This week’s Media Consumption, a regular column asking our favorite game developers what they’ve been listening to, watching, reading, and playing, talks to programmer, designer and author Jamie Fristrom.
Jamie Fristrom is creative director at Santa Monica-based Treyarch, a developer now owned by its next-door neighbors, Activision. There, he was the lead programmer for
Spider-Man and lead programmer/designer for
Spider-Man 2, as well as a contributor to both
Draconus and
Die by the Sword. Previous to this, Fristrom worked at MindCraft on games such as the
Magic Candle series,
Star Legions,
Walls of Rome, and
Siege. Fristrom is also a regular contributor here at Gamasutra, has written a novel, and maintains a weblog (
http://gamedevblog.typepad.com/).
Sounds: "Somehow, around the time of the MP3 revolution, I kind of stopped listening to music,” said Fristrom. “I ripped my CD collection, listened to it on random shuffle for a while, got sick of it all, and never found new music to replace it. Must have something to do with getting old.” Fristrom does admit to listening to old favorites Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails occasionally. “But now that I'm a happy family man,” he says, “I don't really identify with Trent or Marilyn anymore.” But: “I do still have a soft spot for Blue Oyster Cult, the number one band of my childhood,” he said, adding, “More cowbell.”
Movies: “I have an eight-month-old daughter, so it's hard to get out of the house to see a movie these days,” said Fristrom. “We had to figure out the whole babysitter thing just so I could see
Batman Begins – which was a great movie – but I think
Spider-Man 2 keeps the honors for best superhero movie ever. And I'm not saying that just because I worked on the game; I'm a believer.”
Words: “I like novels about geeks,” said Fristrom. “That's who I identify with and what I respond to.” Listed favorites include
Microserfs,
Plowing The Dark,
The Fortress of Solitude,
The Ice Storm, and
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. “And it just so happens I wrote a novel about geeks myself, under a pen-name,” he said. “It even won an award from Writer's Digest.” The book, called
Dionysus Logged Out, has an
official website.
Games: “On the PC, just two nights ago, I came across a single-player
Unreal Tournament 2004 mod called
Hollow Moon that blew me away with its ambiance,” said Fristrom. “You have to play it to see what I mean.” Fristrom says he’s been in a “mod-playing mood” lately, also citing the unofficial
Thief 2 expansion,
Thief 2x. “As for console games,” he said, “
Psychonauts was the best thing I've seen this year.”
[Frank Cifaldi is a Las Vegas-based freelance author whose credits include work for Nintendo Official Magazine UK, Wired, and his own Lost Levels website.]