http://www.pinchiewinchie.com Game design, virtual worlds and other random nonsense. (Matt Dominianni's blog.) Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:57:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Seattle game maker, Valve Software has released updates for all 9 player-types in my favorite cartoon shoot-em up, Team Fortress 2. At $20 for the initial purchase and no recurring fees, Valve has kept the TF2 fan-base growing over the past two years by releasing free updates. New weapons and ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2010/07/tf2-is-the-kickasso-of-games-as-a-service/ This is really cool. I don't know the whole story yet (and there may not be much of one,) but Patrick of Patched Reality is at the ARevent conference in Santa Clara, and he sent me a message saying that Will Wright played the AR game that Patrick and I ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2010/06/will-wright-played-my-game/ I have completed development for the new card game I designed, Laugh Riot! This is a project I started working on many years ago, so I am really excited about it. I think it's a fun game, and so far, all the playtesters have had a great time, laughing their asses ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/10/laugh-riot-the-comedy-improv-card-game/ I recently completed the game design and implementation of a new Augmented Reality puzzle game for A&E television. I worked closely with the extremely talented programmer Patrick O'Shaughnessey, who I have worked with on-and-off since the mid-nineties. We did the project for a new agency called Circ.us. It's an innovative project, ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/08/augmented-reality-puzzle-game/ Supposedly leaked, but it's a promotional video for a game that's been out for a year. I doubt Valve will mind. http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/05/tf2-meet-the-spy-valve-gives-pixar-something-to-worry-about/ The ILL Clan's latest series, Tiny Nation is on it's way to the Oscars... we hope. :) I co-founded ILL Clan animation studio in 1998 along with Paul Marino, Manu Smith, and Frank Dellario. Frank is still at it, with Paul Jannicola, Kerria Seabrooke, and Tom Donelly. Tiny Nation is a ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/05/tiny-nation-racking-up-accolades/ Ok, so it's not specifically for Virtual Worlds, but the stimulus package does apparently include money for National Institute of Health grants that include scientific research involving virtual worlds... from the NIH Challenge Grant website: Funded projects would develop and implement virtual collaborative environments to facilitate biomedical and translational research, e.g. addressing ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/04/obamas-got-200m-for-virtual-worlds/ It's not so easy to type random words into a search engine or web browser. So if you're unemployed and looking for some random webpages you have to get creative. But it's easy to type random TinyURLs, since they are made up of random numbers and letters. I stumbled upon this ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/04/fun-with-random-tinyurls/ My mother is 64 and has enjoyed playing games since I installed Tomb-Raider on her purple iMac in the late nineties. A few years later, when I got a GameCube, I gave her my old N64, and on a recent visit, I gave her the GameCube. [caption id="attachment_164" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="My ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/03/my-mom-the-gamer/ Here's a funny collection of what happens when you let a computer do your photo editing for you. I've collected these over the years as I've spotted them, and it seems that their algorithm has improved lately, so most of these are old but ironic nonetheless. Move your mouse around the ... http://www.pinchiewinchie.com/2009/03/google-news-mistakes/