Kim Swift

Essay

That Time J.R.R. Tolkien Wrote A Short Story About Video Games

by Becky Chambers | 12:31 pm, July 30th, 2012

Back in the late ‘30s, J.R.R. Tolkien (that guy who wrote a few books about a ring or something) wrote a short story called Leaf by Niggle. I was unfamiliar with it until last week, when our managing editor sent it my way for reasons that will soon become apparent. Leaf by Niggle is a curious, poignant little tale of an unremarkable man struggling to complete a painting. Before his work is complete, he is forced to go on a journey — more plainly, he dies. The story is a big bundle of allegories on spirituality and creativity, but the thing that most captured my attention was Tolkien’s take on the afterlife. Heaven, for Niggle, is not a place of laid-back bliss, but rather one of constantly scaling challenges, neither too easy nor too punishing. Once all the challenges in one area have been completed, Niggle moves on to the next stage. By the end of the story, Niggle is blissfully content to continue ever onward, always pushing himself to learn, accomplish, and complete new things.

This, in a nutshell, is the concept of flow. It’s one of the core tenets of game design.

Portal Lead Designer Kim Swift’s New Game Quantum Conundrum Is, Yes, Amazing

by Becky Chambers | 12:28 pm, June 28th, 2012

Gather ‘round, girls and boys, and hearken to the tale of Kim Swift. Once upon a time, when she was but a college student, Swift co-created a little puzzle game called Narbacular Drop. The game was later brought to the attention of Gabe Newell, the head honcho of Valve. Newell hired the game’s entire development team, and Swift became a project lead on a new puzzle game, based heavily on Narbacular Drop’s mechanics. The game was called Portal. You may have heard of it. In 2008, Swift (in conjunction with writer Erik Wolpaw, whom we have to thank for GLaDOS’ now-iconic dialogue) took home two Game Developers Choice Awards for Innovation and Game of the Year. Halfway through development of Portal 2, Swift left Valve for indie developer Airtight Games, simply because she wanted to do something new. That something new is a first-person puzzle adventure called Quantum Conundrum, released last week on Steam, and coming to Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network in July.

I was excited for this game the moment I heard that Swift had designed it, but within an hour of playing, the game had exceeded my expectations. I was grinning through every level (okay, there were a few bouts of loud swearing, too, but come on, it’s a puzzle game). Sometimes I laughed aloud at a puzzle’s solution, just because it was so damn clever. To help you determine if Quantum Conundrum is for you, let me ask a simple question: Do you like having fun?

If you answered yes, play this game.

Portal Co-Creator Says Her New Game Can Definitely Be Compared to Portal

by Susana Polo | 12:34 pm, October 12th, 2011

The puzzle solving mechanics of Portal, as some may already know, were based on a student developed game called Narbacular Drop, developed as a senior project by four Digipen students in 2005. Immediately after graduating, those four students were hired by Valve on the strength of Narbacular Drop, thrown onto a sixteen-person team, and tasked with making Portal from scratch. Kim Swift was one of those four students.

So, after landing a gig at Valve right out of school, gaming media were surprised, to put it lightly, when she left the company in 2009. No worries, Swift says, she just prefers smaller development teams, and it’s totally fair to compare her next first person puzzle platformer, Quantum Conundrum, to the elephant in the room: Portal.

Things We Saw Today: Doctor Who Afterglow

by Jamie Frevele | 5:28 pm, August 28th, 2011

Sometimes, you wake up in the morning, thinking that you don’t have BBC America and you’ll just have to wait for the new episodes of Doctor Who to make it into a less legal format. And then, suddenly, you find out you have it, just in time for the newest new episode. And then, you ride out a hurricane named Irene. It’s been a crazy weekend. (at Doctor Who on Tumblr)