Keep an eye on http://game-central.org/ and their podcasts. Nothing set in stone as far as I know, but they're working on arranging an interview with Jason on exactly this topic.
To my delight, I recently discovered that the iLiad series of e-book readers will run Gargoyle, which plays many popular IF formats. So you can finally play your interactive fiction on your ebook reader, and the circle is complete.
Little synchronicities like that are making are harder for me to resist laying out the cash for one of those things. Even if they are cripplingly expensive.
The long tail for games is doing just fine, thanks. Digital distribution has cracked open the vaults, and tons of awesome games are available cheaply for your nostalgic pleasure.
Check out GOG.com, for example. Many great games at lot prices with no DRM foolishness. (Yup. I'm an affiliate.) It's a great time to game on the long tail.
I wish I had some mod points -- you make a great argument.
The Heroes of Might and Magic franschise are basically hex map games. There's no real benefit to going pure 3D, having revolving viewpoints and such. In 3D, units can obscure each other, making it hard to see their real positions and put them in the right spot. Turning the map around in mid-play is disorienting. (The enemy gate is DOWN!)
The 2D map view is superior when you're playing the general, moving your men around on a map. Relationships are easier to see than in 3D, in which everything is pretty while completely obscuring the tactical realities.
In DOSBox you can bump up the resolution to 640*480 and it still looks awesome.:) They're doing great things to classic with scalers these days. Ur-Quan Masters has a nice array of scaling options too, for you Star Control II fans.
"Nobody plays Silent Hill for super-innovative gameplay."
Ain't *that* the truth.
I'd love to have a survival horror game that -does- innovate gameplay and not rely on zippy OMG ITS SO DRIPPY AND JAWFUL graphics.
I had great hopes for Call of Cthulhu, especially given the major trope of Lovecraft's monsters: you never really get to see them. I'd hoped for something more psychological and uncanny. Instead, it still came down to "look how many polygons we can render on a Great Old One -- and you can count them because he's right there in plain sight." Bah.
Apparently my kind of thinking just bounces off the shiny, radiosity-enhanced, antialiased, ansiotropic armor of game development houses these days.
Half-Life 2 hit a great balance in this regard. The visual design of the levels was so tight and distinct and appealing, yet it wasn't over the top with shine, reflectivity, particles, or any of the buzzwords.
The craftsmanship really shows in Valve's designs. It's more often a question of what they do with what they have rather than turning the knobs on the DirectX Shader/Pixel/Polygon/Whatever controls up to 11.
That was X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, I believe. And now that LucasArts is re-releasing their games catalog through Steam, there's a chance we'll see it again. I hope they update the networking code though; it was a shaky connection at best. That was over dialup, though. Nobody had cable modems or DSL back then.:)
Maybe back in the day of brick and mortar stores, you had a point. And to the extent that some people still judge their game purchases on static imagery, sure.
However, as video games are closely tied to computers, and most computers are closely tied to the Internet, the days of screenshot judgments are numbered, if not gone already. It's just too easy to go to youtube and get a video of actual gameplay, or read in-depth interviews with developers, or download and play a demo within minutes.
It's not the graphics drawing people in, let me assure you. Most of those titles are at least 5 years old. But they're DAMN FUN.
Static screenshots are outmoded and easily ignored in favor of better samples. Anyone who judges on a single frame is going to get burned more often than not.
Agreed. But other factors can mitigate graphics too. Sound, for example -- In The Pit is an XBOX community game that has no graphics whatsoever, and is incredibly fun. You play a blind monster in the bottom of a dark pit, hunting down the pathetic mewling victim of an evil king who throws them down to you as food.
The podcast "Hatchet Job" did a marvelous interview with the designer/programmer R. Hunter Gough. They intelligently and thoroughly discuss how a video game works without video. There's a link on the site to the marketplace to pick up ItP as well.
It does run very well in DOSBox. Steam is selling the original game for $5, and you can buy the whole pack of sequels for $10.
Steam actually packages DOSBox with it, but it runs great in your own DOSBox install. Just lift the data files out of the install directory and you're off.
I'm prepping a video review of the game, and you've just touched on a major strength. Nothing says "brown trousers time" like walking through a doorway, finding a pack of Snakemen waiting for you, and having *just* enough to time to fire *one* snap shot.
The graphics on the game are not astounding, though by the standards of it's day they did look nice. It's the gameplay that makes it.
The enemy in that game doesn't pop out of nowhere like a lot of survival horror game enemies do. In XCOM, the aliens get the drop on you because of tactical errors and advantages. If you play it right, you'll see them coming like a pro. Play it wrong, you'll walk right into a death trap.
I hope they *do* use DOSBox. It's practically guaranteed that you'll be able to run those DOS games without any of Steam's DRM sitting on top of it. Just point your own DOSBox at the data files. I run XCOM: UFO Defense this way.
Whatever one might say about Steam's DRM scheme and how it's supposed to work or not, I appreciate that I can sidestep the issue completely by running it in my own DOSBox install.
If Harvard and Yale et al are in the business of processing shit into shiny shit, maybe we should stop blaming the shit and start questioning the value of the shit shiners.
Stop "Harvard" and "Yale" from being the shit shibboleths. They're not secret code words for "I'm awesome." They're public shorthand for "I'm riding coat tails."
Being an affiliate is basically like becoming a franchise. Under Amazon's name, and under their practices, you become an independent outlet store. What you sell is up to you; you're using Amazon as a supplier.
Affiliates need to pay income taxes to their own state. Not Amazon.
Amen to that. The tsunami of new releases eventually recedes back into the ocean, leaving the best of past games waiting for anyone to pick up and play with, and there are *tons* of great games.
If they stopped making video games today, about five years from now, I'd notice. On the flip side, I'd finally be all caught up.
I appreciated one argument that was made in the article: that the human mind is very good at abstracting the actions of the game onto a generic controller: many controls make for multiple applications. Having an action-specific controller might actually limit the development of games that experiment with more bizarre modes of play.
Specific controllers bog down the gaming impulse, too. It would suck if, to play the baseball game, I had to break out the Baseball-o-tron, to play the racing game I need the Steeringwheel-o-tron... I guess it's a good way for companies to sell more accessories. And crap: if I wanted that much exercise, I'd just go play frisbee. I actually *like* the big blue room.
The Wii controller strikes a nice balance and is a flexible piece of tech for what it's called on to do. Motion sensing is great in the sports games since it can emulate just about anything you can swing or throw, but it *also* acts as a classic pad for the abstracted "jump, punch, run" sorts of action games.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep an eye on http://game-central.org/ and their podcasts. Nothing set in stone as far as I know, but they're working on arranging an interview with Jason on exactly this topic.
To my delight, I recently discovered that the iLiad series of e-book readers will run Gargoyle, which plays many popular IF formats. So you can finally play your interactive fiction on your ebook reader, and the circle is complete.
Little synchronicities like that are making are harder for me to resist laying out the cash for one of those things. Even if they are cripplingly expensive.
About one triganic pu. But most markets refuse to deal with fiddling small change.
Sadly for you, the "I can't code" excuse was originally licensed under BSD. The rest of us really appreciate it, though.
The long tail for games is doing just fine, thanks. Digital distribution has cracked open the vaults, and tons of awesome games are available cheaply for your nostalgic pleasure.
Check out GOG.com, for example. Many great games at lot prices with no DRM foolishness. (Yup. I'm an affiliate.) It's a great time to game on the long tail.
Certainly not for free.
They may, however, be willing to charge us for it.
I wish I had some mod points -- you make a great argument.
The Heroes of Might and Magic franschise are basically hex map games. There's no real benefit to going pure 3D, having revolving viewpoints and such. In 3D, units can obscure each other, making it hard to see their real positions and put them in the right spot. Turning the map around in mid-play is disorienting. (The enemy gate is DOWN!)
The 2D map view is superior when you're playing the general, moving your men around on a map. Relationships are easier to see than in 3D, in which everything is pretty while completely obscuring the tactical realities.
In DOSBox you can bump up the resolution to 640*480 and it still looks awesome. :) They're doing great things to classic with scalers these days. Ur-Quan Masters has a nice array of scaling options too, for you Star Control II fans.
"Nobody plays Silent Hill for super-innovative gameplay."
Ain't *that* the truth.
I'd love to have a survival horror game that -does- innovate gameplay and not rely on zippy OMG ITS SO DRIPPY AND JAWFUL graphics.
I had great hopes for Call of Cthulhu, especially given the major trope of Lovecraft's monsters: you never really get to see them. I'd hoped for something more psychological and uncanny. Instead, it still came down to "look how many polygons we can render on a Great Old One -- and you can count them because he's right there in plain sight." Bah.
Apparently my kind of thinking just bounces off the shiny, radiosity-enhanced, antialiased, ansiotropic armor of game development houses these days.
Half-Life 2 hit a great balance in this regard. The visual design of the levels was so tight and distinct and appealing, yet it wasn't over the top with shine, reflectivity, particles, or any of the buzzwords.
The craftsmanship really shows in Valve's designs. It's more often a question of what they do with what they have rather than turning the knobs on the DirectX Shader/Pixel/Polygon/Whatever controls up to 11.
That was X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, I believe. And now that LucasArts is re-releasing their games catalog through Steam, there's a chance we'll see it again. I hope they update the networking code though; it was a shaky connection at best. That was over dialup, though. Nobody had cable modems or DSL back then. :)
Maybe back in the day of brick and mortar stores, you had a point. And to the extent that some people still judge their game purchases on static imagery, sure.
However, as video games are closely tied to computers, and most computers are closely tied to the Internet, the days of screenshot judgments are numbered, if not gone already. It's just too easy to go to youtube and get a video of actual gameplay, or read in-depth interviews with developers, or download and play a demo within minutes.
Heck, even low-on-the-radar sites that offer reviews of classic games based on video footage of actual gameplay and an exploration of the gameplay involved are doing quite well, thank you. And they lead to clickthrough sales from digital distributors like GOG.com, who sell those classic games like hotcakes. Cheap, wonderful, time-tested, DRM-free hotcakes.
It's not the graphics drawing people in, let me assure you. Most of those titles are at least 5 years old. But they're DAMN FUN.
Static screenshots are outmoded and easily ignored in favor of better samples. Anyone who judges on a single frame is going to get burned more often than not.
(Yeah, I'm a GOG affiliate. It's okay.)
Agreed. But other factors can mitigate graphics too. Sound, for example -- In The Pit is an XBOX community game that has no graphics whatsoever, and is incredibly fun. You play a blind monster in the bottom of a dark pit, hunting down the pathetic mewling victim of an evil king who throws them down to you as food.
The podcast "Hatchet Job" did a marvelous interview with the designer/programmer R. Hunter Gough. They intelligently and thoroughly discuss how a video game works without video. There's a link on the site to the marketplace to pick up ItP as well.
It does run very well in DOSBox. Steam is selling the original game for $5, and you can buy the whole pack of sequels for $10.
Steam actually packages DOSBox with it, but it runs great in your own DOSBox install. Just lift the data files out of the install directory and you're off.
I'm prepping a video review of the game, and you've just touched on a major strength. Nothing says "brown trousers time" like walking through a doorway, finding a pack of Snakemen waiting for you, and having *just* enough to time to fire *one* snap shot.
The graphics on the game are not astounding, though by the standards of it's day they did look nice. It's the gameplay that makes it.
The enemy in that game doesn't pop out of nowhere like a lot of survival horror game enemies do. In XCOM, the aliens get the drop on you because of tactical errors and advantages. If you play it right, you'll see them coming like a pro. Play it wrong, you'll walk right into a death trap.
They were waiting for the tab to finish loading.
Run XCOM in DOSBox. That's how Steam rents it to you anyway - just install your own DOSBox and point it at the data files.
It runs significantly better that way than any rejiggered wrapped up Windows .exe would. Also: built in processor slowdown emulation!
I hope they *do* use DOSBox. It's practically guaranteed that you'll be able to run those DOS games without any of Steam's DRM sitting on top of it. Just point your own DOSBox at the data files. I run XCOM: UFO Defense this way.
Whatever one might say about Steam's DRM scheme and how it's supposed to work or not, I appreciate that I can sidestep the issue completely by running it in my own DOSBox install.
If Harvard and Yale et al are in the business of processing shit into shiny shit, maybe we should stop blaming the shit and start questioning the value of the shit shiners.
Stop "Harvard" and "Yale" from being the shit shibboleths. They're not secret code words for "I'm awesome." They're public shorthand for "I'm riding coat tails."
Furthermore, where's MY ten cents?
Wait till you get to 36. I could barely bring myself to finish reading your post.
(Joking! Joking! Don't hit an old man!)
Mod parent up.
Being an affiliate is basically like becoming a franchise. Under Amazon's name, and under their practices, you become an independent outlet store. What you sell is up to you; you're using Amazon as a supplier.
Affiliates need to pay income taxes to their own state. Not Amazon.
Amen to that. The tsunami of new releases eventually recedes back into the ocean, leaving the best of past games waiting for anyone to pick up and play with, and there are *tons* of great games.
If they stopped making video games today, about five years from now, I'd notice. On the flip side, I'd finally be all caught up.
I appreciated one argument that was made in the article: that the human mind is very good at abstracting the actions of the game onto a generic controller: many controls make for multiple applications. Having an action-specific controller might actually limit the development of games that experiment with more bizarre modes of play.
Specific controllers bog down the gaming impulse, too. It would suck if, to play the baseball game, I had to break out the Baseball-o-tron, to play the racing game I need the Steeringwheel-o-tron... I guess it's a good way for companies to sell more accessories. And crap: if I wanted that much exercise, I'd just go play frisbee. I actually *like* the big blue room.
The Wii controller strikes a nice balance and is a flexible piece of tech for what it's called on to do. Motion sensing is great in the sports games since it can emulate just about anything you can swing or throw, but it *also* acts as a classic pad for the abstracted "jump, punch, run" sorts of action games.
No, but it IS in the affidavit.