The latest from Niall Taylor (@nialljtaylor). Games Designer / Artist / VGA -. Manchester

E3 Livetweet and Drinking!

Hey folks in case you are wondering, we're all tweeting along to E3 and drinking while we do it! Imma get drunk, come ask me questions about game, follow all the people I retweet (who are also on tumblrs but I won't out them if they don't want)

There will be cursing, like, a lot of cursing, and we're definitely gonna be needlessly mean about every game.

I've been fairly quiet on this blog lately - I've primarily been concentrating on mostly non visual stuff, including

Various design and mechanic docs for Nice Face stuff

Super exciting stats and maths for Nice Face stuff

Learning gamemaker

Building a university project in gamemaker that is extremely non-tumblr-friendly when it comes to uploading the gifs (srsly tumblr plz fix that)

Writing essays

I made a Twine game for the Naked Twine Jam.

I mean if you're interested in a report on how we can use animal farm to predict future revolutions and then trick kids into thinking a certain way about it then I'll happily post it but...

..I don't think ya'll are.

Hopefully, I'll have a ton of stuff to reveal in the coming weeks and months. Nice Face Games will be announcing our new title, so I'll be recruiting alpha testers, lets players, reviewers, and anyone else who fancies helping us make it as good as it can possibly be!

(This is a thing I'm working on, and I'm not really sure if its my favourite thing I've ever wrote or just fake intellectual nonsense. Regardless, there are tons of Gone Home spoilers throughout. )

  Ghost in the Machine

The Significance of the Supernatural in Gone Home

  Gone Home is a game in which a young woman, Kaitlin, returns home after a year abroad to her family’s new home. Already unfamiliar with the layout, things take a turn for the worse when she finds the old building completely deserted, with nothing but a cryptic note from her sister, Sam. What follows is an unexpectedly creepy, surprising and thoroughly compelling story, as the player tiptoes around the house, examining objects and rifling through drawers to piece together just what happened to her family.

In the run up to Gone Home being released, theories of what had happened to Sam and her family were rampant. The most popular, of course, was that the house was haunted by some sort of malevolent presence, and that Kaitlin and the player were walking into a deathtrap. This rumour was quickly debunked by the game’s writer and lead designer Steve Gaynor, who stated in no uncertain terms on his twitter feed that people expecting a ghost were not getting one, and were going to be disappointed - even going as far as hiding an easter egg in Gone Home itself, referencing the theory.

This didn’t, in fact, do much to deter the ghost theory. Indeed, it was generally accepted that while the house may not currently contain a ghost, it was still entirely possible that one had been present at some point.

This is where this article comes in – just what is the significance of the ghost in making Gone Home the great game it is? I would argue that the ghost, whether you believe it exists or not, is a central part of Gone Home’s core narrative, and is the key to proving that games are a medium worth studying by all academic disciplines. The author is dead, and Gaynor’s intent is no longer a factor in analysis.

(Needless to say, spoilers abound after this point. If you have yet to play Gone Home and wish to experience it properly, read no further!)

Inspired by various "jam" websites, I have decided to put together a list of themes to work through this academic year alongside my other studies. I will put together a fun list of themes taken from various websites and attempt to create a piece of artwork based around it. I am not setting a rigid time limit, but am going to try for one a week!

Here is the list, and if any of my artist followers want to join in, that would be awesome!

 Disney Character Re-Design

 Rider and Mount

 David vs Goliath

 Alice In Wonderland

 Wild Wild West

 Noah's Ark Rejects

 Greek Mythology

 Voodoo Witch or Shaman

 Favourite TV Show/Cartoon of the 80s/90s

 Man-Eating Plants

 Elemental Weapons

I was intending to live blog this throughout the week, but what with one thing or another (Brighton is insane fun, chain chatting at panels and booths, delicious takeaways) I never got the chance.

There were many, many highlights of the conference, too many to cover over one single post. Therefore over this week I will be slowly churning out my take on the various things I experienced. This will include chatting to the various indie developers in the showcase competition, including the near legendary student devs Digipen (Portal), the new MS OS Windows 8, and in particular the tablet version (throw away your android, its that good) and my personal highlight, the work done by the charity Special Effect.

If you were at the conference or expo, or just fancy asking my opinion, I am still in total "enthusiastically talk to strangers about games" mode - lets get chatting.