Hello you,

I'm two days late with this newsletter, and full of excuses. We're currently hiring a new professor in my department at Concordia University and I'm the chair of the department and the hiring committee so I'm very implicated in that. That and other work stuff has taken up most of my time the last couple of weeks.

That said, I did release Play It By Trust (Sky Blue Super Mario Bros.) last week, which you probably saw since I emailed you about it. I'm happy with how it turned out, though it remains to write a formal "closing statement" where I try to summarize at least some specific aspect of what the game revealed to me in its making. For one thing, I keep returning to the practice of adapting/conversing with the art world, so perhaps I ought to write that up.

During the last two weeks I've kept thinking about a game I've wanted to make for quite a while which is about Auditioning Monsters for a Horror Game. Haven't figured it out yet, but I like the idea that you would have an interview process with a series of monsters (five?) and then hire one, then be able to play a scene from the eventual game that the monster "acts" in so you can see how it went. Maybe there could even be "game reviews" at the end critiquing your choice?

I'm giving a talk in a couple of weeks at UCLA by way of the GameLab there which is essentially going to be an exploration of the ideas in the book I'm working on, and so also titled Playing the Variation Game, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Game Design. I'll also give a workshop while I'm in LA, along related lines, as that's the main "big idea" I'm looking at for now in terms of design stuff.

I'm writing quite a bit of poetry at the moment but nothing that I've quite figured out how or whether to share.

That's where we're at, mac. See you around.

Pippin