much because what it’s doing to me, but because of what it’s done to the other people I interact with on this site. It’s not really worth interacting with people who are so intensely steeped in this content consumption cycle. It also helps not to be so steeped in it myself, too. It’s a bad scene.

cantripgames: Hey everybody! We just finalized the box for...

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:39:00 -0400

cantripgames:

Hey everybody!

We just finalized the box for Story War!

It looks like this! How cool is this?

Pretty dang cool.

I’m so happy with this.

The first two lines of 30 Rock. I love how 30 Rock was about...

Tue, 07 May 2013 05:23:00 -0400

The first two lines of 30 Rock.

I love how 30 Rock was about something.

I love how these lines totally set up the power dynamic that was at the core of the show - the conflict between Liz in the world, but also, the conflict between old white men with power and everybody else.

I love that this guy is the kind of person Tina Fey hates more than anything in the world and that she made a show about her and a guy like this learning to be friends. The first line shows Liz’s inability to let herself be freed from the rat race and the second line shows the person responsible for the rat race existing.

30 Rock was about the trade off between power and happiness. It was about Liz learning that to enjoy her life she had to give up on her dreams and ideals just a little bit. But she had to work for that failure. Settling has to be earned.

It was a really beautiful message.

What a good thing.

cantripgames: KC Green just finished storyboarding the Story...

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:55:00 -0400

cantripgames:

KC Green just finished storyboarding the Story War cartoon! Here’s a few choice frames! Ha ha ha can you believe our most ridiculous Kickstarter reward is actually happening ha ha ha wow I kind of thought we were going to just apologize and under deliver on that one.

Next step: Lindsay and Alex are gonna actually animate the frickin’ thing! The storyboard is so good you guys. KC Green is so good. This cartoon is gonna be great.

frezned: magicandvoidstuff: Brad asked for pictures of the...

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:57:57 -0400

frezned:

magicandvoidstuff:

Brad asked for pictures of the Witch-ness so, yeah…

This is only the hair, make-up, and ~~first attempt~~ pointy latex-ears of a full cosplay I’m planning to wear to MCM London, so if any of you are going, look out for me!

(for my non-Story War followers, the Witch Card)

ohhh my GOSH

Oh my GOD!

!!!

The final art for the Winter Wand - previous iterations shown...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:36:03 -0400

The final art for the Winter Wand - previous iterations shown below. (Previously called Frost Wand.)

cantripgames: Hey! I just noticed we haven’t really updated...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:34:11 -0400

cantripgames:

Hey! I just noticed we haven’t really updated about what we’re doing with the cards and stuff in a while! Today (toDAY) is the deadline for sending the cards off to the printers. We’ve spent the last few weeks doing minor revisions and trying to get a consistent look and feel across all the cards, replacing art that’s always bothered us, and doing some last minute adjustments based on our PAX playtesting.

Since we brought Lindsay and Alex on board to help with the cartoon, they gave us some really good advice on making the character faces appear more consistent and expressive and cartoony across the board. So we’ve been doing things like that. Here you can see the wizard’s face updates! He went from a glowy-eyed halpert-faced guy to a really expressive cartoon guy which is a much better look, I think!

Once we send the final deck off to the printers we’ll ALSO release an updated print-and-play version of the game, that will more closely resemble the final game!

I’m trying to find a picture of the platonic ideal for an...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 08:58:00 -0400

I’m trying to find a picture of the platonic ideal for an aurora for a Story War card and it’s really difficult. When I think “aurora” I think of a snaking string of icicle-shaped lights but all the photos of real auroras just look like smudges of color.

Not a single photo or reference for an aurora is representative of what I think of when I visualize an aurora in my brain. The closest I can find are auroras from video games (except Pokemon which has garbage auroras) and movies. Where did this “platonic ideal aurora” imagery come from? The Observatory room in Luigi’s Mansion? The movie Frequency? Why do I recognize this shape that does not exist in nature.

Anyway here’s the mockup I ended up making:

I had to photoshop two auroras together, a raggedy one and a smooth one. This is for the Winter Wand, we’re having trouble visualizing how it freezes things so we decided that meant we should probably make a definitive visualization and put it on the card so that everyone playing Story War is on the same page as to how it freezes stuff.

video game journalism

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:13:16 -0400

video game journalism

”The stories that I like the most are where he kind of...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:37:01 -0400

”The stories that I like the most are where he kind of goes a little nuts trying to achieve his goal, and then he dials it back and realizes what’s really important,” says Bozon, who cites Scrooge as one of his favorite fictional characters. “He’s very relatable. He’s not a superhero, he’s a thinker and nothing gets him down, he always bounces back. He’s like Ash Ketchum but with money.”

— Matt Bozon of Wayforward on Ducktales Remastered

I’ve been playing a lot of the best-selling free-to-play...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:15:00 -0400

I’ve been playing a lot of the best-selling free-to-play games on iOS lately. I’m really curious to see how the different free-to-play models work because I want to make my own mobile games. I really like a lot of them, like Clash of Clans (which lets you buy gems to speed up construction time) and Fish Out of Water (which lets you buy little power-ups, though you can get them for free and it’s possible to get a perfect score without them). And a few days ago I downloaded Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga by King.com and I was really enjoying them until I realized they were dark-sided.

Candy Crush Saga (which was recently featured in Psy’s newest video) is essentially a combination of Bejeweled and rogue-like gameplay elements - you have to clear a specific mission in a specific number of moves. If you run out of moves without clearing the mission, you lose. The game is a series of missions with specific goals (clear all the jelly, get the chestnuts to the bottom, get a score within the time limit, etc) and gradually increasing complexity with each level. That, by itself, is a really cool idea. It’s actually super fun and addictive. (Bubble Witch Saga is the same thing but it’s based on Puzzle Bobble instead of Bejeweled.)

But there’s a twist… most of the time it is impossible to win. The tile layout is randomly generated in such a way that even if you play with 100% efficiency the game is rigged against you. Unless, of course, you buy in-app purchases to get extra moves or special powers. Like a carny’s game, you won’t realize the cans are glued together until you buy your third softball.

Apparently 70% of people beat Candy Crush Saga without ever actually buying anything, but they do so by playing the same levels over and over until it randomly generates a tile layout that’s actually winnable. At first I thought I was just bad at the game, but then I played Bubble Witch Saga which has fewer possible moves and it’s much easier to be sure you’re playing the game as effectively as possible and still see yourself lose over and over.

And on level 30 of Candy Crush Saga (where I’m currently stuck) there were so few available moves that the game would have to reshuffle the layout at least once per life. The player has so few options for making good choices that even if they make the best choice at every turn they can still lose.

Also, something about the look and feel of Bubble Witch Saga reminds me of video poker or a themed slot machine. The poorly thought out character design, the stock “cha-thunk” sound effect when you click a big Fisher Price button, and the weird soundtrack all feel so … un-game-like.

I looked into King.com (which describes itself as “a leading destination for skill-based games”) and it has no connection to online gambling as far as I can tell. But most of it’s leaders come from an e-commerce background rather than a gaming background. Maybe games that are made by people without a passion for games just share a similar aesthetic? Maybe they all get art assets from the same non-game art asset warehouse. Who knows.

Anyway, I’m not going to berate King.com’s games for their monetization strategies. Making money is cool. Coming up with new ways to make money is cool. This is just… something I’ve never heard of or thought of before… and I feel like I’m staring into the gaping maw of a dark abyss.

And as far as I can tell, people are generally annoyed by this kind of free-to-play strategy (warning: that link contains e-rage, racism, nsfw, etc). It’s clever, but I wouldn’t want to employ it in my own games.

cantripgames: Hey everybody, we have some big news today! These...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:41:00 -0400

cantripgames:

Hey everybody, we have some big news today!

These gifs are test animations from the Story War animated short! Making a cartoon was our Kickstarter’s $200k stretch goal, and I bet you thought we were bluffing, didn’t you? You totally did.

The short will be animated by Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera (who made Baman Piderman and the gifs above) and it will be written and storyboarded by KC Green (who does Gunshow and the Regular Show comic). We’ll be posting about the cartoon’s progress on this blog, and we expect it to be finished by the end of the summer.

Our Kickstarter is over, but you can still pre-order Story War here!