Lara L. Schenck
Computing researcher, maker of monsters
Blog
Look through historical posts using these drop downs:
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#1reasonwhy: what women deal with in the game industry
via Raph Koster’s Twitter Also check out this segment on NPR: Online Harassment Gets Real For Girl Gamers
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A Template for Analyzing Game Design
A note about analyzing vs. reviewing a game: an analysis mainly consists of what is actually present in the game, not what you think should be. Pick it apart and see what choices the designer made and think about why. I figured it’d be helpful to have a template for guidance when critiquing a game.…
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What if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars?
It would be amazing. via kottke.org
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Issues & Assets, a card game concept
Issues & Assets is a card game about WWI I’ve been working on. Pretty random, right? It’s an assignment at the end of Game Design Concepts Level 3 (yes, I am working through this quite slowly) which was: Design a non-digital game with theme a relating to World War I. The primary objective of players…
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Scathing critique of Digital Natives/Immigrants [Bad Websites]
It’s a cliche by now, but really, Comic Sans? Doesn’t that pretty much prove the Natives/Immigrants arguments? Disclaimer that I haven’t read it at all (likely won’t) so the content could be legitimate. Of course this is in large part design snobbery from my end. On a for real note, I reference the Digital Natives…
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Pittsburgh Web Design Day 2012
Just got back from Web Design Day, hosted by Refresh Pittsburgh, Pgh’s web design meetup group. After a day of excellent presentations by some excellent speakers, excellent drinks and snacks were had at Commonwealth Press for the after party. #WDD2012 win, I’m definitely looking forward to next year. Thanks to Val and Jason Head for…
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Artists, read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Yes, it’s a comic about comics. But not about comics as you might initially think of them – it’s about visual and representational language in general. If you are anything like me and have let your art theory knowledge go to seed (somewhat) after college, this is an excellent way to begin reawakening your critical…
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The Boy Who Wanted to be a Lion
via Short of the Week
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Analysis of Temple Run for iPad
I want to start playing as many games as possible and doing brief-ish analyses of them, so here’s a start: Basics Name: Temple Run Platform: iPad Time played: 25 mins Overview Temple run is a free (and ad free) 3D platform game. You are a man running from a herd of what appear to be…
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The Online Class Club [Idea]
Every semester since I’ve graduated (which I guess is only 3), I’ve said I was going to unofficially take a course at CMU or Pitt. Which basically means sitting in on a class and hoping no one would care that I’m not actually a student. I never did this, but I still want to. Along…
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From the vaults [lnfnmo][NODOI]
Since the relatively recent renewal of my artistic/conceptual energy, I’ve been looking through some old projects and writing a bunch (won’t be posting that though). I am at last reintroducing NODOI and lnfnmo. It’s been about a 1.5 year break. I totally forgot how far I had gotten with both of these – the biggest…
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The Saxifrage School
From their website: The Saxifrage School is redesigning higher education by lowering costs, re-thinking the campus, and reconciling theory and practice. We teach students to make what is valuable and to question the value of what is made. Watch this: One of the most inspiring projects I’ve seen in the past year (or ever). I…
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Some definitions of games & Game
There are many many definitions of a game, most of which differ only subtly. Some are dependent on the definition of play, but that’s a whole other discussion. Maybe I should have written about that first, oh well. Anyways, here are a few ways to define a game, accompanied by thoughts: Katie Salen and Eric…
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made myself a logo
The font is Geometric Slab 712 BT. Nabbed that from the school computers. There is a free alternative called Arvo that I’m using for some of the heading styles on here.
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Raph Koster on how to become a game designer
Be sure to check out the links he lists at the bottom, exceptionally useful.
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to dos over the next year
Grad school is on the horizon. Well, I’ll apply next December, but it’s time to start preparing and pick up where I left off after school. Which is where? My ultimate goal (in life I think) is to design games for college curricula, ergo I will go to grad school for game design. In undergrad,…
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Site Redesign Preview
Only the blog so far. The header still needs work, but I’ve got some baller post formats in there. I’d like to post about them in more detail because until this point I’ve thought post formats were a little useless, but with some work they can be great. Of course there’s a nice responsive deal…
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Bones has made me like WordPress again
That’s right, I didn’t like it for a while. Had a pretty scarring experience with a WordPress/BuddyPress site running on 20+ heavy duty plugins, and I fully realized why people say it’s messy on the backend. I had been doing a lot of custom coding, and dealing with WP hooks and filters, misc filepaths, and…
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Freelance project: Cast Partner
Recently launched a portfolio site for Castpartner, a Hollywood casting company. The site design is by Nate Harrison and hand coded by yours truly. I have to say it was a relief to not be responsible for the design – it’s nice to just be told what to do every now and then. Also, custom…
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Digital Placemaking logo
Here is a logo draft for Digital Placemaking, a spin-off philosophy/blog about using digital tools in (guess what) placemaking for local communities. Read more about Digital Placemaking here.
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What I’ve been doing the past 6 months
It’s been a crazy few months. Working 60hrs a week at times, but I guess that comes with the territory when you’re talking about startups. The startup in question here is Scenable, the app for local communities. There is an active startup and co-working scene here in Pittsburgh, definitely loving this city. Read about Scenable’s…
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Book recommendation: Designing for Emotion
I’ve been reading Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter, the lead designer for MailChimp. It’s a quick read, very engaging, and infinitely useful. I’d been in a bit of a creative slump, focusing on navigation patterns, getting inspiration from great work other people are doing, and generally avoiding the being creative part. This book has…
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Scenable Intro video: about animating to narration
Introducing Scenable: A New Platform for Bringing Communities Online. Over the past week, I made an animation introducing Scenable: a new platform for local communities online (i.e. my job). This was my first experience animating to narration, so I thought I’d post some tips as well as the video. Brainstorming the script and initial storyboarding…
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If localhost/PhpMyAdmin is 404
Then most likely you’ve been sloppyily setting up configurations – this was my case at least :/. First make sure phpmyadmin is installed, then include its configuration file (httpd-phpmyadmin.conf) in your apache’s httpd.conf. On a Mac, httpd-conf will probably be in /opt/local/apache2/conf, and httpd-phpmyadmin.conf in conf/extra. If that’s the case for you, add this to…