This weekend, I participated in the Global Game Jam at the SCAD Atlanta / Georgia Tech site. We were tasked with making a game that included the themes of “deception” and “rain, plains, or Spain.” 48 hours later, we made SUPÉR MATADOR 3. Click the image to go to the GGJ site and play! I was responsible for game design and audio. My team won first place! The contest also had “achievements” we could get by sticking to certain constraints. We were rewarded for having no text, using less than 16 colors, and being playable in a browser. Check it out and let me know what you...
Read MoreWhat I Played: 2009 Edition
For all the time I spent working, I still managed to play a lot of games in 2009. I’m late on the decons, but in the meantime I’ve put together a list of (almost) every game I played this year with a couple thoughts on things that stuck out to me about each of them. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – Capcom, Nintendo DS I was hesitant about the series ditching Phoenix, but in the end, I still got to yell “OBJECTION” at my handheld and that makes everything in the world OK. The updated investigation phase mechanics weren’t all that compelling even though they made good use of the DS. Maybe I was burnt out from the previous three games, but this one couldn’t keep my attention long enough to make it past the third case. Finished: NO Auditorium – EA, iPhone I played it first on PC, so buying the iPhone version was a no-brainer for me. It’s a great mobile game. The puzzles lend themselves well to the touchscreen, and levels can played in two or three minutes while waiting for a bus. I found the gameplay to be addicting enough that I finished it before I had the opportunity to play while waiting for a bus, opting to play it over Thanksgiving when I should have been socializing with family. EA offers more levels, but you have to feed the microtransaction monster to get to them. Finished: YES Batman: Arkham Asylum – Rocksteady, PS3 As most of the mainstream reviews have already noted, this one was a pleasant surprise. It’s one of the best stealth action games out there, even if the AI is fairly predictable. The combat system was intuitive and fun despite being so repetitive. None of the mechanics would have meant anything if Rocksteady hadn’t done such an amazing job with the game’s presentation. It truly makes the player feel like Batman, and even the collect-a-thon elements (Riddler trophies) were rewarding with Bioshock-esque tape recordings and backstory that went far beyond the genre’s usual offering. It’s a licensed game, but it’s also fun and innovative. What a concept! Finished: YES Boom Blox Bash...
Read MoreOnly at U(sic)GA Rejects
Rivalry week is past, and UGA played the better game and won. Hats off to them. We turned “Only at Tech” into “Only at U(sic)GA” as a way to poke fun at our rival prior to the game. We had hundreds of hilarious stories submitted by Tech students, but some folks from UGA also used the site to express their displeasure. Here are some of the funnier hate posts that we rejected: Girls. Only at UGA We don’t have such a severe Napoleon complex that we have to make fake websites, and newspapers, making fun of a superior University that hardly considers us a rival. Only at….wait….thats everywhere except Georgia Tech. Get a life, geeks. “I noticed there was a ‘cows’ category now. That must be referring to all the Tech girls that visit Athens…only at UGA.” Everyone who reads this website is a loser who was too scared to go have a social life in Athens. Sorry you’re all retarded. Only at tech By the way, UGA is too hard for rednecks to get into. A for effort though. Only at tech. NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS Only a truly lame and retarded school would make a stupid website about their rivals. L2becreative. Only at tech. And finally… this website makes tech look retarded. ever realize people at uga don’t care about our ‘rivalry’? sorry you don’t think poultry science and agriculture is important to our country, because it is. Only at tech. I hope everyone had fun with the site! Good luck getting through dead...
Read MoreOnly at Tech hits the Technique
The Technique, Georgia Tech’s student newspaper, has an article on Only at Tech in the Focus section this week. Check it out! There are a few typos (and some misquotes – I promise my grammar isn’t that bad) but it’s full of praise for the website and the way it has been embraced by the Georgia Tech community. We’re rolling out some major updates to the site on Saturday – can’t say what just yet, but hopefully it will give Tech students yet another reason to...
Read MoreOnly at Tech – The First Day
Today’s website launch went better than any of us could have imagined. We launched the site around 12:15 EST. Below are some general stats about the site’s traffic for those who are interested. Assuming 90%+ of our traffic came from Georgia Tech students, it’s somewhat revealing… Hits: 383,691 Page Views: 281,952 Unique Visitors: 8,770 Average Page Views per Visitor: 32.15 Fans on Facebook: 1258 Bandwidth Used: 8.96Â GB The page view ratio is extremely high. That means people are getting onto the site and staying to read pages upon pages of content. Great news for us! And some graphs: Site Activity by Hour of Day In typical Tech fashion, the website’s popularity was highest from 11 to midnight. Will with 12AM-1AM slot be even better? It looks like we still haven’t peaked. Top Referring Sites Behold the power of Facebook! We didn’t do any advertising for the site other than mentioning it in front of our CS class. Most Used Browsers Georgia Tech is probably the only place where Google Chrome users outnumber IE 6, 7, and 8 users combined. The “Others” category was dominated by Blackberry and Opera, but there were also a few hacking tools in there from people who tried (unsuccessfully) to hack the site. At one point, someone did run a script that voted for their post every 30 seconds to raise it to the top of the ratings. Most Used Operating Systems Windows Vista narrowly edged out Windows XP for the title of “most used OS.” There were roughly half as many iPhone users as Windows 7 users, and three times as many Mac OS X users as Windows 7 users. To break one Tech stereotype, only 182 people accessed the site from Linux, and 11 poor users were still running Windows...
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