Rod Humble interview with design3

Rod Humble talks about games design, development and Second Life in this recent interview with design3. I thought the interview was interesting and inspiring throughout the 8 minutes / 7 seconds of the video.

design3 got a chance to talk to Rod Humble at the UCSC ‘Inventing the Future of Games’ Symposium.

At 4 minutes in the video Rod Humble talks about Second Life which is always good to hear. Here are my favourite quotes from the interview below.

Rod says “I think what attracted me to Second Life is it was so unique”
“The economy is entirely driven by the players”
“Boy, that connected me”
“They care awful lot about that”
“I think that, to me it was this logical progression”
“Second Life was right there already”

At 4 minutes and 57 seconds the interviewer asks a question about the debate about video games being considered art.

Rod says “I think it’s over”
“I made games that I created”
“At this point you’re in a time machine business”
“It’s time machine time”

At 6 minutes the interviewer asks about what advice would Rod give to someone who is new to games development.

“I would say if you’re not a programmer then start with board games”
“You can make a game this weekend”
“It’s not hard”
“It is a learned skill”
“You don’t have to learn C++ to make a game anymore”
“There’s tools out there like game maker, there’s dark basic, all these are very easy to use tools”
“Then you’re off to the races”
Rod says “I encourage everyone who likes games who thinks its interesting to do it and my hope is that there will be a bunch of ideas”

At the end of the video the interviewer asks Rod what one word he would give to sum up video games design. Rod says “Glorious” which is a great word to use I think.