Play the free trial here in your browser. A percentage of the $1.99 full version for iPad and Android goes to the David Suzuki Foundation.
Update: Due to the Sun’s sloppy journalism, there’s been a bit of a media furor, but unfortunately in a “taxpayer dollars paid for this?!” vein rather than about the more important environmental or industry issues the game addresses. We’ve issued a press release in response.
My thoughts on it below. (more…)
Heading to the west coast this Friday for the San Francisco Indie Film Fest screenings (as well as doing a reading and then a talk at UCLA). At this point we’ve attended almost a dozen screenings of Ghosts, from Seoul, Korea to Poznan, Poland, and the Q&As are — pretty fun. Really fun, actually. I’ll tell you why I found that surprising, below.
Put your trillion dollar coins away! Ghosts With Shit Jobs is available to rent for as little as $4.99. Our lo-fi sci-fi mockumentary about the slums of Toronto in 2040 is now in wide digital release at the links below.
To help support this we’re offering to do 20 videochat Q&As between now and when the Debt Ceiling falls in. To enter, sign up over here and plan a GHOSTS screening party of five or more people in January and February. Then, if you’re one of the lucky 20, one of our lo-fi faces will be beamed via sci-fi into your very home!
iTunes / Amazon (US only) / Xbox / PSN / Vudu
For people looking for DRM-free options, we recommend buying the DVD and then ripping it.
(And sure, Cloud City is a bit of an ethically dubious place. But it’s not like Lando would sell us out or anything, that dude is solid!)
Just booked the Vancouver screening for Ghosts With Shit Jobs (Tickets | Facebook) for two weeks hence — that makes it a round dozen! Plus, doing a talk at the Full Indie game meetup group. Been 5 years since I been in the city, looking forward to it. Click through to see the rad poster. (more…)
The verdict is in: people really liked Guilded Youth (it just took 3rd in the Interactive Fiction Competition, and 1st in the Ms. Congeniality competition) but hated the ending. Of the fourteen or so reviews I’ve seen over half of them expressed being disappointed by the ending or finding it abrupt.
A previous novel of mine, Everyone In Silico, also had an unconventional ending. I figured it’d be irresponsible of me to tie everything up with a neat little bow, given the complexity of the politics. Depriving readers of their resolution and catharsis made some of them upset, but it was by design and I stand by it.
Not so with Guilded Youth. I just kind of dropped it when I was done. Me and Matt considered it a lark, a nostalgic trifle, so much so that we didn’t anticipate people would care what happened to the quickly sketched characters. But of course we’re delighted. And because it’s not a physical book like Silico — and the digital format allows it — I decided to add two more scenes to give people more time with the awkward adventurers. It’s still charmingly low resolution, but with more of a resolution!
So now you can play version 2.0 of the game, with a better ending. (If you’ve already played it you can start with the command “skipthru” to get to the dining room scene.) (more…)
I’ve just submitted a game to the Interactive Fiction Competition that you can play now if you like.
You play Tony, a fourteen-year old thief who needs some help looting the legendary Oakville Manor. Luckily it’s the 1980s and finding fellow adventurers is just a modem squeal away…
Notes on the game below.
UPDATE: “Suffice it to say that it’s one of the most evocative portrayals of our collective disaffected BBS-enhanced adolescence I’ve experience in a game, effortlessly giving surprisingly rounded life to characters you only know briefly via a few descriptive lines and Hammill’s skilled caricature.” —Brandon Boyer, Venus Patrol
(more…)
In the next month I’ll be visiting a bunch of cities to do Q&As after the screenings of Ghosts With Shit Jobs. If you know folks in these cities, it would be great if you spread the word!
Ann Arbor (Sept. 9, Workantile)
Ottawa (Sept. 14 [with Q&A], Sept 15 & 16, Mayfair Theatre)
Austin (Sept 19, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek)
Tucson (Sept 27, Arizona Underground Film Fest)
Note that the Austin one will only happen if 30 tickets are reserved in the next 4 days as we’re using Tugg to gauge interest. (UPDATE: Austin is Go!) We can do it in other towns in the US too, so if you’re interested in bringing GHOSTS to your town in November, just fill out this form and we can start to try and make it happen! If you’re not in the US, just email us directly.
Oh, that? That’s just my trophy nook. I don’t have enough for a case but I fill it out with other precious things like my gem-studded golden turtle.
I’ve won some awards before but I think this is the first meatspace trophy. It’s from Games for Change, who liked Unmanned, a game I did the writing for.
It’s also nominated in two other awesome upcoming fests, Indiecade (in Los Angeles) and Fantastic Arcade (in Austin). This is wicked because it gives me a great excuse to go there and hang out with amazing game makers and sneak in a few screenings of Ghosts With Shit Jobs as well!
Heading to Poland next week for Transatlantyk Poznan International Film and Music Festival. They’re screening GHOSTS and I’m doing a Lo-fi Sci-fi *cough* master class after the Friday screening.
Back when I knew him in Toronto, Kirby Ferguson was making dirty comedy shorts and directing a segment of my sci-fi flick Infest Wisely. Five years later, he’s doing Ted talks and raising 50K+ for his next video thinkpiece series. His Everything is a Remix series is to blame for his ascension from the gutter — it’s a terrific, much needed piece of populist cultural theory. Watch it for free here! Earlier today we sat down to talk reinvention, being of service, and the benefits of obscurity.
You can download the newest episode in the No Media Kings Inspiring Creators podcast over here, subscribe to it via RSS2 or iTunes, or just click play below. Feedback welcome! I just got a new microphone, so hopefully it’s loud enough to listen to while you do the dishes.
I’m involved with the new Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge that’s happening at the end of August. In my role as Creative Director I’ve programmed four Lo-fi Sci-fi Salons in the run-up to the Challenge.
Each Salon will be hosted by a different local filmmaker who will be showing some inspiring fantastical shorts and then sharing some tips from their experience making science fiction movies. There’ll be lots of time before and after to meet & drink with other lo-fi sci-fi enthusiasts.
They’re happening Mondays at 7pm at the Monarch (12 Clinton St., Toronto). They’re free and open to the public — you don’t have to be signed up for the Challenge.
But you totally should! It’s a great way to collaborate with new people, try something too weird and experimental for a feature, and get something small and achievable in the can. Hot tip: if you check out the first Salon you’ll get a sense of what it’s about and still have time to get the Early Bird rate ($50/team til Aug 1st).
Only now recovered from the Toronto Ghosts With Shit Jobs screening last week — we sold out the theatre and got a really nice response from people. Thanks to all the folks who came!
We showed trailers prior to the screening for our pals at Iron Sky, ByoLogic, Manborg and Rasputin’s Bastards, and afterwards Sean announced the Lo-fi Sci-fi 48hr Film Challenge and I showed off a brand-new GHOSTS USB Bracelet.
We’re excited about our next screening and Q&A: Saturday July 14th at 8pm at MIT in Boston. It’s a free screening and open to the public, and I’m doing a bunch of other game related stuff while I’m in town.