I like games! Do you?
To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION. Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.
The Principia Discordia, pp. 74
I like to play games a lot. Card and board games (and less often role-playing or other long-winded exercises) constitute my main pretext for socializing with other humans, both in person and online.
This page is about games I have made, games I like, and other gamey things in my world. I have a separate page devoted to some favorite card and board games.
Jump to: My game blogs and podcasts | Games and game systems I have created | My digital game identities | My game links
Podcasts about games
I produce a couple of irregularly published video podcasts involving games.
I should first mention The Gameshelf, a TV show and video podcast that I produce. Each episode features me and some friends talking about, playing, and telling you how to find obscure but interesting games. Check it out.
There is also Jmac's Arcade, a series of short monologues reflecting upon the intersections of my life and old arcade games.
Games I have made
The Warbler's Nest
A short, interactive horror story, originally written for the 2010 Interactive Fiction Competition.
See my interactive fiction page for more work in and around text-based videogames I've been involved with.
Currents
A board game. To play, you need a checkerboard, a deck of cards, and a pawn, along with these rules.
Martian Chess: the computer game
My attempt to translate Andrew Looney's Martian Chess into a
networkable computer game. While open to anyone with a sane telnet
client, I've ceased further development of it for now.
fall
A tiny game I wrote as an entry to an Obfuscated Perl Contest, many years ago. I have since learned that it's been used in at least one classroom setting as an example of the madness of which Perl hackers are capable.
Calliope
My first published work of interactive fiction, and an entry into the 1999 IFComp. A short, rather gimmicky game that seemed quite clever to me at the time.
Minti Nomic
Some friends and I started a game of Nomic in early 1999, and while
it's rather run out of steam for now, the Perl scripts that ran it
still function, more or less, so it remains an interesting
conversation piece, at least.
Actually, as of January 2010, I'm closing this link down indefinitely. The over-a-decade-old Perl code has ancient dependencies that the CPAN has no clue about, and it may be causing problems with the operation of this server. Maybe someday I'll find the time to prop it back up...
Game-related services I run
Volity
Volity is an open protocol and framework for playing games over the Internet. It's also a large, multiperson project that I'm managing.
Planbeast
Planbeast is a free scheduling service for online multiplayer games. Currently online as a prototype that works only with Xbox Live. If you're an Xbox 360 gamer, give it a whirl!
Jmac's game console identities
Can you believe that when I first created this page, I thought my first-generation PlayStation was hot stuff? Anyway, here's my info regarding the most recent wave of Internet-enabled game appliances I happen to use.
Wii
My Wii friend code is 5097 2869 6404 3359.
XBox 360
My Gamercard:
Nintendo DS
My DS friends codes and other writing is on its own page.
Gamey Links
Wunderland.com
I owe a lot to Looney Labs, and their amazing sprawl of a website, wunderland.com, made by a community of friends, all creative geniuses, which one can spend weeks happily exploring. My chance encounter with it one day not too long ago showed me the great potentials for fun and inpspiration that elegent, self-contained multiplayer games can reach, rescuing me from the doldrums of solitary computer games and off-and-on RPG sessions. See especially Icehouse, an ingeniously abstract game system that can't help but encourange creative players to try coming up with their own rulesets.
NetHack
This used to be my favorite timekiller, and it will always be one of my favorite computer games, just on general principle. Help the brave little @ hack and slash its way through a dungeon of fierce and deadly alphanumerics and a brain-melting array of gameplay permutations. Runs on every operating system you can think of, except for PalmOS. (Foo.)
The Interactive Fiction Archive
I proudly host a mirror of the Interactive Fiction archive, an enormous repository of interactive fiction ("text adventure") games, interprerters, and other resources, both ancient (pre-1990) and modern. You may want to have a look at my own page about IF.