I haven't done one of these end-of-the-year blog roundups since December 2018. This blog is now 16 years old. Maybe now's a good time to catch up over the past 6 years of my life??
Here's my "greatest hits" / notable blog posts since 2019, along with some commentary with the benefit of substantial hindsight.
⭐ = Gay game release / artist statement.
2019
- Thick skin: complexion, realism, and labor in games is still a good one, comparing the tech art of layering multiple texture maps in modern 3D game materials to Lucian Freud's fleshy painting.
- Radiator European Tour 2019 (London, Berlin, Milan) + Lessons from Europe: field reports from EGX Rezzed, Now Play This, and A MAZE Berlin provide a snapshot of the pre-pandemic games festival circuit in Europe. Flying back-to-back weekends between New York and Europe sounds glamorous but it was actually a mild nightmare and it made me realize I didn't have the energy / desire to try to become a "real artist" and all the travel it'd require.
- State of the design blog is when I officially started blogging less. Little did I know that 6 years later, it'd be the year of the blog!!
2020
- The powerful presence of non-presence in "Out For Delivery" is my last VR-centric post, about a remarkable piece of VR filmmaking in Wuhan just as the pandemic was beginning. I think it might even be the last VR thing I ever played?
- My fy_iceworld feature for Rock Paper Shotgun is probably the best thing I've written for RPS. Read the comments in part 2 for a possible tantalizing conclusion to the mystery too -- though without evidence, it's impossible to confirm anything. Thanks to editor Graham Smith for believing in it.
- ⭐ Hard Lads as an important failure. Personally I think this is one of my better gay games / masculinity simulators, and it doesn't even have any explicit nudity. It also happens to be one of my better artist statements / essays too. It's my only game to get reviewed in Art in America -- again, I was on the cusp of entering the art world, and I had to decide whether to commit to it or not.
- I got burnt out on streaming and I started making Quake maps. I can't find a blog post for my first Quake map, but #2 is Smell It In The Street and #3 is It Will Be Summer Eventually. I wouldn't say they're good levels, I was still learning TrenchBroom and figuring out my Quake design voice, but they play OK enough.
- The year of changes - kia ora Aotearoa. And the big one: I announced I was leaving New York City and moving to Aotearoa New Zealand, where I still currently reside today. (You can't get much further from the art world than this?)
2021
- ⭐ We Dwell in Possibility as queer gardening simulation was a Manchester International Festival commission and represents the height of my fine art dabbling. I still feel a bit cheated by the pandemic here -- it would've been great to attend MIF in-person and experience it firsthand. At least the game turned out pretty good! One art critic said it was surprisingly subtle and open, compared to my other games -- I forget his exact words, but it was something like -- it's my least American game.
- Three more Quake maps: #4 is Daughter Drink This Water, #5 is Tell Me It's Raining, and #6 is When There Were Wolves. I believe Daughter is regarded as one of my better maps, an adaptation of Hang 'Em High from Halo 1 that gradually unfolds itself. It represents the point when I finally became proficient and fluent enough in TrenchBroom and Quake mapping, culminating in my Quake Renaissance series for Rock Paper Shotgun.
- Open world studies: for some reason this is the year I wrote big design analysis blog posts about big meaty open-ish RPGs -- Deathloop, Enderal, and The Forgotten City (2021).
