Actually, not really; nothing in at least the first page of Google hits blatantly deals with the term in the usage you describe. Mostly it's a name for websites and comics and companies and projects.
Some of the previous 4th wall breaking in that game was annoying, mostly because of the middle-school-level voice acting and/or writing. They could've been much more clever and sly about it if they didn't have the character just say something "and now X will happen, I know because X always happens in this game" but "and now X will happen, I know because...well, it always happens"
All he's really doing is trying to coin a term that has been in common use in the game design field for several years.
Does anyone have any cites for that?
I don't think "metagame" is the appropriate term for what you said or for the main thrust of the article; only the article's example, of say, the characters in the game playing a game themselves meets the usual definition. The article is mostly talking about breaking the 4th wall (which seems about as good a term as any...dumbest example I konw of is yoda saying "double tap B to double jump, you must" in Rogue Squadron 3), and you seem to talk about...like, the game mechanics. (If something were the "true" anything, that doesn't make it "meta-")
Yeah, essentially they still have aspirations of true printage, where what 90% of their target audience cares about is the content, just the words and pictures.
But what I really want to say is any Treasure fan should get a copy of Bangai-O, for DC or optionally for N64...it has that "you have to force them to come as close as possible to danger" aspect IN SPADES...the more things are around you and just about to touch you when you release your super bomb, the more weapon you send out. Do it right, an you kill enough stuff to replace the super bomb you just used.
It's a brilliant game -- from my FAQ on it: Bangai-O! What a great game! The level exploration and enemy generators of Gauntlet combined with the action of Smash TV, all in a veneer of Metroid with a touch of the control of Joust...sounds like a mess but it's brilliant. A 2D game where level design really really matters, that throws hoards and hoards of enemies at you and gives you the hardware you need to take it all on...plus, a huge heap of Japanese weirdness.
PS Another vote for Blaster Master, and a shrug that Castlevania didn't make it...never did a lot for me.
I think that one small possible issue with that kind of arrangement is over dependence on one employer...if you're out of the hot spots, you're competing with fewer techies, but there are less opportunities as well if a gig goes south. And I guess it would be easier to work in a high stress/high salary place for some decades, and then plan to retire some place less expensive. But overall, it sounds like you got a great and enviable thing going, thanks for your responses in this thread.
That's an very easy trap to fall into. Remember, though: it never hurts to ask.:)
True. Actually, more to the point, perhaps, I'm not sure if this kind of cool non-techie place would pay be surprisingly-still-dot-commish salary, esp. with a title like web developer:->
The funny thing is, even if I saw that, if I wasn't hungry for work, I'm not sure I'd even try for something that was 'web developer', just 'cause of some ego things I have, also because it sounds like it would be too simple work.
That does sound very cool. Does it seem long-term?
'Course, the problem is finding how to get a gig like that. I would love to be the do-it-all coder w/ lite sysadmin for some random company--it's so easy to be the continual hero in that situation:-)
Yeah, one guy I looked up to, he was kind of my mentor at a previous gig and we're still in touch, gave me the catchphrase "well hey, it's not heavy lifting"...as bad as some of our desk jobs can seem, there are plenty of worse ones out there.
What, didn't you see the Simpsons episode where they have the little box Navitron that drives the damn truck?
Any, I'm not sure about the Truckers per se, but pre-Y2K I was reading about how complex some of the software shippers use is to determinte the most effecient way to pack a truck and plot a route requiring minimum mileage, so the truck can make many deliveries, the stuff being delivered at that stop is always at the back of the truck, etc. In some ways, a hardcore variation of the comp sci "travelling salesman" type problem.
One of the small issues is sometimes it's bad when every little program has a new UI to learn. Not that big a deal.
Actually, there's a related issue internal to development: I find small do it from scratch implementation much better than applying some massive pre-existing gramework, ala EJBs in J2EE; when you build from the ground up, directly task-focused, and understand how to reimplement the parts of the giant framework ou need in a fairly quick way, I think you get a lot more done than trying to munge some massive beast which always seems to be doing almost, but not quite, what you want.
Coding a 401k tracking and transfer system in UNIBASIC. Hands down. An incredibly aged and horribly designed system (honestly, are any legacy systems WELL designed?) that definitely was NOT defined with extensibility in mind
That's a good question.
I'm getting the impression that a lot of old code is better than the new guy gives it credit for, especially if there hasn't been a particularly smooth hand-off. The new guy has new and better--or sometimes just different--outlooks on coding than what the original team had.
For the 2600, it's based on the [stella] mailing list, and for the manufacturing, AtariAge.com is a great bet for someone who just wants their game manufactured and publicized and not (nec. maximizing pure profit, just taking a royalty per cart)
I just had my first atari 2600 game JoustPong made, released it at "PhillyClassic 5". You can order it at atari age.
People interested in trying it themselves...it's not easy to learn to program it, but isn't too bad if you know assembly or at least are good in some high level languages. I recommend my own tutorial, 2600 101 for people looking to learn.
Amen to the nostalgia... I sometimes get upset with myself that I never got beyond the BASIC stage on either the Atari 8-bit (which had a fantasic version of LOGO with turtles that looked like turtles...) or the C=64 (which had all these cool sprite and character set editors from Compute's Gazette).
ZZAP!64 rocked...it was so much better than the stuff I could get in the USA. I cherished my 1 or 2 imported copies to the Nth degree...
C=64 was capable of ultimately looking better than, say, Apple II or Atari 8-bit; take a look at "Skate or Die" for example, I thought it looked like it was running on an Amiga at first. (Ooh, and the music...)
Kinda like the Atari 2600 has some really nice feel, and everything tends to be 60fps, but it's a bit of a bear to code for....
I'd love to see a (admittedly somewhat clunky) PDA that let you enter new contact, todo, and datebook entries. I envision using the wheel like an old arcade game character select. Not as slick as palm, but I realize I'm using less and less of my Palm features... feh, maybe I should give the REX another try;-)
ooh ooh, I got mod points, I just HAVE to use them...oh look, here's a post that's only TANGENTALLY related to the main post...better smack it down! Way to understand what it means o have a frickin' discussion board
I've noticed kind of a similar thing w/ electronic stores and video game stores...borders are getting fuzzy. EB starts selling used games, Funcoland starts selling new, both start selling DVDs and hobbyist toys, Best Buy sells laptops and PCs, CompUSA starts selling big TVs and stereos....sometimes it feels like it's going to become one big store type...
I am nuts for information-- as are we all, I suspect, most real men and women. I can't get enough of the stuff. When I'm clicking through the hundreds of E-mail messages that await me each morning, sometimes I imagine I'm a mighty information whale, sifting through thousands of tiny (but nutritious!) krill bits. Yum! Whether it's reading the cereal box or scanning the advertisment slide show some genius thought to project on the big screen at the movie theater, my appetite for information is unquenchable. --Joshua Quittner
Yeah, if you search on "apple" it's going to talk about the computer company. Search on "apples", you know, like human people talk, and the first hit is an excellent, informative site on the tasty fruit. Search on "fruit apple" (well, without the quotes) and you get relevant results as well. (On the other hand, "fruit apple" is a better search than "apple fruit", so there is some seeming arbitraryness to it...until you learn that Google gets some hints from word order on queries and pages.)
But yeah, successfully using Google requires both some search term assemblage skill and some online cultural literacy. Old farts at the NYTimes might not be blessed with too much of either, but I bet their kids are.
It's not perfect, but that college president / symphony director's comment "It's like looking for a lost ring in a vacuum bag. What you end up with mostly are bagel crumbs and dirt." sounds like it's coming from someone who doesn't really know how to use a search engine.
I haven't had the chance to read all the responses, but I think it bears pointing out that even the great video game crash of '84 wasn't all that terrible. A lof of games got deeply discounted, it was a bit of a lull in consoles and arcades, but a lot of people discoverd home computer gaming ("don't copy that floppy!";-) -- but people didn't go off and do something else.
The demographic shift *is* interesting, where we are kind of seeing the retirement of the first generation of gamers, but...I mean, aren't a lot of other industries worried about consumers moving TO videogames from whatever they're trying to sell, not the other way around?
you actually *knew* which websites had good shots of that scene? you freakin' perv!!
Hey I resemble that remark....
Well, the first link I had posted on my quote and link journal, along with the "The Rack of K.D." line...the second was the result of an images.google.com search...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, not really; nothing in at least the first page of Google hits blatantly deals with the term in the usage you describe. Mostly it's a name for websites and comics and companies and projects.
Yeah, that was kind of cute.
Some of the previous 4th wall breaking in that game was annoying, mostly because of the middle-school-level voice acting and/or writing. They could've been much more clever and sly about it if they didn't have the character just say something "and now X will happen, I know because X always happens in this game" but "and now X will happen, I know because...well, it always happens"
All he's really doing is trying to coin a term that has been in common use in the game design field for several years.
Does anyone have any cites for that?
I don't think "metagame" is the appropriate term for what you said or for the main thrust of the article; only the article's example, of say, the characters in the game playing a game themselves meets the usual definition. The article is mostly talking about breaking the 4th wall (which seems about as good a term as any...dumbest example I konw of is yoda saying "double tap B to double jump, you must" in Rogue Squadron 3), and you seem to talk about...like, the game mechanics. (If something were the "true" anything, that doesn't make it "meta-")
Yeah, essentially they still have aspirations of true printage, where what 90% of their target audience cares about is the content, just the words and pictures.
Some odd layout typos here and there.
But what I really want to say is any Treasure fan should get a copy of Bangai-O, for DC or optionally for N64...it has that "you have to force them to come as close as possible to danger" aspect IN SPADES...the more things are around you and just about to touch you when you release your super bomb, the more weapon you send out. Do it right, an you kill enough stuff to replace the super bomb you just used.
It's a brilliant game -- from my FAQ on it:
Bangai-O! What a great game! The level exploration and enemy generators of Gauntlet combined with the action of Smash TV, all in a veneer of Metroid with a touch of the control of Joust...sounds like a mess but it's brilliant. A 2D game where level design really really matters, that throws hoards and hoards of enemies at you and gives you the hardware you need to take it all on...plus, a huge heap of Japanese weirdness.
PS Another vote for Blaster Master, and a shrug that Castlevania didn't make it...never did a lot for me.
It does sound like you have it pretty nice.
I think that one small possible issue with that kind of arrangement is over dependence on one employer...if you're out of the hot spots, you're competing with fewer techies, but there are less opportunities as well if a gig goes south. And I guess it would be easier to work in a high stress/high salary place for some decades, and then plan to retire some place less expensive. But overall, it sounds like you got a great and enviable thing going, thanks for your responses in this thread.
That's an very easy trap to fall into. Remember, though: it never hurts to ask. :)
:->
True.
Actually, more to the point, perhaps, I'm not sure if this kind of cool non-techie place would pay be surprisingly-still-dot-commish salary, esp. with a title like web developer
Well, I'm not looking yet, but you never know.
The funny thing is, even if I saw that, if I wasn't hungry for work, I'm not sure I'd even try for something that was 'web developer', just 'cause of some ego things I have, also because it sounds like it would be too simple work.
That does sound very cool. Does it seem long-term?
:-)
'Course, the problem is finding how to get a gig like that. I would love to be the do-it-all coder w/ lite sysadmin for some random company--it's so easy to be the continual hero in that situation
Any advice, how did you get that gig?
Yeah, one guy I looked up to, he was kind of my mentor at a previous gig and we're still in touch, gave me the catchphrase "well hey, it's not heavy lifting"...as bad as some of our desk jobs can seem, there are plenty of worse ones out there.
C'mon man, you coulda had a new year's party like every 6 hours! break out the champagne and funny hats!
What, didn't you see the Simpsons episode where they have the little box Navitron that drives the damn truck?
Any, I'm not sure about the Truckers per se, but pre-Y2K I was reading about how complex some of the software shippers use is to determinte the most effecient way to pack a truck and plot a route requiring minimum mileage, so the truck can make many deliveries, the stuff being delivered at that stop is always at the back of the truck, etc. In some ways, a hardcore variation of the comp sci "travelling salesman" type problem.
One of the small issues is sometimes it's bad when every little program has a new UI to learn. Not that big a deal.
Actually, there's a related issue internal to development: I find small do it from scratch implementation much better than applying some massive pre-existing gramework, ala EJBs in J2EE; when you build from the ground up, directly task-focused, and understand how to reimplement the parts of the giant framework ou need in a fairly quick way, I think you get a lot more done than trying to munge some massive beast which always seems to be doing almost, but not quite, what you want.
Coding a 401k tracking and transfer system in UNIBASIC. Hands down. An incredibly aged and horribly designed system (honestly, are any legacy systems WELL designed?) that definitely was NOT defined with extensibility in mind
:-)
That's a good question.
I'm getting the impression that a lot of old code is better than the new guy gives it credit for, especially if there hasn't been a particularly smooth hand-off. The new guy has new and better--or sometimes just different--outlooks on coding than what the original team had.
Of course, some code is just inarguably bad.
There's a reasonably active indie/homebew scene.
For the 2600, it's based on the [stella] mailing list, and for the manufacturing, AtariAge.com is a great bet for someone who just wants their game manufactured and publicized and not (nec. maximizing pure profit, just taking a royalty per cart)
I just had my first atari 2600 game JoustPong made, released it at "PhillyClassic 5". You can order it at atari age.
People interested in trying it themselves...it's not easy to learn to program it, but isn't too bad if you know assembly or at least are good in some high level languages. I recommend my own tutorial, 2600 101 for people looking to learn.
Amen to the nostalgia...
I sometimes get upset with myself that I never got beyond the BASIC stage on either the Atari 8-bit (which had a fantasic version of LOGO with turtles that looked like turtles...) or the C=64 (which had all these cool sprite and character set editors from Compute's Gazette).
ZZAP!64 rocked...it was so much better than the stuff I could get in the USA. I cherished my 1 or 2 imported copies to the Nth degree...
C=64 was capable of ultimately looking better than, say, Apple II or Atari 8-bit; take a look at "Skate or Die" for example, I thought it looked like it was running on an Amiga at first. (Ooh, and the music...)
Kinda like the Atari 2600 has some really nice feel, and everything tends to be 60fps, but it's a bit of a bear to code for....
I'd love to see a (admittedly somewhat clunky) PDA that let you enter new contact, todo, and datebook entries. I envision using the wheel like an old arcade game character select. Not as slick as palm, but I realize I'm using less and less of my Palm features... ;-)
feh, maybe I should give the REX another try
I released my new 2600 Homebrew JoustPong! It was cool selling cartridges and talking to people about it.
ooh ooh, I got mod points, I just HAVE to use them...oh look, here's a post that's only TANGENTALLY related to the main post...better smack it down! Way to understand what it means o have a frickin' discussion board
Thanks for the "Underrated" though.
I've noticed kind of a similar thing w/ electronic stores and video game stores...borders are getting fuzzy. EB starts selling used games, Funcoland starts selling new, both start selling DVDs and hobbyist toys, Best Buy sells laptops and PCs, CompUSA starts selling big TVs and stereos....sometimes it feels like it's going to become one big store type...
I am nuts for information-- as are we all, I suspect, most real men and women. I can't get enough of the stuff. When I'm clicking through the hundreds of E-mail messages that await me each morning, sometimes I imagine I'm a mighty information whale, sifting through thousands of tiny (but nutritious!) krill bits. Yum! Whether it's reading the cereal box or scanning the advertisment slide show some genius thought to project on the big screen at the movie theater, my appetite for information is unquenchable.
--Joshua Quittner
Yeah, if you search on "apple" it's going to talk about the computer company. Search on "apples", you know, like human people talk, and the first hit is an excellent, informative site on the tasty fruit. Search on "fruit apple" (well, without the quotes) and you get relevant results as well. (On the other hand, "fruit apple" is a better search than "apple fruit", so there is some seeming arbitraryness to it...until you learn that Google gets some hints from word order on queries and pages.)
But yeah, successfully using Google requires both some search term assemblage skill and some online cultural literacy. Old farts at the NYTimes might not be blessed with too much of either, but I bet their kids are.
It's not perfect, but that college president / symphony director's comment "It's like looking for a lost ring in a vacuum bag. What you end up with mostly are bagel crumbs and dirt." sounds like it's coming from someone who doesn't really know how to use a search engine.
I haven't had the chance to read all the responses, but I think it bears pointing out that even the great video game crash of '84 wasn't all that terrible. A lof of games got deeply discounted, it was a bit of a lull in consoles and arcades, but a lot of people discoverd home computer gaming ("don't copy that floppy!" ;-) -- but people didn't go off and do something else.
The demographic shift *is* interesting, where we are kind of seeing the retirement of the first generation of gamers, but...I mean, aren't a lot of other industries worried about consumers moving TO videogames from whatever they're trying to sell, not the other way around?
Well, what the hell do I know...I'm getting ready to release my first atari 2600 game JoustPong at PhillyClassic next weekend!
you actually *knew* which websites had good shots of that scene? you freakin' perv!!
Hey I resemble that remark....
Well, the first link I had posted on my quote and link journal, along with the "The Rack of K.D." line...the second was the result of an images.google.com search...