Esquire just published Jason Fagone’s profile of art game developer and friend Jason Rohrer. The piece is a part of that magazine’s “Best and Brightest 2008” features, and it’s a terrific portrait of a strange but earnest man whose work is surprising and important. I make a few brief appearances in the article, for which I am grateful, but mostly it’s a superb portrait of Rohrer’s life and work.
Like a feature on Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern in The Atlantic Monthly two years ago, here we have a mass market lifestyle publication focusing on videogames not via the traditional commercial industry but in relation to the weird offshoots that surround it. Mateas and Stern’s Façade has served as a model and inspiration for features and techniques in commercial titles, but that game aimed for the highest of summits, one it may not have reached. Some of Rohrer’s games are better than others, but their small size and rapidfire release might make them more relevant, faster, and wider. The Esquire piece offers one example of that influence at work.
Esquire also published a new game by Rohrer, Between, which became the main example in my recent column on disjunctive play.