Hello World!

Hello ladies and gents, mutants and aliens, and all other unrepresented intelligent things out there in the universe!

My name, is Matt, code named TorrMercury, also known as Agent Darkwall, Lahyts, and a variety of other names. What I am here for, is something odd, something passionate, something amazing, and not quite believable. Can you guess what that is? The answer my good friend, is Problem Solving, but not in the traditional sense. Problem Solving to the Nth Degree is about solving, or at least attempting to solve, design issues in games. Meaning, GAME DESIGN!!!

Hopefully, I will be discussing many of the problems that video games, board games, and all sorts of other games that currently exist, have and need solving, and propose some solutions to them to hopefully solve the problem. However, in reality, and the more likely situation, is that I will be discussing design topics and learning about them through my ramblings here.

I want to learn and to share my experiences in the games field because it is something that I have wanted all my life to get into. From all sorts of opposition from my family, and from lots of scoffing and put downs from teachers and guidance counselors, I have pushed through and have entered into the realm of my dreams, and found it lacking. I love games, no matter what kind: video, pen and paper, board, sports, etc. I love them for the play, they study, the design, the escape, and more. Because of this though, I want to contribute back to what I love so much. I want to give all of the passion inside of me to a new creation. I want to do what Johan Huizinga would definitely agree with: give rise to new institutions and culture from play, and new play from institutions and culture.

I am merely an aspiring game designer, a student of the NYU Game Center, learning as much as I can about design before I head out into the wide world of gaming.

Are we ready, friends? L-l-l-let's begin!

TL;DR: I like games and designing them so I started a blog to talk about game design.

Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) was arguably the first true scholar of play. He wrote the book Homo Ludens (Man at Play) in 1938, and talked about play in its own context. He was a man that was ahead of his time, and a man who knew what he stood for and stood beside it to the very end. He was an anti-materialist and an anti-fascist. Homo Ludens was as much a reaction to the fascist and socialist/communist movements as it was an actual study on what play is. A huge shout out to this man, who inspired me to become a designer and to think about games as more than just something that I do for fun.

The NYU Games Center is a magical play in New York City, a part of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and a huge part of my life. It is headed by Frank Lantz, and features many prominent game designers and scholars as professors, including: Yesper Yuul, who wrote Half-Real and A Casual Revolution, and Eric Zimmerman, who wrote Rules of Play and designed Dinner Dash. A huge thanks to the Game Center for being the amazing resource and source of inspiration that it is.