A while back, I was interviewed for a little blurb in the Carleton Voice about the changing audience of games. I just stumbled across the e-mail in which I gave my rambling, incoherent answers to the writer’s straightforward questions: > 1. It seems that gaming is gaining an increasingly wide audience, > particularly in the past few years. Are there reasons that it’s attracting a > wider audience, in terms of age/gender/socioeconomic…
The flow of awesome games that I just don’t have time to play continues unabated.
Even though the characters and story are lackluster, I’m still pouring much more of my time than is healthy into Days of Ruin, because the gameplay has gotten deeper.
Brain dumps from Thursday at GDC.
Notes from the first day at GDC.
The nice thing about Duels is that it’s web-based and asynchronous, which means that you can level up and earn cash without having to spend hours pressing the same sequence of action keys over and over again.
I am apparently so easily amused that you don’t even need to give me a game to make me happy — a good UI is good enough for me.
I think I’m just going to have to accept that it’s one of those great American institutions that I can’t quite manage to wring much enjoyment out of, like football and Manifest Destiny.
There’s a very brief interview with me in the fall issue of my alma mater’s alumni magazine, the Carleton Voice.
I mean, sure, it’s a completely obvious idea that was just waiting for someone to actually take the time to do it, but I prefer to think that I’m prescient and totally on the edge of future trends.
Something about MP3 just feels kind of… lacking.
Sometimes I wonder.
Everything good that you’ve heard about “Portal” is true.
Because of the randomness and all, you’ll probably never find them, but I went ahead and uploaded a few Miis anyway.
Whether you do something right or wrong, just make sure you do it big.
It’s like Frequency and Vib Ribbon had a little iPod shaped baby, and that is awesome.
Why does this game grab me in a way that, say, Twilight Princess completely failed to do?
Puzzle Pirates is basically a casual game portal with avatars and a point system, which actually puts Three Rings pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of casual and virtual world trends.
I love it when people realize that business isn’t a zero-sum game.
I finally buckled down and worked on one of my New Year’s resolutions, and the results are as underwhelming as you might expect.
The way that the feature is described makes it sound less like training wheels and more like a completely different game.
Can I justify paying the same amount for two hours a week of gameplay that I was for 20?
Kongregate isn’t the YouTube of web-based indie casual games; it’s the Xbox Live Arcade of web-based indie casual games.
Defensive, opportunistic, and strategic ways of playing pinball.
Making a game is easy. The challenge in game design is in helping the player understand the game you’ve made.
“First, [it] provided me a source for continuous escapism; second, it gave me a never-failing sense of accomplishment; and third, it allowed me a platform for on-going identity construction and reconstruction.”
Thoughts on two games that are more about waiting than action.
As the image of gaming and gamers has evolved over time, so has their advertising.
Why can’t I just shovel in peace?
The game the elderly seem to get the most kick out of? Excite Truck.
When we start thinking about games in terms of their moments of engagement with players, they become much more than a set of rules and fictions bound within in a magic circle.
Gametty game game smurf.
As anyone who’s ever been trapped in a staring contest with a blank page or canvas knows, it’s really hard to be creative without some kind of push to get your juices flowing.
Traveling around the world has been one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in WoW in a long time.
A wishlist of things I’d like to see at “the intersection between Web 2.0 and MMOGs.”
When I play Gunpey, though, I still feel a little bit of that technomancy, as if the innocent little puzzle game was channelling something bigger than itself.
If you’re going to go to the trouble of remaking your entire game, why not just take the extra step and make a new game?
The original Legend of Zelda is great, but it’s got some design tics that date it a bit.
The gadgets in Josh’s home continue their march towards world domination.
The PS3 and Wii have launched, in all their coded glory.
If I’m going to finish FF XII, I need to do it in the next few days, because I just realized that this weekend is The Big One.
A skill-based Final Fantasy isn’t a bad idea, but the pacing leaves something to be desired.
A good game makes it easy to get around the world so that you can accomplish things more efficiently; it takes something really special, though, to make you want to take the slow route for no other reason than that it feels good.
Or, Mechanics vs. Verbs.
Josh is such a big nerd that he has three level 60 characters in WoW.
Josh’s OCD breaks down.
Still more random thoughts from the Austin Game Conference.
Random thoughts from Day Two of the Austin Game Conference.
Very brief notes from the first day of the 2006 Austin Game Conference.
My home is invaded.
How I spent my afternoon.
What we really need is a Jane Jacobs of games criticism: someone who can speak with clarity and urgency about the world we live in and its problems, and can point the way to real solutions.
Random thoughts on E3. Warning: extreme sleepy rambling ahead.
Daxter not only manages to give the Jak and Daxter franchise a shot in the arm, it’s one of the few games that PSP owners can play without getting really depressed.
I managed to turn Tetris DS off without the battery running out first. This is the first time I’ve managed to do that in the five days that I’ve owned the game.
As of today, I have been playing World of Warcraft for an entire year, and when I say “an entire year,” I mean that almost literally.
I don’t want to turn the machine on and see a starving, dirty, neglected symbol of my inability to take care of another living thing. Even when that thing isn’t actually alive.
Blizzard’s efforts to maintain the integrity of its magic circle — to lock out as many real-world referents as possible — have the effect of locking players in a magic closet, a place where targets of abuse and discrimination are blamed for “inviting” harassment and where a veil of silence is the only accepted defense.
Sudoku puzzles almost always deliver the reward that they promise, almost always follow through on their offer of satisfaction on a job well done.
Is there a subculture out there that’s more defensive and quick to anger than the gaming community?
Guitar Hero allows you to play like a rock star without having to bother with niggly little details like actually learning to play the guitar.
Explain to me again why I bought a PSP? It wasn’t for the RSS reader, I’ll tell you that.
Notes on Soul Calibur 3 and Ratchet: Deadlocked.
I was hoping for something to dazzle me, to remind me of the ways in which games can completely turn your world on its ear and create a new one out of thin air and light.
I was really looking forward to Capcom’s Killer 7, which only makes my unhappiness with the game that much greater.
When its towns and caverns aren’t just dungeons to be traversed or stages for performances, but are instead people’s homes and playgrounds and battlefields, you begin to leave the “virtual” off of “virtual world” and just treat the imaginary place as if it were real.
Some brief notes on Psychonauts. Psychonotes?
The game totally gives lie to my claim that I’m no longer a fan of Star Wars.
I’ve always been the guy who buys his clothes a size too big, because then everything is equally, safely ill-fitting.
As a collection of random thoughts, Difficult Questions is great, but as a book, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Just a couple of weeks after the New York Times ran a long feature on the rise in popularity of Christian-themed videogames, we see a press release announcing the development of a Bible-themed trivia game.
Rather than being a numbing morass of brainless candy, pop culture (video games, TV, etc.) is instead a stimulating experience that requires active participation on the part of the audience.
My review of Dope Farmer is now up at PopMatters.
The competitive argument against selling virtual assets seems to be that it puts players who aren’t willing to spend extra cash at a disadvantage against players that are; the only way to make up for this disadvantage is to spend hours and hours grinding your way to the top. Personally, I think that any game in which competition and success can be boiled down to a “time = money” equation is not a fun game.
My poor, tendinitis-riddled hands just cannot deal with this constant strain.
Josh reads way too much into simple business transactions.
Mashing never did a thing for me when pinned up against a wall, or when floating in the air during one of those long juggling combos that Tekken is famous (infamous?) for.
My review of NBA Street V3 is up at PopMatters.
All of this morning’s big news seems to involve big business deals between big companies.
You can hardly blame them for being lulled into a liminal state by Halim’s deceptively simple, airily seductive games.
Setting up an opposition between the everyday game reviews that UK Resistance defends and the more reflective pieces that the Guardian promotes is an apples/oranges affair; the only thing the two types of writing have in common are that they both concern video games.
Slate has an article on the ways in which World of Warcraft and City of Heros encourage less-than-obsessive gameplay.
When I walked into the Haiku Dungeon, I assumed the name was a pun or something. I didn’t expect to discover that all the descriptions in there were, in fact, written in haiku.
While the latest big-budget, big-scale Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil games garner lots of attention and sales, I find myself drawn more and more these days towards casual games.
How is it that games that are so difficult and frustrating can be so much fun?
The question is whether you can get all this writing moved off the web and into print, and if you do, whether anyone will buy it.
It’s incredibly saddening to think there are whole servers full of people out there who honestly, innocently think that the words they use have no effect at all on those that hear them.
Beyond such classics as The Blair Witch Project and Independence Day, there are scads of 90s films out there, just waiting to be remediated into hit games.
What was most rewarding for me personally was the opportunity to see games discussed in a new context, not only topically, but socially.
Having a whole pack of Jedi backing you up rather than just a couple of schlubs with laser pistols can make a huge difference in how easy or difficult the later stages of the game are.
The Onion A.V. Club launches its new videogame section with a pair of interviews.
I always think online gaming is a good idea, until I actually go out and try it.
While my inner knee-jerk liberal wants to rail against a wave of corporate invasions in video games, the cynic in me just shrugs.
VFX powers are useful not only because they boost your abilities and power, but because slowing down, zooming in, and replaying the action allows you to revel in the simple pleasures of wanton destruction. At least that’s how it feels when you actually get to destroy things.
Ratchet & Clank, manages to outstrip the others, not with its level design or its mechanics or its story, but by being more addictive than the other games.
the National Institute on Media and the Family has released its annual Video Game Report Card, which singles out Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as being particularly “killographic” and accuses video games of “contributing to the obesity epidemic among American youth.”
If I can get tetrises, that’s great; if I can’t, I don’t let it bother me. If I don’t get the pieces I need, or if a couple of gaps creep into the board, I don’t get angry and slam on the “Quit” key, like I might have in the past.
See PBS air a two-hour documentary on video games. See Josh read a lot of TV-related critical theory for class. See Josh nitpick.
When we fight a boss battle, we give up the freedom to choose and change the game’s world in favor of performing a specific set of actions under the game’s direction. What’s up with that?
An absence of video games leads to an abundance of web design.
When everything is explicitly framed as an object of desire for the straight male player, it completely closes off all avenues of desire for those who don’t fit its narrowly defined demographic.
Quick non-thoughts on A Tale In The Desert, Starcraft, Animal Crossing, and Dr. Blob’s Organism.
I wish all these developers would skip all this irritating plot and dialog crap and let me get on with playing.
Seeing Aarseth’s statement that “games are not intertextual either; games are self-contained” gets my dander up.
Leaving out modes that are considered standard to the form seems like an odd decision, to put it mildly.
Games as unlockable content in other games.
Because I am congenitally unable to resist a list-making exercise, here are a few 2600 games that I think are interesting.
Please consider updating your graphics engine once in a while.
Bugs like this aren’t enough to ruin a good game, but they sure can put a damper on your enthusiasm.
Nauman’s video loops and neon signs flashed and shouted at me just as loudly as any DDR machine could, and sucked me into their hypnotic, repetitive patterns until I was completely in sync with the patterns on the screen.
The annoying part of the whole having-a-day-job thing is that I don’t really have much time or energy to expend on enjoyable activities like sitting around reading and responding to random articles on the Internet.
I finally started playing Devil May Cry, which is generally considered the gold standard for third-person action games. It has nice graphics, nifty attacks, etc. etc. Unfortunately, I just can’t play it.
There was a time when all the dialogue a video game had was a couple of expository sentences on the side of an arcade cabinet, or a half-page teaser in a manual.
It’s very possible to min-max your way to godhood while poring over every roll and modifier to see where you need improvement.
Space Channel 5 has something that very few video games even know they should want to have: swing.
I have no idea how to judge shooters.
A new video-game-theory weblog, Ludonauts, has recently cropped up.
Jak II has the feeling of a big experiment, one that unfortunately isn’t all that successful.
A report of crazy goings-on in FFXI.
Why, oh, why must games be so damned dark?!
I was wondering when the post-Wario Ware era of gaming would begin. Happily, Gamelab has presented us with Arcadia.
FFX-2 may be my favorite mainline FF game ever, if you consider it a mainline game, as opposed to a spinoff like Tactics or Chocobo Racing — distinctions which don’t really matter unless you’re a nerdy fanboy like me.
What’s really great about this game, though, is the level design, which makes the game Exhibit #1 in any list of games that effectively display an architectural sensibility.
One of the stranger marks of a truly dominant mascot like Mickey or Mario is that the bigger and more iconic one gets, the less important its original reasons for popularity become.
I can post a wish list of stuff I want for the holidays without feeling like everything I desire will put me or my friends into debt.
I am an American male between the ages of 18 and 34, and therefore am a part of SpikeTV’s target demographic. Pardon me while I curl into the fetal position and weep for a while.
Otogi causes no end of frustration by being simultaneously far better and far worse than your average hack-n-slash brawler.