Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

Now I’m no longer writing for other sites, I’d planned to stop writing worklogs on here and instead write proper posts instead. As it is though, my final piece of games journalism just went live on Gamasutra. Seems a shame not to talk about it…

Published under the wordy title of ‘ANGELINA: The Computer Program That Designs Games‘, the article is the result of a hefty three-hour interview I did with Mike Cook, an academic at Imperial College London. Mike and I discuss the philosophy of creativity, look at his titular research and discuss (perhaps controversially) whether artists are really as creative as they might think:

“Good ideas aren’t intentionally produced; you just recognize that one of the random thoughts you were having was good… But nobody thinks of themselves that way. They think themselves incredibly creative. Artists will say that their muse descended on them.”

It really is a shame there’s not more stuff written about games in academia; there’s much more out there than bits about whether games cause real-world violence! Take this paper Mike pointed me to, for example – about a procedural generator that generates procedural generators procedurally.

While I’m talking about my old work, I’ll say quickly that my last issue of Custom PC Magazine should still be on sale for another day or two. After that the excellent Rick Lane will be taking over from me and I’ll be focusing on the future of Unlimited Hyperbole.

I also found out today that I was long-listed for the first annual Games Journalism Prize (for this article) and, while I didn’t make the short-list, Rick did. Congrats to him!