sajon77 on 10/11/2011 at 16:51
Got snowed under by work for several months, but the Looking Glass podcast is back finally. This week is Marc "Mahk" LeBlanc. Here is the summary:
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Marc was a programmer/designer at Looking Glass for most of the company's life, and was one of the major voices in shaping the overarching design aesthetic of the company. This is partially what lead to Marc being a thinker, writer, and educator on game design, developing the MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) as a simple tool for creating emergence-centric games. I talk with Marc about his time at Looking Glass, how he remembered dealing with simulation, fiction, and emergence across various projects, and how those lessons and strategies have filtered out into the rest of the games industry after the company folded.
If you ever wanted to know how performance-enhancing drugs can help you in System Shock or what the exact difference is between the design philosophies of Deus Ex and Thief, give it a listen.
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Here's the (
http://outsideyourheaven.blogspot.com/2011/11/interview-with-marc-mahk-leblanc.html) link.
demagogue on 10/11/2011 at 18:44
This was a great podcast.
There were lots of ideas I liked, way too many to mention, but one thing I particularly liked and made me feel nostalgic was when Marc talked about the 90s when players got caught up in the "experiments" of the developers and wanted to participate in the revolution, so maybe were a little more forgiving... But the positive spin of it was that everybody ("everybody" being a smaller community of gamers) could feel we were into this completely new territory with gaming, and players wanted to be a part of figuring out how this new world would work and we were all in it together. I just really liked or felt nostalgic for that idea of the relationship between player, developer, and game, and it's not something you see today ... except maybe in modding & indie gaming.
Myagi on 11/11/2011 at 23:36
Sweet! Can't wait to listen to it, I was getting withdrawal symptoms :)
jtr7 on 16/11/2011 at 02:01
Thank you thank you! :cool:
