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Reflections
You may remember it from previous years. This year, the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) spanned two days (the last weekend of September), and Sunday was billed as Kids Comics Day. FableVisionaries headed over to neighboring Cambridge to celebrate and exhibit.
Meatball. That’s the name given to a stuffed Koala bear that soldiered through my husband’s surgery with him nearly 23 years ago. A radiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital gave it to him during his stay and at some point, Mike says, he dropped a meatball on the bear – thus the name.
Every year PAX East opens its doors in Boston to anyone linking arms with the gaming industry. More than 60,000 swarm into our city: many are costumed, though many are not. Amidst the fanfare, the games, the controls, the booths, and the buzz there's one thing that holds the three-day extravaganza together: passion. Often you'll overhear people staring at each other (mouth slightly drooling from over-stimulation from all the lights) and saying, "What do you wanna check out??"
But there's a lot more there than just gamers looking at games. Though the primary focus is on games, there's also massive networking action as well. It's an opportunity to connect with fans, publishers can find potential clients, prominent people in the industry walk around in the wild. It's a convention that's by gamers for gamers. Several FableVisionaries joined the masses. Here's their report.
Out of all the attractions at PAX, even though the big-name game companies had the largest, flashiest and loudest booths, I found the growing Indie Megabooth the most inspiring. I kept being drawn back there for fear that I had missed some hidden treasure. And I think I still managed to miss some. They are small, intimate, the developers are right there to talk to, and though they don't make much money, the games themselves are much more innovative and unafraid to explore what's possible, both functionally and artistically. I was very happy to see a lot of 2D art and design.
Some indie games that stood out: Tengami, Guacamelee, Apotheon, Don't Starve
The smaller studios and indie games definitely had the most variety of gameplay and artistic styles, which was really refreshing to see when most of the bigger studios are focused on subtle variations of the same tried and true theme. The Indie Megabooth had the most excitement and the most innovation, a creative bubble in the midst of the larger booths. Having the smaller companies mixed in with the larger ones gave them a leg up in a competitive industry, and made their games viewable to the fans who were drawn there for more well-known games.
Another great aspect of PAX was the tabletop game room. It's a place where people can play games together just for the love of games and have fun.
John | Creative IT & QA Specialist:
There was a lot to see, and even more to learn from at PAX. I saw a lot of people pouring their hearts and souls into their passions solely for the sake of chasing those passions. Meeting indie developers is always a breath of fresh air in the industry. The way they explain their games is often so full of passion, because they live for that game.
Jordan | Production Assistant:
I'd have to say that my favorite part of PAX (aside from seeing a friend wear 30 free 2XL-sized T-shirts at once) was the misleadingly-titled "I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours" panel. In it, a group of experienced game developers showed videos and told stories of their very first bug-filled attempts at games. Even for someone who doesn't make games, it was a great reminder that failure is a natural part of the creative process.
The best part of my experience at PAX East was meeting Tim Schafer from Double Fine. He's one of the co-creators of my most favorite games of all time, Day of the Tentacle (circa 1993!) He signed my floppy disk. So awesome.
My take away from PAX East was inspiration. I was lucky to witness a panel on how Games Designers are Defining the Next 50 Years of Education. It was a discussion by Steve Swink who worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a game for schools called "Doctor's Cure." Besides the interesting take he had on using games to educate kids and get them involved in their own education, he said something to think about: the importance of everyone learning programming language. He made the point that as we progress with our technology it's becoming more and more important to know and understand programing. He argued that it's something we should be teaching our kids (and ourselves) because not knowing programming language is leading to it's own sort of illiteracy of the tech driven world around us.
Some of the big take aways from PAX this year for me were (these aren't exclusive to the Indie Megabooth):
Media Molecule's new PS Vita game called "Tear Away." The player controls a paper hero running in a paper world, but utilizes some of the unique features of the Vita -- tapping on the device, blowing air, etc. The style is BEAUTIFUL, and worth checking out, especially if you're a fan of paper craft.
Capy's new game called "Super Time Force" -- a throwback side scrolling shooter in the same vein as Contra. One of the unique aspects of this game is the ability to go back in time and correct your mistakes. Piggybacking on that mechanic, you can choose characters with unique abilities to strategically play through, then time warp back and play through simultaneously with your previous self. It's a trip for sure and really fun to play.
Carbine Studios' new MMO "WildStar" -- I've been following artist "Cory Loftis" for a long while and has been a big inspiration to me and my work. When he announced he had been working on a game a while back, I was thrilled. I'm happy to say that his art style translated over REALLY well into the 3D space and the world Carbine has created is amazing. It's a perfect blend of next gen -- while still keeping it stylized, colorful, and cartoony. I got a chance to talk to some of the team members working on it -- they're a great team making a great game.
DoubleFine (founded by Tim Schafer) was sharing a booth with Capy, they were talking about their Kickstarter adventure game called "Broken Age." Last year they announced that they would be creating a new Adventure Game, much like the good old days (Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island. They set their goal at $400,000 -- and ended up shattering that goal at almost $3.5 million. I also got to meet Tim Schafer which was pretty awesome.
Here at FableVision we pride ourselves on being a great mix of talents and personalities working together to reach all learners through media, storytelling and technology. Our staff has a great mix of cultures and traditions; we are lucky to have team members with ancestry from countries like Ukraine, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Japan. As Easter and Passover approach, we asked some FableVisionaries to share some of their holiday traditions. It was amazing to see just how varied our backgrounds are.
Passover and Easter celebrations, in a nutshell, are stories that matter and stories that move. These stories have room for interpretation and are rich with traditions and rituals. The differences in which our cultures celebrate and acknowledge these holidays are some of the creative ways we connect the dots between cultures:
Didi: "Bulgarian Easter is a family holiday that honors old traditions, and unlike other holidays, has mostly resisted commercialization. When I was a kid, I remember my mother and grandmother spending a whole day baking the sweet Easter bread-kozunak, my sister and I helping out with the laborious kneading. Every family had their own variation on the bread, the recipe passed down from mother to daughter and sometimes a closely guarded secret.
While the bread was baking, we'd dye the eggs, with a combination of contemporary dyes and traditional methods like onion skin, wax and spring blossoms. The colors of Bulgarian Easter are deep, rich, natural colors like red, orange, yellow and green. Unlike the faint pastel colors, they are saturated and symbolize strength and vitality. We kids would have a few eggs reserved for our own creative ideas - crayons, paints, glitter... I even used nail polish once!
DidiEaster
On Easter morning, we would eat the bread for breakfast with Nutella spread on it, and have the Easter Egg Fight - everybody grabs a colorful egg and cracks somebody else's egg with it, the survivor then hits somebody else's surviving egg and so on until only one intact egg is left. The victor egg is kept around until next Easter, at which point it is ceremonially broken, and if it hasn't rotten, then the year will be good! (eggs have a sneaky way of neatly drying out into a little ball... so the year is always good!) After the egg fight, we'd take a plate of Easter bread and dyed eggs to every neighbor, who would in turn give us some of theirs, so we can all try each other's bread recipes and egg dying techniques. Easter was among my favorite times of the year, when we'd all come together to create beautiful and delicious things that we would then share with our neighbors. I truly miss that spirit of the holiday, but try to keep up my side of it every year by baking my mother's bread recipe and dying brightly colored eggs the way grandma taught me, and then sharing them with my friends".
Margarita: "In Greece we prepare the traditional Easter bread- tsoureki and we dye the eggs red (red is the color of life as well as a representation of the blood of Christ). However, it's some of our other traditions and rituals that set us apart and make the holiday truly fun and unique.
For us, Holy Friday is a day of mourning, not of work (including cooking). Flags are hung at half-mast and church bells ring all day in a slow mournful tone.
Then on Saturday, the celebratory mood starts with the arrival of the Eternal Flame by a military jet. It is distributed to waiting Priests who carry it to their local churches. This event is always televised and everyone awaits it!
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On Easter Sunday, the customary main attraction of the holiday is the whole roasted lamb or goat, to represent the Lamb of God. The spits are set to work, and grills are fired up. Ovens are filled with traditional accompaniments and all the trimmings. Great Greek wines, ouzo, and other drinks flow freely, and preparations for the meal turn into festive celebrations even before the eating begins".
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Renee: My parents used to leave a trail of milk chocolate eggs from my bedroom to the back door, leading me to believe that the Easter Bunny was in my room while I was sleeping...it was TERRIFYING!
Naomi: "One of my favorite Passover traditions is called Bdekat Chametz, which translates to 'Searching for Unleavend Bread' (Jews are commanded to not eat chametzfor the duration of the Passover holiday). Bdekat Chametz is a ritual that involves a feather, a flashlight and oftentimes cheerios (little bits of chametz) hidden around the house. The child (or grown-up child) in the house goes around the house with the flashlight and the feather and collects all the "remaining" pieces of chametz in the house. These pieces are then ritually burned the next morning, making the house (at least) ritually free of chametz.
I always remember the search being very fun as a kid and now that I have a kid, it was very fun to do this with her (here's a fun video of Sylvia searching for chametz) But for me, the searching for chametz has always had greater meaning. Sure, we're looking for little breadcrumbs, but I like to think of chametz as things that are stuck in our lives that we need to be freed of. Things like getting upset about unimportant things, excessive worry, self-doubt. I like to think of cleaning out chametz as looking inward at the things we want to clean out of the crevices in our mind, leaving us all more free by the next morning".
I, along with thousands of other grown-up kids, was saddened to hear about the passing this week of Jan Berenstain, the author and creator of The Berenstain Bears series. I grew up with Sister and Brother and Mama and Papa Bear, going with them to camp, to the dentist, to school, and on spooky trick-or-treating outings. When I was old enough to read, Stan and Jan Berenstain were almost a mythical part of that surrogate family to me, their names on the cover of each book, as bold and as large as the titles.
