Randy Smith's Recent Blog Entries

• Essay Questions on Storytelling
  Much like real life, which is also made up as it goes along, we are invested in the unfolding, emergent story told by our actions in a videogame.

  Essay Question 5. In his closing keynote at MIGS 2008, Jon Blow expressed opinions about the intersection between stories and videogames. Summarise what he said and offer an opinion of your own.
  Jon Blow stated that stories in videogames were a losing proposition because they were either not interactive (and therefore didn’t belong in the interactive medium) or, to the extent that they were interactive, they would always be inferior to stories authored in advance by a human mind.
  
  January 7, 2009
• A Few of My Least Favorite Things

  Unimaginative gameplay solutions block our ability to innovate. Here are some of the very worst offenders.

  Randy Smith is a lead game designer at EA's LA studio. His current project is a collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
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  December 9, 2008
• The Big Question

  How much of the average videogame is art, and how much is product?

  
  On one extreme you’ve got ‘art’: Van  Gogh’s Starry Night, Michelangelo’s David, slabs of rusted metal elegantly posed outside an office building, a buck-naked performer howling and urinating while  attempting to play a xylophone with her feet. 
  
  You know, art.
  
  On the other extreme you’ve got  ‘product’: individually packaged microwavable pancakes, Pokemon plush dolls, sunglasses for  pets. Useless stuff that adds a breathtakingly small amount of value to our lives.
  
  November 13, 2008