lead story on Gamasutra.com

Today the game was featured in the lead story on Gamasutra.com (read it here). Gamasutra.com is the leading online community and news source in the game industry. So it's a big deal to be the lead story.

One interesting thing in the story is the point about how serious games have much lower budgets than commercial games and thus are not as polished. The author, Bryan Ochalla, cited me as agreeing with that (which I do in general) but he didn't include my comments that serious games also provide more creative freedom for the game makers. Here's the full text of what I sent to Ochalla about this:
I want to design play systems that create meaningful and dramatic experiences. I transitioned from industry to academia because I wanted creative freedom to pursue ideas without being governed by a publisher and without the design constraints that come along with having to sell lots of units. There are pros and cons to designing in an academic environment. The pros are: broader set of problems to pursue and much more creative freedom / flexibility once you secure funding for a problem. The cons are: production budgets are smaller and you have less access to experienced talent. Right now there is tremendous opportunity and so many interesting problems to pursue. And we are finding (and growing) more and more talented developers who want to work in this environment.