Taking out the Trash

So, originally I started this blog to improve my writing. I would write once a week once every other week once a month, and then, over time, my writing would improve. Sound logic, right? Instead of the constant deadlines improving my writing, it forced me to turn out shitty, terrible posts. Or worse, yet, blog posts that were...*gulp*...mediocre.

I've gone through my blog and removed articles that were not worthy of the Alex Whitfield Seal of Quality© and more will be removed in the coming days. From here on out, I'll only write when I have something interesting/funny to say.

Or something profoundly stupid.

Viva Pinata: Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Viva Pinata is one of my favorite games ever. Partially because of how brilliant it is on its own, partially because it’s a Rare game that is proud of its heritage, but I think a big part of why I love it so much is that it’s unique. In a generation that has been overrun by desaturated, realistic, military shooters, the fact that Viva Pinata, an HD console game, exists at all is nothing short of a miracle. I don’t think it was really given the proper chance it really needed to become a cultural phenomenon because no one exactly knew what to do with it.

But before I continue, a history lesson…

Double Fine and Valve

Tonight, it’s Valve versus Double Fine. Are you ready to find out which is the better studio!?

Mr. Boxman Postmortem

So finally comes the post I’ve been waiting itching to write: the Mr. Boxman Postmortem!

I rebuilt Mr. Boxman into a 50 level (5 worlds, 10 levels/world) 70 costume game that I submitted to the Independent Games Festival, and I am looking into selling it on various platforms sometime in 2013 (I’ll have a demo of the first 10 levels on my website come November 1^st). Seeing as the blog post has in the title “Postmortem”, you were right to assume that the game is “done”! Granted, there are still lots of little changes I want to make, but if I were to suddenly die today from my terminal case of “Being Too Damn Awesome”, the game would still be “done”.

Game Developer Magazine does postmortem articles for games, where the developer lists the top 5 things that went right, and the top 5 things that went wrong. Now that I’ve “finished” Mr. Boxman, I thought it would be “fun” to reflect on the game and see where I went “right” and where I went “wrong”, but with minimal “quotation marks” (sorry, I’ll stop using quotes. I swear, I’m “done”).