Mark Cooke's G-Mixer » life

Great presentation on human behavior

Mark Cooke — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:34:36 +0000

The below presentation from the TED conference by Dan Ariely about how humans make decisions was quite entertaining. Watching all 17 minutes is recommended if you have the time. If the embedded player below doesn’t work – it is acting funky for me – the original link is here.

Long time game developer

Mark Cooke — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:55:41 +0000

On a recent trip to the US I dug up some old items of mine from storage that indicate the beginning of my game developer roots. First, here’s a picture of me at 15 years old along with John Romero, Adrian Carmack, and Shawn Green from id Software. It was taken in 1996 at the Computer Game Developers Conference, or CGDC, which later became the GDC we know and love today.

At the time this was taken I was playing a lot of Doom 2 and it was awesome for those guys to take some time out to chat with an aspiring game developer who looked up to them. I ran into Romero at GDC 2009 and he was just as friendly as ever. Doom 2 is still one of my all time favorite games.

The photocopied check in the upper right is from my first job as an intern at a defunct game developer named Rocket Science Games. That company was in a building on 2nd and Townsend in San Francisco. The same building now houses Secret Level and ngmoco.

Next we move onto early experiments in game design. Below is a map of a pen and paper RPG (geek alert) I created as a kid with a childhood friend of mine. Construction paper for the win!

We were working on that right around the same time I started to teach myself how to program, around 11 years old. The game was called “Catiso”. I don’t remember many of the details unfortunately but I do remember that we had a rulebook to go along with the maps. Hopefully I’ll find that someday. I bet lots of game developers have fun game designs from their youth too. It would be great if someone shared a story in the comments.

Finally, this isn’t related to me but here is a cool video from Romero that was recorded during the creation of Doom. It’s great that he uploaded it – it’s fun to see how small id Software was during the creation of one of the biggest games of all time.

A Visit to id Software from john romero on Vimeo.

Weekday afternoon in Shibuya

Mark Cooke — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:53:08 +0000

Still playing around with my new camera. The video below was recorded right outside the 109 department store building. If this looks crowded, just image a Friday or Saturday night… it’s madness. If you want to see the video in a larger window go to Vimeo directly via the links in the video.

In front of 109. Shibuya, Tokyo. from Mark Cooke on Vimeo.

Now with video

Mark Cooke — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:57:13 +0000

To record more of life’s occurrences, for both fun and for sharing with friends and family, yesterday I bought a Canon HF20 HD video camera. I haven’t had much time to play with it but did record a few scenes last night around my neighborhood.

I used Vimeo to upload the HD video. Vimeo has a great interface and looks like a quality service. Unfortunately, unless you are a paying member you cannot embed HD video into an external webpage. You can see the full HD version by clicking the link below the video and going to Vimeo’s webpage.

Ebisu, Tokyo, Japan. from Mark Cooke on Vimeo.