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By Brad Cook Ian Lynch Smith, founder and president of Freeverse, says that hes discovered why the companys card games are so successful, and hes willing to spill the beans (or, more appropriately, reveal his hand). Our secret is not that we can shuffle the cards better, he says, but that we recognized from the beginning that social interaction is an essential part of the experience. Hes so confident of this that Freeverse and Aspyr Media (the folks who brought you The Sims among other games) have teamed up to release iPuppet presents: Colins Classic Cards, which is playable in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. The suite features spades, hearts, euchre, and setback, and it will include a how-to for gamers who want to create puppets that will represent them when they access the GameSmith online gaming service and play against other card sharks. You can even create your own rooms to play in and share them with other gamers. You can be as somber or as goofy as you want to be, but youll find the latter a pervasive mood at Freeverse, which has a history of not taking itself too seriously. |
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Free-form Computer Games Smith was a Cognitive Science major with an artificial intelligence focus at Vassar College, but the liberal arts slant of the school led him to view programming differently than most engineers do. For example, he says he chose the name Freeverse because free verse is a type of free-form poetry, which can look almost exactly like computer source code. Hes joined in his endeavors by his brother Colin, who also helped found the Outsiders Art Fair; photographer Gareth Anderson, a fellow Vassar alum; customer support guy Carlos Sanches, who also works in a contemporary art gallery; and art director Steven Tze, whose sense of design is felt in everything we do, according to Smith. The Boss is Coming!
And for those of you who like to play games in the office, Freeverse has wisely included a Boss Coming! option in the File menu of all their games. Well let you discover some of the other fun little features. These arent the nondescript Solitaire and Mindsweeper games youll find on other computers. |
Read on to find out what else Freeverse has up their sleeves. |