My Games

These may be my games but they are not only mine. Making videogames is always a team effort and this is no exception. Most of the games have been created in collaboration with the Powerful Robot team and my long-time friend and partner-in-crime Sofía Battegazzore. What follows is a selected list of my commercial and personal projects.

2006-07
Both the title and the game are quite big: BIG FAT AWESOME HOUSE PARTY. So far, this is the only commercial game on this list. I'm incredibly proud of the Powerful Robot team that worked for over two years in this project. A year after its launch, it gathered over 13 million player accounts. Powerful Robot imagined, designed and produced this game for Cartoon Network, a long-time client who was a pleasure to work with. They even went on the record saying: "Big Fat Awesome House Party has been our biggest gaming success in our history".

2004

Madrid. This game was online just two days after the horrendous terrorist attacks in Madrid. It's quite different from our previous Newsgaming effort: it is a game that you can actually win and it explores a more emotional side of games. Another difference is that, so far, I never received any hate email for this game.

Cambiemos. This was a game commissioned for the Uruguayan Presidential Elections. The client was the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition which won the election by a landslide (probably not because of our videogame, even if we would like to think so ;)

2003

September 12th. Our first game for the Newsgaming.com project. By far, our most popular game, having been played by way over half a million persons so far. The amount of attention that it gathered, both online and by major international media, took us by total surprise. September 12th keeps generating strong reactions. That means that yes, I still get hate mail, but I also get emails from teachers who say that they use the game to encourage debate among their students. Personally, I do not care if people agree or disagree with its message. If games can be powerful enough to make players think about the world they live in, then I could not ask for more.

Howard Dean for Iowa Game. This was the first videogame ever to be officially commissioned for a US Presidential Campaign. Democrat pre-candidate Howard Dean did not live up to the expectations, but he changed forever the way to use technology in US political campaigns. After this game was launched on Christmas week 2003, it was followed by a series of political videogames, both from Republicans and Democrats. Dean started a trend, officially inaugurating the use of videogames as campaign communication tools. I co-designed the game with Ian Bogost and it was produced by the Powerful Robot team.

2001
Kabul Kaboom!". If there ever was a political event that triggered the development of hundreds of amateur online games as a form of expression, that was 9-11. I was on a United flight with my wife on that day, and the next time that I had to fly I decided to create a game as a way to deal with my fear. By that time, there were many anti-Osama online games but, as much as I dislike Osama, I decided to focus on another event. The US was engaged in the war in Afghanistan, and was both bombing the people as well as throwing food and help packages from planes (many houses were actually destroyed by help packages). I was disgusted at seeing how the most powerful country on Earth was bombing the crap out of one of the poorest, so I created this game. I wasn't expecting much when I posted it online, but after a few days it had several thousands players from all over the world and this encouraged me to keep using videogames as a form of political expression and experimentation. The game has incredibly crude graphics and gameplay, but keep in mind that it was fully coded and produced on a coast-to-coast flight.