Skip to content
Hallway
0:00 / 0:00

#pico-8#fantasyconsole#gamedesign

PRACTICE 2018: Joseph White

NYU Game Center

4.1K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2022.
  • Presented by Joseph White, creator of PICO-8
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 8 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

21K views8 years ago2 recommendations

Game developmentSoftware designUnity, Unreal and GodotGame designRetro games and consoles

Joseph White discusses the design philosophy behind the PICO-8 fantasy console and how constraints foster creativity.

Joseph White PICO-8 and the Search for Cosy Design Spaces June 23, 2018 Development tools can play a creative role in shaping the work made with them; they can be made to not only implement, but also to guide and tease out ideas, or even to operate as a design manifesto. This talk retraces the design of the fantasy console PICO-8 with these goals in mind, embracing the fuzzy boundary between tools and creative process, and the influence that user-made PICO-8 cartridges have had on PICO-8 itself. Joseph White is a Tokyo-based designer and software author. He formed Lexaloffle Games in 2003 in order to pursue his interests in game design, graphics programming, electronic music, and creative tools. He is currently developing the concept of fantasy consoles (PICO-8, Voxatron) and exploring their use in creativity and education. With his wife Natsuko, Joseph also co-runs Pico Pico Cafe: an event space and meeting place for artists and developers. For more from the NYU Game Center visit gamecenter.nyu.edu

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as an insightful talk on how constraints and cozy design spaces encourage game development and creativity.

Impossibleon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pico-8 Virtual Fantasy Console is an idealized constrained modern day game maker”

I'm a huge Pico-8 fan and suggest that anyone that is interested in Pico-8 watch Joseph White's (the creator) Practice (NYU game designer conference) talk about the design philosophy of Pico-8. link to this video . The TLDW of the talk is that he explicitly tried to built a "cozy" game development environment with enough constraints in place to encourage creativity without the stress of starting from a completely blank canvas. At the end Scott Hanselman has a footnote about building or buying a physical Pico-8 console. One thing that is missing is most Pico-8 consoles focus on the play aspect of Pico-8, not the creation aspect of Pico-8 which is just as important to me if not more so. I own a PocketCHI…
View on Hacker News

Impossibleon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?”

All of these are explicit design choices, for example a fixed palette is important to give games a "Pico-8" look and also reduce decisions regarding color choice. I suggest you watch Joseph White's practice talk ( link to this video ) if you're curious about design decisions that guided Pico-8. Multiple resolutions would absolutely break the "Fantasy console" feel of Pico-8, even though I understand why programmers universally hate that. To be fair a lot of people do code editing outside of the Pico-8 editor. #4 is an interesting point. The trick here is that different parents have different ideas of what is and isn't appropriate, and of course different kids will have different responses. It seems lik…
View on Hacker News

havercosineon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The cloudy layers of modern-day programming (or what programming has become)”

…Also, if your startup achieves even a moderate level of success, you'll be back to solving boring problems. The other is to find a pockets of software development outside work, where you can still solve interesting problems, like developing small games. Joseph White, who created the famed programmable fantasy game console Pico-8 alludes to this ( link to this video ) ! It was an explicit goal to build a tool to solve cute, interesting problems because routine software development feels like glueing things together. The whole youtube talk linked above is worth watching. But the trick here is to forgo commercial motivations. People make fun, cute little games on Pico 8, distribute them as cartridges. Oc…
View on Hacker News

meheleventyoneon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Scratch 3.0”

I mean it’s definitely a way to enjoy things. But the intent of zep who made it was to create a cozy design space. He gave a talk about it last year: link to this video
View on Hacker News