Brenda Brathwaite’s Train is receiving more publicity than I could have imagined while I was watching its development down at SCAD. Many people have now seen the game, played the game, and talked about the game. Talking about it is something I have put off for a while, and now that it is in the public eye, I think it’s time to do so.
The first time I saw the game in its full form was during a class of Design Patterns. The class was cut short as Train was being photographed (which is where the picture to the left comes from) and the class was going to go see it. As we watched it being photographed, Brenda told us some stories about its development and about the symbolism, specifically the broken glass, which had been blessed by a rabbi beforehand. I had realized long before that the kind of power a game could have on a person because of its interactive properties, but this was the most powerful game I had ever seen because of the abstracted forms of the symbolism – like how you stuff the pawns into the trains just as the Jews were in the holocaust – and the surprise ending which, to the uninitiated in this game, causes a great deal of shock and disgust.
After the photo shoot was over, the glass shards on the table were swept up and put into a box, which Brenda then handed to me. I took the box and was immediately unable to think about anything other than what I had in my hands. These shards were blessed under my religion. I don’t consider myself much of a religious man, but Train actually had me thinking twice about that. Nothing has ever made me question whether I want to take my religion more seriously. Train did.
This game put me in a very strange mood, one that I’m not sure anyone else in the class could fully appreciate. All I could say at the time was, “I’ll talk to you about it later,” to which the response from Brenda was, and I’ll never forget this, “Dan never has nothing to say!”
A couple months later, I was sitting in the cafeteria at Montgomery Hall with my friend Thomas, when he received a text from Brenda to come upstairs alone as she had something to show him. I figured, “Okay this must be a thing for grads only.” As it turns out, she wanted to show him the Nazi S.S. typewriter which the ruleset for Train had been written on. I really wish I’d gotten to see it just so I’d have more to say here. Sure I’ve seen photos of it, but just as with Train itself, sometimes photos don’t do a thing justice.
As much as people are praising this game, no amount of praise I could give would do it justice. Not just because it is a great game – it is. I give this game praise because I got to see it in development, and I love seeing games come together, be them my own or anybody else’s. I’ll never forget how speechless I was at seeing the end product.
I want people from all over the nation to take a pilgrimage to see this game, even if they don’t get to play it. You must see it in person to fully understand it. Photographs and videos are no substitute for what this game proves: that games themselves are art, not just through their artwork but through being played, and though this is a concept new to a species trained to just look at art instead of interacting with and experiencing it (not to mention a species that thinks all games are for children), Train is more than a step in the right direction. She may not have realized this when she named it Train, but Brenda Brathwaite has started taking us on a ride down a whole new track of game design.
All aboard!

One thing I truly love about this generation of games is downloadable content. Creating DLC for your game means that you not only care about it but you care that the fans keep playing it. However, DLC on the Wii is nonexistant. There are a few reasons behind this, as I see it. One is that the Wii lacks a harddrive and currently any USB external harddrive capability. DLC can end up being pretty hefty in terms of gigs, and the Wii just doesn’t have any gigs to spare. What makes this an even bigger issue is that the Wii Shop Channel more than has the capability to supply extra content for games like Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but effectively can’t because of the lack of storage space.
I recently uploaded a Youtube video about my thoughts on Sprint’s distribution of the Palm Pre. In the video, I said Sprint was not handling the inventory well, and as much as I understood only releasing 375,000 units in order to build up interest, it made acquiring the phone very difficult for anyone who actually knew about it and wanted it, considering each store only got about 10-20 phones, and the one near me did not get any at all.

Can games be used to educate? I’m not just talking about educational games here. This aspect spans to all games. Games require mastery, and mastery of a game requires learning about its game world. Therefore, anything we learn about a game is only limited by what is included in that game world.
Thinking of exploring new platforms to develop for has got my programming hands shaking. On top of being a year or so away from the announcement of next-gen consoles, the Palm Pre is coming out on Saturday and, yes, I am getting one, mainly because my current phone gets 5 minutes of battery life while talking, and also because it’s a touch-based mobile platform I can develop for without buying a Mac and purchasing a yearly SDK license. Whatever I make for it I will most likely port to the iPhone, sure, but I’ll have to be able to afford a Mac first. In the meantime I’ll be able to make games for a less congested app store, and that’s an exciting notion.
3D Realms was an industry innovator. THE industry innovator I should say. Without them, the idea of episodic gaming and downloadable content wouldn’t even exist. There would be no Wolfenstein, no Duke Nukem… no Dopefish. The games that Apogee/3D Realms published in the early-mid 1990’s is responsible for a period I refer to as the “gaming renaissance.” Some may disagree with me on the term, but this was a period after the PC started to become more than a viable option for gaming; it became a gaming POWERHOUSE. This was the period when graphics, sound and gameplay all started blending together to create the truly immersive experiences that today allow us to classify videogames as a legitimate artform. The PC had sidescrollers, RPGs, First Person Shooters (DOOM clones in those days), adventure games… you name it, the PC had it, and thanks to the technology it looked and sounded better than anything the SNES or Genesis could ever offer. So while the two sides feuded over who had a better console, I went with the only console that still remains a powerhouse of gaming capabilities to this day. I’ve always been and always will be a PC gamer and developer.
Angry gamer language is like listening to someone with tourette’s syndrome screaming at a losing horse. It’s unfortunate. The anonymity factor allows gamers to get away with saying anything they want. However, that does not stop the fact that gay isn’t actually a derogatory word, and if we were in England, that other word you just called me would only mean cigarette.