Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Game inventors make game designers look crazy

Or maybe it's jut reality television.

Check out this five-minute video from YouTube (direct link for my RSS friends). You've got a fellow on the American Inventor reality show pitching his game, Bulletball, which looks like ping-pong without paddles, or handball played on a circular surface. Inventor (not "designer") Marc Griffin pitches his game with an enthusiasm that just doesn't seem all there. Maybe it's an editing trick?


Digging a little deeper, I found an interview with Griffin where he talks more about the game and his life, defending himself as accepting the trade-off of looking foolish for national exposure for his game. I can respect that. I can't respect selling one's house and living in a car for what looks like a bad game.

I certainly don't think it would make the Olympics. Maybe I'm wrong.

1 comment:

arsagano said...

I watched that show last summer when it aired. That guy was crazy and there were hundreds more just like him.

On the flip side another guy almost won it all with a game he designed. It was an educational game that taught vocabulary and spelling. He came in second place.

The guy that won designed a new car seat for babies. He won out of sympathy because he cried about how his baby daughter died in a car wreck. The truth was that his daughter was over 20 years old and not wearing a seat belt when she died.