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Actually, the sailing puzzle in Puzzle Pirates is based off of Dr. Mario, not Tetris.

They already do this in Puzzle Pirates. Instead of "bleeping" certain words they convert them to pirate speak. For example, "bitch" is "tart" and for some reason "fuck" translates to "scupper." It can be quite funny in certain situations.

Actually they are including anything up to midnight PST on April 7th Per the Captain/CEO (Look for Cleaver's post, right at the top)

The indie half of the game industry needs to *grow up* if they're going to be conventionally successful. Puzzle Pirates had a $600k budget -- if you want to break into the restauraunt business you don't start with a lemonade stand, and I can't imagine why anyone thinks they're going to be successful starting from a garage in this day and age. Distribute online, take the publisher out of the loop and get 95% of every sale instead of 15%. THEN, when you have 5000 paying customers like Puzzle Pirates did the last time I checked, the publishers will come to *you* trying to get the hot new IP fix that they crave and cannot make in house, and you will get to dictate the terms because a) any publisher can make you bloody rich and b) you have the demonstrable ability to make any publisher who takes your game to wide-release a godawful amount of money.

See Stardock for another example of a company which proves you don't have to have a $20 million budget to act like "#$&"$# professionals.

I'm completely in line with this - the first thing that came to mind was photoshop, and the hundreds of megs per file that always happens with files that have been worked on for a while. Remote access? No thanks.
Second that came to mind was gaming - java games are all very well, but they have their problems; games like puzzle pirates, designed for all-platform use, based on java, still have fairly large load times - and this is with most data on your computer. Getting all that kind of information remotely on top of the current stuff would require huge improvements in bandwidth.
Third thing that came to mind was privacy issues (with the recent security incidents), hacking attempts (this'd be a tempting target to the scum that take pleasure from targeting useful systems), and so on.

It's a nice idea to improve the current stuff with the JS+XML we're seeing - and there's some neat stuff; multimap's mouseovering with image/map combination; this neat thing that you can click on when you recognise a book cover; yeah, it's nice to look at, nice to use, but we're left with: "Variety is the spice of life", and there's something BIG to be said about keeping seperate platforms and utility. Competition leads to better stuff, where uniformity leads to stagnation.

mmoarrrrpg

Everything is done by puzzles (e.g., advanced tetris-style games). A ship sails because the navigator plays the Navigation puzzle, using movement points created by people playing the Sailing puzzle, in ship vs ship battle people play the Gunnery puzzles to load guns, ships can grapple after which everyone fights each other hand to hand in Swordfighting puzzle games. That's different from yet another graphical MUD!

Although I'm not sure the exact numbers, Puzzle Pirates was near 10,000 players a while ago and has probably far surpassed that now.

In fact they recently launched two new oceans (servers) to handle additional players. One of these servers runs off a different business model that allows unlimited play time but where you actually pay real dollars for additional game features (buying a ship, getting promoted, etc). It's a great experiment and has already worked well for people who like playing the puzzles but don't want to pay the price for a full subscription.

Try Puzzle Pirates. A veteran can create a new character and, with it, crush an average player with a months-old character on their first battle - or drinking competition.

One month of play is included in the fee.

Funny that...
There's four other new MMORPGS on the shelf with WoW that all include the first month and all cost under $40.

Now, if you (collective) are the sort of person who has purchased fewer than 4 video games in the course of a year, I tip my hat to you. You're absolutely right. A MMO is a waste of your money.

How much money I spend total on games isn't the point. If it were, you wouldn't be able to explain the $4800 I've spent in the the last three years on games (Some PS2, some GameCube, some PC). The point is that Blizard's pricing is not the standard. It's *higher* than the standard. And signifigantly so. If they charged approximately the same amount as everybody else, you'd have a point; but they don't.

There are games that go the other way too... I was addicted to Puzzle Pirates for over a year. They got my monthly fee, and I was perfectly OK with that. Incidentally, unless you buy the retail box, they don't charge up front, but only for the monthly usage.

People hate java 'cause it's overly verbose, but complain that languages like perl look like line noise.

People hate Java because it's a language that was born of an advertising campaign and not a specific need in the technology field.

People hate Java because the technology has been caught in the middle of several commercial interests and platform wars, which has crippled the promise of Java's stability and reliability.

People hate Java because it's a lie. Java promised a new generation language that was to be cross-platform compatible, but it's actually less cross-platform compatible than C/C++.

People hate Java because it's slow as molasses. Need an example? Take a look at Puzzle Pirates, a very clever multiplayer online game, that because the developers were foolish enough to use Java, runs ten times slower than it should and is painful to use as a result.

People hate Java because it sucks. I'm sorry to those of you who are Java programmers and are finding less jobs, but no sane company wants to use this technology when there are other systems available that offer better performance, reliability and longevity.

Actually there's already a very active gaming group at Sun, led by their Chief Gaming Officer. There are already a few commercial Java-based games around and I think there are more in the pipeline.

According to the FAQ, the game is playable via dial-up, but I don't think there are many dial-up users that are willing to wait for a 40MB download.

OK, pay $24.95 per quarter ($19.99 first quarter) or $74.95 per year.

The retail version includes a simple single player mode, unique in-game item, and a free month subscription. You can still download and pay as before and are not required to purchase the box set. For more information see http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.p hp?t=15118

From the Installation FAQ:

Puzzle Pirates has been developed in Java. This has given Three Rings a lot of advantages, in particular being able to run on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying this makes it awesome, or that Java rules, or that it couldn't be done another way, or that cross-platform Java doesn't have its problems, etc. etc. etc. I'm just shedding some light on how it was "published at the same time for PC, Mac and Linux," by quoting directly from the FAQ.

Agreed. Honestly, it's the best community I've ever seen in an MMORPG (mostly because it seems to be a bit of an older one, attracting both men and women in their mid-20s). It has an entirely player run economy, very active devs and player support staff (OceanMasters are always on and always available to help), and it generates a sense of teamwork I haven't seen in any other game (effectively, you puzzle together to keep a ship afloat and running well).

Give it a try, you can download the client and play it for a week free.

- Spoom
Captain of the Monkey Hunters
Prince of Angels and Demons
Evil-Eyed Peglegged Monkey Pirate

Ubisoft paid good money to get this earth-shattering bit of information posted on the front page of Slashdot. Please click the links and wander through the site a bit so your favorite news source stays in business.

As much as I hate Java, that's not entirely true. You wouldn't want to write a game that needs to be fast in Java, but it's fine for turn-based games and even some MMOGs.

there, are a few who are trying. Its just that the ridiculous up-front costs make it hard to attract the money.

Do you play your own game, do you play other massively multiplayer games, consoles, board games, or do you just like to design em??

When you do play are you a 'serious' gamer, or are you playing causually, or are you playing as a professional who has an stake in keeping up with what is going on in the gaming industry?

What do you think of the how other games have handled trying to avoid the 'level grinding' like A Tale in the Desert and Puzzle Pirates?

it seems that the consensus among the beta testers is that the game is ready. there are no major known bugs that i've ever come across, and there are very few glitches to speak of. [...]

the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG, and it was deserved in that case. that game still isn't ready for production [...]

And to me, that's the important distinction. If you wait until your grand vision is done, it never will be. I think the optimum is to get something minimal but solid out ASAP, and then let your future development be influenced by the early adopters, rather than designer fantasies of what people will want.

There's a fine MMORPG called Puzzle Pirates that took this approach. They have a massive vision that will take them years to finish. They got something out early, first as a free beta and then as a for-pay 1.0 version. It's perfectly fun as is, and they add new features often enough that things are always getting more interesting. And because many of their users have been in on it and been listened to for quite a while, they're hugely supportive.

If you're looking for a game that doesn't involve a level treadmill or involve doing the same thing over and over without anything fun, try Puzzle Pirates. The name may sound odd at first, but I have played many MMORPGs and it is, by far, the best one I have ever played. The community is great (it's very rare to find the sorts of lamers that inhabit other games in YPP), the game is fun, the economy is entirely player run (and works in a sane manner that involves puzzling to craft things and automated labour, so you don't do the same thing over and over), and there are MANY different ways to play the game.

How about Borland JBuilder? That's a big, powerful IDE, and I'd consider it a successful commercial product. Also, from the games side, Puzzle Pirates is a Java game, and good chunks of Chrome are Java. Oh yeah, plus about a billion cellphone applications.

Last year's winners are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.

The Puzzle Pirates are cross-platform (since it's built on Java, presumably there's Linux support, but I've never tried it). Fun little game, with excellent concept.

So what you're saying is that Linux and Windows and Mac OSX can run the same application just because it's compiled and linked against OpenGL? No porting involved?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that if you use an API with implementations on multiple platforms your port is considerably more simple than a rewrite. It's a lot easier to rewrite some platform specific elements than to rewrite to a different I/O API when you do a port.

Lets face it, different versions of Linux with different libraries are different platforms.

That's what static linking is for. It's considerably easier to support multiple versions/distributions of linux than it is to support the multitude of windows variants... assuming you know what you're doing.

Heck, even the WORA mantra of Sun's Java is a different platform on Windows than it is on Unix

Tell that to all the developers that have successfully written WORA applications in Java. Especially the games developers. I'm not limiting that comment to applet developers either.

This assumes that your users are running Windows... What percentage of the market is that?

100% if you're using DirectX. Why would you eliminate potential sales from the rest of the market when you could potentially run on other platforms with minimal effort though? Targeting the platform with the most market share may seem like a no-brainer strategy, but it's not that simple. If your port is easy enough it's more than possible that your sales to people on minority platforms will generate profits far in excess of the porting cost.

Good programmers don't select languages because they're "cool!"

And this epitomizes what is wrong with Java. It's a technology that accompanies a marketing campaign. Why? Because for the most part, unlike other computer languages, Java doesn't address a specific niche or application area in any superior way. Therefore there is no substantive need for Java which explains why it has to be heavily marketed to be "cool" so people will use it.

Having been programming for more than 20 years now, I've noticed a dramatic increase in misguided questions newer techs ask me, specifically, "What language should I program in?" as if there is one universal language that will do everything. I've always found this annoying. I'm asked, "Should I learn Perl or PHP?" as if it's merely a question of picking a single language to do everything. While that may be possible, it doesn't do justice to the application if you try to hack a less-suitable language to address a scenario where another choice would be superior.

Java has been dead for a long time. More marketing isn't going to revive it. No computer language will last if it isn't OBVIOUS to developers that it is the best choice for an application.

The bottom line is that C/C++ is more portable than Java, despite the myth of Java being marketed as more portable. Java has better garbage collection and string handling and some higher-level abilities, but none of those features couldn't be plugged into C/C++ with a few libraries. Most Java applications are interpreted or p-code and run hundreds of times slower than lower-level counterparts.

A good example is Puzzle Pirates. A pretty nifty online game written in Java. Unfortunately, the thing is so goddam slow it really detracts from the experience. This application and the company is suffering because they chose an inferior technology as the base of their service.

Meh, my favorite is still Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. It's a free download, runs on any platform that runs Java, it has skill-based gameplay and a friendly community. Of course if you're a PHAT LEWT whore who enjoys crapping your pants so that you don't miss a mob it's probably not for you. It's better suited to more casual players.

...just give me more control over my character instead of me being a passive observer and chatter while the battle takes place.

If this is the case, then perhaps you would be served by trying some of the games I recommended before.

Meridian 59 focuses on PvP and has more action in its combat than most other online RPGs. PvP combat is especially fun given the active nature of the game.

Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates gives you little puzzles to solve when you take various actions. Your wits and reaction time determine how good do at the action. This game also supports a form of PvP between different pirate ship groups.

Both of these games encourage a more active participation by the player.

Note that, financial success does not a great game make....

I never argued that. I would be a fool to; my own game has significantly less subscribers and thus significantly less moeny than most other online games, but I consider it a very fun game.

However, at the end of the day games are still a business. So, while you and people like you might enjoy more action in their games, this goes against the general trends. The "boring" games you complain about make a lot more money. Most people already complain that PlanetSide is too expensive compared to "free" FPS servers, but the game is making significantly less money than either EQ or SWG. Large companies especially look to maximize profit, so they are going to build the games which attract the largest number of people.

I'm sorry... maybe I am misinterpreting what you mean by 'big impact'? I have to even question if you play MMORPGS, most MMO's have very little penalties beyond experience penalty and most give you a choice to go 'hardcore' and opt in to increase your penalties (challenge of the game) they do everything to make sure the character doesn't lose a significant amount of anything when you die except for a 'death fee' in experience or gold.

And that is enough to make people complain about death. This is one of the problems with our discussion: You do not seem tounderstand the audience for these games. Everyone is not like you. Some games also have very harsh penalties. In Meridian 59, for example, you drop your whole inventory on death. If you don't have a backup set of equipment or some friends to help you out, you could be in for a long period of rebuilding. Items in M59 aren't as vital as in most other games, but being naked has its disadvantages. ;) People don't want to experience this just because a router that neither the player nor the game company has control over decides to stop working just then.

Also note that FF XI success is primarily due to the Japanese....

All the other games include worldwide figures as well. EverQuest has been released in Asia and Europe as well as the U.S.

Plus, that chart doesn't even include some of the largest online games from Korea. Lineage 1 has/had over a million subscribers at one time. The largest game called "Mu Online" claimed to have over 5 million worldwide subscribers during E3! This market is bigger than yo

Online games can't do proper "twitch" because of latency. The split-second reflexes which make a great twitch gamer would be absolutely ruined when subjected to typical internet lag. Do you really want your character to die just because one of AT&T's routers decided to not play nice and delay your packet by 500 ms, meaning that you missed your block and took a leathal blow? Most people don't.

But, perhaps you should try some different games if you're tired of timesinks. You might expecially want to look toward more independent games.

My own game, Meridian 59 is a pretty typical fantasy game that focuses on combat, but the combat is much more active. Maneuvering and distance is important, especially in PvP play. While there's definitely a learning curve, building a competent character doesn't take a year like it does in most level-dominated games. Yeah, you're still going to have to kill monsters and collect gold, but the pace is faster than most other online RPGs which makes a lot of difference. Plus, the PvP is second-to-none. I might be biased, but I think it's a lot of fun.

A Tale in the Desert features great gameplay and doesn't even include combat. It focuses more on experiencing life in an Egyptian setting, solving puzzles, and competing and cooperating with other players. There's no "hit 'a' and pray" here.

Or, you could try Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates if that strikes your fancy. The game uses puzzles for all meanginful in-game actios. Play a puzzle to pump bilge, or distill rum, or any of the other stuff. Plus, who doesn't enjoy talking like a pirate? It's actually role-playing in this game!

There's lots of games out there to play if you're tired of "timesinks" or the "grind". Go out and enjoy them instead of just complaining.

Have fun,

Thanks for the kind words. :)

A few thoughts about your comment:

The final state is presumably a 'virtual world' where nothing is scripted and everything is the emergent result of interactions within that world.

That's one possibility that people have advocated. Personally, I think that this is not the likely outcome. Even at Disneyland, which you mention later, the experience is rigrously organized and highly polished. Since people are paying for the entertainment, there are certain expectations. While I could conceive of a movie of various images and sounds strung together and left to the audience to construct something meaningful of it, I don't think that's the best way to entertain people. Likewise, virtual worlds need a bit of structure imposed by a competent developer in order to make it truly fun and worth paying for.

What I mean by that is that I imagine virtual worlds will be something like Disneyland where there are automated NPCs but also people employed to work as an in-game agent to keep the immersive experience running smoothly.

The problem is that the audience isn't willing to pay for it. Doing a quick lookup, the standard 3-day "park hopper" ticket for Disneyland is $124 if purchased in advance. That's only a bit under what you'd pay for a full year of Meridian 59! Yet, you see numerous complaints from people on sites like Slashdot complaining about having to spend $15/month on subscriptions. Honestly, the audience that are interested in virtual worlds isn't ready to pay the price for a focused experience like you get at a theme park like Disney.

Really, this gets into the reasons why we're stuck at the level we are. People have stated what they're willing to pay, and they mostly accept what online games have to offer. Until the market is willing to pay more and demand more, we won't see anything startlingly new.

That said, I think there's some cool things in the future that will turn expectations on their sides. A number of smaller developers have started making some cool games. Including my own game Meridian 59, you can take a look at the wonderful games of Puzzle Pirates and A Tale In The Desert. All these are games that were developed by a group of dedicated people, usually single-digit number of developers. These are games that offer something besides the same-old, same-old.

Some further points to ponder.

Have fun,

...are still right here.

Chris Mattern

Future? How about present?

Puzzle Pirates is a Java game title. It's available now. Apparently it's fun. I tried it. It wasn't my cup of tea but I suck with puzzle games.

Skotos has been offering this type of service for a long time.

I'd make note that we make significantly more money on the Meridian 59 servers we host ourselves than the ones we licensed to Skotos. The Skotos server is a bit different (it's the non-PvP version compared to our PvP-focused servers) so it's not necessarily a direct comparison.

That said, I think there's more room for indie developers than people might otherwise think. The biggest thing is that the market needs to support the games the indies develop. A Tale in the Desert and Puzzle Pirates also offer innovative and interesting gameplay you won't find in the larger, heavily-marketed online RPGs.

Have fun,

As far as patching mechanisms go, I think Java Web Start is an interesting deployment mechanism, since you can make changes/updates to your Java program, and they can show up just as soon as a person launches the application via web start. It's transparent to the user (which is great for patching, IMO -- why should a user have to worry about that?), but it does have the disadvantage of requiring a network connection.

Still, for some applications I think it would make good sense (such as Puzzle Pirates, since the program relies on a network connection anyhow).

Right, so you get to see a forum "moderator" threaten other players with in-game retaliation.

Link, please.

Suggestions to spare the developers by making the docs available on a Wiki were dismissed by the same moderator on the grounds that his eyes glazed over whenever he saw the word Wiki. Maybe you will host one on drod.net?

Here's the post referred to: I've never met a wiki I liked. Well, I fully admit that I might just not 'get it.'

Of course, he's a player moderator, so it makes no difference to what he thinks - the developers love wikis (see We talked about it on the way to lunch a while back... ) so they're the ones you have to pay attention to. In this case, it's much like /., where the ability to moderate does not influence the ability to have an opinion (or indeed the quality of that opinion - I've seen nothing but good wikis.)

As to DROD.net hosting a YPP wiki, I doubt we'd do that. Firstly, we've still got to escape IPowerWeb (mostly done, but it's somewhat embarrasing that I've still got the link appearing on every post to an 'account suspended' page.) And secondly, DROD.net's for a different game, and I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate. Also, someone else is paying for hosting. Then again, I could always bring it up...

It seems more that you have a beef with atteSmythe, the player in question, than with the game. In which case I suggest you e-mail the developers (start here: http://www.threerings.com) and outlines, with specific examples, exactly how you feel and imploring them to at least remove his moderator status (which extends only as far as the Game design forum). Instead of complaining on /.

For the record, I have no problem with atteSmythe - the only moderating I've seen him do is locking and moving threads that go off-topic or contain ideas that have been done to death, and in those cases he waits a few days so the explanation can be seen (there's also a few stickied threads that summarise all the common ideas considered and how they fared.) But then, I haven't seen anything that has been deleted with no trace whatsoever, obviously. So if there's a lot of stuff deleted without any sign, I'd want to hear about it. So e-mail them already.

Right, so you get to see a forum "moderator" threaten other players with in-game retaliation.

Link, please.

Suggestions to spare the developers by making the docs available on a Wiki were dismissed by the same moderator on the grounds that his eyes glazed over whenever he saw the word Wiki. Maybe you will host one on drod.net?

Here's the post referred to: I've never met a wiki I liked. Well, I fully admit that I might just not 'get it.'

Of course, he's a player moderator, so it makes no difference to what he thinks - the developers love wikis (see We talked about it on the way to lunch a while back... ) so they're the ones you have to pay attention to. In this case, it's much like /., where the ability to moderate does not influence the ability to have an opinion (or indeed the quality of that opinion - I've seen nothing but good wikis.)

As to DROD.net hosting a YPP wiki, I doubt we'd do that. Firstly, we've still got to escape IPowerWeb (mostly done, but it's somewhat embarrasing that I've still got the link appearing on every post to an 'account suspended' page.) And secondly, DROD.net's for a different game, and I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate. Also, someone else is paying for hosting. Then again, I could always bring it up...

It seems more that you have a beef with atteSmythe, the player in question, than with the game. In which case I suggest you e-mail the developers (start here: http://www.threerings.com) and outlines, with specific examples, exactly how you feel and imploring them to at least remove his moderator status (which extends only as far as the Game design forum). Instead of complaining on /.

For the record, I have no problem with atteSmythe - the only moderating I've seen him do is locking and moving threads that go off-topic or contain ideas that have been done to death, and in those cases he waits a few days so the explanation can be seen (there's also a few stickied threads that summarise all the common ideas considered and how they fared.) But then, I haven't seen anything that has been deleted with no trace whatsoever, obviously. So if there's a lot of stuff deleted without any sign, I'd want to hear about it. So e-mail them already.

This is really a mischaracterization of the game, and I don't see how you could reach this point of view.

I've never played any game that's so open and inviting to new players. For new pirates just starting out it's a fun game environment centered around playing puzzles. As you advance through the game you can get more involved in the social/political aspects (as well as perfect your puzzle skills) and try to achieve higher rank and status in a crew or flag. I suppose if you're completely incapable of social interaction you might not get far beyond the basic game, but that's not the same as others more adept at it being "granted monopolies."

As far as the Game Design forum, I have to wonder if you heard this second-hand. There is a pretty free flow of ideas and debate from people in all levels of the game, and the developers openly discuss and interact with anybody who has a good, original idea or insight, both in the forums and actually in-game. I remember standing on the docks on one of my first days playing the game, and carrying on a conversation with one of the lead designers regarding ideas for new clothing options. For a team of six developers to spend so much time interacting with players of all levels is really amazing.

The only restriction of speech that occurs (thankfully) on the forums is when frequently discussed issues are brought up again and again. Those posts are often locked and moved to the archive ("Davy Jones' Locker"). This is done in an effort to keep the forums clean and readable for newer players. If you think heated debate over game design issues doesn't take place, you have obviously never read those forums.

As far as free economy aspects of the game, just in the last couple of weeks a major update to the game was released that introduced 1) bazarres, where anyone who owns a ship can get involved directly in the economy by selling goods at a stall, and 2) the ability to blockade and claim entire islands. One flag just conquered a major island in the last couple of days (or "liberated" it from the developers) and declared it a free market where they will try to institute a democratic system of government with the involvement of the citizens and shop-owners.

If you haven't played this game, ignore the parent and check it out:
Puzzle Pirates

A great game will find its way to popularity.

Just take a look at:

Puzzle Pirates

Puzzle Pirates is another great game that runs on Linux.

Well, there are still great original games, but they just don't get the same hype as the big game company's games. Check out Puzzle Pirates for an innovative game that combines Ultima Online, Tetris, and Pirates!

...of Puzzle Pirates we should comment, also. Our budget was also high compared to others in the IGF (second highest, I think), and I am sensitive to the view that budgets do have a decisive role in what a developer is able to accomplish. That said, I don't think having a higher budget made us any less indie.

Personally I feel that the web/downloadable vs. open distinction was broken, and perhaps next year they'll try a budget-oriented category. We shall see.

Puzzle Pirates is a great innovative game. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Bejeweled, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Pirates into one great game. Check it out, as the demo is free, and the game runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. My wife and I just started playing last night. Its the type of game that the whole family can enjoy.

Not only that, but the developers are very FOSS friendly and independent. So give them a little support if you can.

I think that most people that love GTA3 and GTA3:VC have never extensively played the original GTA. Therefore they didn't miss the motorbikes or multiplayer in GTA3. They also don't realize that Liberty City, Vice City, and San Adreas were packed into the original GTA. They don't realize that the original GTA was a 3D game with open-ended "sandbox" gameplay.

These same people slam GTA3:VC for being too derivative.

Then you have the people that have been with the series since the original GTA. These types miss the multiplayer, but generally agree that GTA3:VC is the best GTA game so far. Each game has mostly improved upon the previous games, with a few notable exceptions such as multiplayer.
I would buy another GTA, as long as enough new quality content was added, and additional gameplay improvements were made. In other words, as long as the improvement made between GTA3 and GTA3:VC is made for the next GTA game... I will buy it.

Don't get me wrong though. I am always on the outlook for new revolutionary games. My current favorite game is Puzzle Pirates, which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bejeweled, and Pirates of the Caribean into one fun game.

Maybe not as revolutionary as some games, but it is revolutionary enough in my book.

At the IGDA awards, three games were given "Game Innovation Spotlights": the EyeToy, Viewtiful Joe, and WarioWare Inc. All three of these seem quite novel and worthy of the attention.

At the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, both indies and mainstream games were shown. On the indie front, this year's Indie Game Jam games (full disclosure: I co-run this event); Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates; and Zoesis' The Demon and the Princess. On the commercial front, the creator of Namco's Katamari Damashii spoke about and demoed the game ("Was it difficult to convince Namco to let you do this game?" "Of course." was even funnier with the long pause for translation between question and answer); we had presentations about WarioWare and about the explorations of time as a game mechanic (specifically in Prince of Persia, Max Payne 1 & 2, and Viewtiful Joe).

(There were a few more presentations about more academic "games": Ken Perlin's work on natural-language-programming for kids, "Haptic Battle Pong", and I forget what else, as I was developing a fever during the 3-hour EGW.)

The winner of the Indie Games Festival's web downloadable grand prize, Oasis, is a fairly original and creative game (full disclosure: I did contract work for Oasis' developers on a different project), and since this is announced at essentially the same ceremony as the IGDA awards it has a fairly significant cachet.

So I think the Reuters reporters just didn't go to the right events at the GDC.

The story itself has plenty of debatable claims. Are gamers, as the article claims, getting more conservative, or are publishers just getting extremely conservative and releasing more sequels and focusing their marketing dollars there? Hint: nobody debates the truth of the latter.

For more on pirates, check out Talking like a pirate is fun, but annoys people, a writeup I did a long time ago. Includes a link to a most excellent techno mix of the writeup done by a friend of mine.

ARR!

Hooray for Puzzle Pirates =D good to know that they're getting the recognition they deserve. I've played my fair share of mass multiplayer games and for the most part, and they're all the same, except for this one =D just... needs to be less addictive =(

If you haven't yet tried out Puzzle Pirates, then you should. That's about the best use of Java for a game that I've seen or really expect to see. Works like a charm cross-platform and takes advantage of the -ahem- chunky graphics to deliver a great gaming experience.

Slightly OT, but to allow everyone to better educate themselves, do check out Puzzle Pirates. Amazing stuff. They give you a nice long free (no-CC) demo too. Spot on with that comment. All the social aspect, but you can participate with anyone at level and still be successful. It even has PvP! Worthy of any MMORPG discussion.

Do you remember interactive fiction books? They give you a paragraph or two, you decide what to do, and get a "goto" for another paragraph. There's thousands of them out there, and children and young teens love them. It would take one such book, a week of VB, and one day in your average TV series studio to turn the book into multimedia interactive fiction (30 second clips rather than paragraphs). TW could flog off stuff like that at a quarter the price of a game and still make a killing.

Disturbingly, I find that idea very attractive. You could take it a step further and integrate simple puzzle games as the "action" step for resolving conflicts, in the manner of Puzzle Pirates