My nephew, who is six and thinks video games are completely rad (although I had to explain the meaning of the word “rad” to him today) has long labored under the belief that I create video games rather than simply write about them. I’ve never had the heart to let him know that I am a mere media parasite, in part because he has no idea what in the world it means to be a media parasite.
Anyway, he’s in town today with the rest of his family, and he has decided to finally begin pressing the issue. He’s been asking me to create a game for him for a couple of years now, and he simply won’t take “I don’t think I can” for an answer. This afternoon he wanted to know when I’m finally going to make his game.
“What is this game you want to make?” I asked.
“Um,” he said, scarcely believing his good luck that maybe I was finally going to begin assembling his dream creation for him. “It’s… you have an arrow, that’s a rocket ship. And you have to shoot meteors. They come from the side.”
I could be mistaken, but I’m fairly certain that a game like this is easily within the realm of possibility in WarioWare DIY. We’ll give it a go tomorrow, and if it works out, that means Nintendo will have made me into a superhero in the eyes of at least one human being. You’d think they’d include that as a bullet point on the package.
Worst case, have someone suggest what he really wants is to make a game about a possum with a rocket pack. I’ll let you take the credit this once.
Hope your mission is succesful :). There’s also Little Big Planet for your game creating, although that may be quite a bit harder.
Has there been any game developer turned journo before? I always hear it the other way around.
Successfully? That’s rare. I know waaaaay too many former game journalists who wanted to make games and never pulled it off, but the successful ones are pretty rare. Also, you know, GSQ has someone writing for it who is not above rambling about games he’s worked on, so that’s at least one for you.
Um, maybe just show him Asteroids and call it a day? I mean… an arrow… shooting meteors… I don’t think you have much to do to make his dream come true.
Googleshng: yeah, but good luck getting Tomm to finally write more about Mythri.
Rad!
Recyclable: In Germany, we have an example. Anyone remember Factor 5’s Julian Eggebrecht? Before going to the US and making the Rogue Squadron-Series, Factor 5 was stationed in Cologne, they made great games like the Turricans and an awesome R-Type port for the Amiga. Anyway, for a couple of years, Eggebrecht was not also one of the Factor 5-Guys, he was also an editor for “Video Games”, back then the most popular vg-only publication. Proof: http://www.kultpower.de/videogames_1_komplett/123456789/030.jpg (first row, middle position)
D’aaaaww~
Media parasite? Jeremy, you’re hardly the sort. Yours is more of a symbiotic relationship because you have something to offer your host. Kinda like the relationship between blue green algae and fungus with lichens.
Based on personal experience over the past 20 years of trying to make something out of myself, the real parasites somehow find their way to the top; they don’t want to do any of the hard work themselves (they can’t, they don’t know how), so they suck off the people they hire only willing to pay them enough to cover the expense of food and renting an apartment.
Definition of parasite would be Squaresoft’s mitochondria phase where you had one game saying mitochondria are being used by some physchotic megalomaniacal whore intending them as viral trojan horses then releasing another game featuring a religion utilizing political/psychological manipulation through bad science by claiming the rogue genetics hacked into Bruce Lee’s mitochondria prove he is sexually meant for their divine female, but in reality the genetic tinkering is fully responsible for all of Bruce Lee’s ultra rediculous psychological trauma, and it was all done as a pretense by some megaman like alien parsitic blob that wanted to both eliminate Bruce Lee as a threat and cosnume and absorb his Bruce Lee powers for its own vile diseased purposes… And then financially murdering your successful because you felt like gambling millions of dollars to make a CGI sausage fest based on a turkey of a plot revolving around a dystopian future where humans are terrorized by ghosts, James Woods tries to solve the ghost problem by destroying the planet, and a female magically becomes pregnant after she collects 7 chaos emerrr I mean spirits.
yah, unless you stole someone’s identity expecting to hijack all their credit for yourself at their expense, you’re not a parasite.
Also if you wanted to impress your nephew, you could always lie to him and claim you made Gorf.
bah that meant to say “And then financially murdering your successful COMPANY” I really ought to learn how to proofread better…
Also, is there something wrong with using the word “rad”? explain
You lucked out Parish! You’re lucky he didn’t ask for “A game like Pokemon, but with more monsters” or “a game like GTA, where you can go in EVERY BUILDING” like my friends in their 20’s are always asking me to make.
“a game like GTA, where you can go in EVERY BUILDING” just gave me an awful Daggerfall flashback.
Young Hair Man: ‘Ha ha, I’ll play as a Burglar! I’ll be able to sneak into all the houses and steal everything that isn’t nailed down!’
About an hour later: ‘Oh god, this is probably the most boring adventuring style I could have chosen. The money is terrible compared to looting dungeons, the houses are all samey and dull, I have no real use for what money I AM getting, and these skills won’t help me advance the game’s plot at all! Time to reroll as a Spellsword.’
Daggerfall had tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of buildings you could enter. With randomly generated interiors of course, but much smaller and less complicated than the game’s randomly generated dungeons, so once you’d seen five or so, you’d pretty much seen them all.