This weekend we met in the city of Haarlem and talked about all sorts of aspects of games, education, ludology, design, culture, etc. while enjoying cool drinks while the hot sun beat down on us. Here's some of the excerpts:
On love for making games:
Jesse hosts a website with an impressive portfolio of games. His love for making games he combines with his studies at the Utrecht School of the Arts: Game Design, a school which he honestly admits to leaving him much time to pursue his game making. When I asked him if he prefers making games or playing them he says he prefers making them; he enjoys the creativity, the challenge, the learning process. Every game features many surprises and it requires a lot of improvisation. He still plays games, of course. He's currently enjoying Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. and all sorts of indie games. But he mostly plays them to for inspiration. He likes to look at games from an analytical point of view: how is this game put together and what can I steal?
On originality:
But even if he borrows from other games, no one will disagree that Jesse's games are highly original. Jesse says he takes pride in his originality and always tries to break barriers of how people look at games. For instance , in the game Execution (spoiler alert! So download and play the game now, it only takes two minutes), he wanted players to be shocked that once the player lost, they lost forever; reloading the game does not bring the character back to life. Interestingly, many players saw this as a metaphor for the death sentance and would enlighten political discussion. Jesse says his games aren't meant to have a political message, but he is flattered when players feel they learn something from his games.
On academics:
Jesse is dissapointed with the amount of design teached at his school. He wishes more courses would explain how games were put together. He's also currently reading The Rules of Play , but he looks forward to having programmers turn his ideas to code for bigger projects. With smaller games becoming more important, including the likes of X-Box Arcade and PopCap, Jesse is sure he'll find a bigger outlet for his ideas. In the meantime, we can enjoy all the games on his website, which I all highly recommend.
