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God, Nethack is far, far, far too complicated. This only reminds me why I hated it so much (compared to Rogue, or even Larn).
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"I’ve mentioned before that I get the ’so how come you like games’ question pretty regularly, and don’t have a particularly cogent answer, beyond ‘because they’re awesome’ and some stuff about the funny quizzes my brother used to write for me in Basic. But one key component was an amazing pop-up book about computers that made it perfectly clear that they were the most exotic, powerful and fascinating things ever made and that, if at all possible, I’d quite like to grow up inside one." Turns out Margaret owned *that* pop-up book.
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Brandon on a genuine piece of interactive TV programming – Endemol's live 360 version of 1 vs 100, coinciding with the broadcast of the show in Canada. This sort of thing is always a nightmare, so impressive to see it working so well.
A new life awaits you in the Offworld colonies…
08 May 2009
Old news, but worth an announcement: I now appear to be doing some semi-regular writing for Offworld, the Boing-Boing stable’s wonderful gamesblog. As well as making the odd post from time to time, I also seem to be writing a regular feature entitled Something For The Weekend, which each week looks at one game – which you can play right now – that I’m going to be spending some time with over the coming weekend.
So far, it’s covered Outrun Online Arcade and The Chronicles of Riddick; this week takes a turn for the indie with Popcap’s awesome Plants Vs Zombies.
If you’ve not been reading Offworld, do check it out; Brandon – the esteemed editor – is a lovely chap, it’s got some fantastic regular contributors (including comrades Rossignol, Robertson, and Parkin), a great take on the world of games and game culture that really marks it out from most of the other gamesblogs there, and a lot of fine writing. In short: worth your time.
Service announcement over. You may return to the rest of your RSS feeds.
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"I have this idea in the back of my head — a fool idea of course — that one day, people with the power to do something about it might stumble across the notion of "a stable business ecosystem," and conclude that actually, to sustain industry growth and survival, you might conceivably, you know, want to let developers potentially make a buck from time to time, even if publishers and retailers have the power to strangle them. That rewarding development success breeds more development success, and gives heart to those who want to create good games." I knew about 3D Realms (which is a shame), but not about Gamelab (which is also a shame). Also: Greg speaks Truth.
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"Strange that, in order the simulate the experience of moving without the guidance of a machine, we are granted the perspective of a god." Lee on games and perspective and HUDs and comics and maps and navigation and more. Ding.
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"Archiving my very 1st teenage steps with the Atari 800XL in the form of a folder full of code, sketches & references" Toxi's been archiving his early coding notes and experiments and, you know, it's making me feel a little inadequate. Some beautiful hand-drawn pixel typefaces and graphics here
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"They're like triple-A games, but trimmed down and tightened to fit a smaller team, smaller scope, and usually a smaller audience– to try new, interesting, and exciting approaches that the baggage of a triple-A game can almost never allow. Single-A games: they're what we need more of, and they're what The Path and Zeno Clash are outstanding examples of." I like your coinage, Steve.
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Mike Darga's blog is a smart, insightful, data-driven look at game design, especially for MMOs. It's very good, and goes straight into my subscriptions.
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"Clipstart complements your photo application to give you a place that is designed for home movies. Import your movies, tag, search, and upload with one click to Flickr and Vimeo. You can even quickly upload a trimmed portion of a movie without needing to save a new copy." Looks like an interesting alternative to iMovie for most of the uses I make of video.
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Scans from a German magazine: messy, full of records, sometimes computers.
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"Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context–make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large–and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve." Fantastic: transcripts of a series of lectures about the biology of B-Movie monsters; funny, accurate, informative.
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Map of Shanghai, as Sim-City style rendered projection; is this useful? Or is this just a style of imagery computer users are used to?
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"I find the watchclock fascinating not simply because it’s a kind of steampunk GPS, a wind-up mechanical location-awareness technology. I’m further fascinated at how this holistic system of watchclocks, keys, guards, and supervisors succeeded so completely in creating a method of behavioral control such that a human being’s movements can be precisely planned and executed, hour after hour and night after night, with such a high degree of reliability that almost a century goes by before anyone thinks of ways of improving the system as originally conceived." Fantastic.
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"Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken (without giblets) is an entire cooked chicken in a can (a big one)." For reference: I am not whole chicken-in-a-can hungry.
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"The Twiggy Game is a charming cultural object from a bygone era; it's also a stark representation of what went wrong with boardgames, and a stark warning for what can go wrong with games as a whole — at least, if we fail to inculcate, in ourselves and in others who love games, an aesthetic that prizes something beyond the brand." Costikyan on the dangers of games having a 'lack of culture'.
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John Peel's Festive 50s the Spotify playlist edition. Obviously, there are holes, but nice that it exists.
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"Because the ability to be in a city and to see through it is a superpower, and it's how maps should work." The maps of New York Jack's been working on for a while are now available to buy. Having seen them in the flesh, I can tell you they're properly beautiful.
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"Well, ok there probably aren’t that many to give away, and this isn’t a Government mandate or anything, but Sony Europe are giving away free woolen Sackboy toys to Happy Gadders in the UK and Ireland – yay!" Want. Emailed!
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"In this piece, each of the departments involved in making a videogame are examined and accused of one particular vice. In making these assessments, the assumption behind each is that the purpose of the videogames industry is to make games that players want to play, and not to make the games that developers want to play." It is good, and I'm looking forward to the second part.
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"…as developers, we need to deal more honestly with the disparity between our reach and our grasp – which is to say, what we tell ourselves our games are about, versus what they are actually about. History will see this decade as the period when games struggled with their destiny in this way." 2K Marin's JP LeBreton with a smart, insightful take on the road ahead for games design, and the many positive steps being taken along it (and: a decent commentary on the "shooting people" issue).
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"With limited influence, unlimited hands in the pie, a low barrier to critique, and the perception of triviality, frontend engineers are the janitors of software development. Rather than cleaning up trash, the boulder they toil beneath is skew: the distance between team member's conceptions of a project." This really feels very familiar: it's the most under-appreciated art in the stack of software development, and the one that takes the brunt of the crap.
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"Best of all, for impatient gamers the developer plans to conceal load screens with a mini-game where players can connect a USB keyboard and write an undergraduate thesis on the illustrations of Gustave Dore." Seriously, this already sounds much better than the Redwood Shores version…
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Farbs quit 2K Australia. This is his resignation note. It's fun, and not in any way mean.