Mischievous Ramblings II

Gordon Walton: Publishers see devs as "replaceable meat puppets" | GamesIndustry International

Walton spent many years building games to put in boxes for retail stores, and over time began concentrating on online games, which demands a relationship between the company and individual gamers. That's a difficult transition for publishers used to the old way of doing business. "Most of the big companies I work for think about the consumers like a faceless mass, and not about people," Walton said. "People are the ones using our stuff. Even in the mid '80s, when I was doing games then, I always went to alpha as quickly as I could. I was on the online services and I would recruit people who were interested in the topic and I would have forty or fifty people playing my early game and giving me feedback, because you can't see the forest for the trees when you're making the game. Just because you made it for yourself, and your team, and they all think it's cool, doesn't mean a damn thing if customers don't think it's cool."

via www.gamesindustry.biz

Not like the industry hasn't heard this before, and I doubt they'll listen just because Gordo got some press.  OTOH, if reading Gordo's words educate even a few of the kids who enter the computer games business every year, then it's a great thing.

Hilarious: Microsoft keeps it old-school with a pricey text adventure game

Microsoft keeps it old-school with a pricey text adventure game, Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft has jumped onto the free-to-play bandwagon with its latest game, a text-driven adventure called Visual Studio 2010. The innovative new game marries the traditional interactive fiction text adventure with its arcane commands and exploration with the free-form, open-ended gaming pioneered by the likes of SimCity.

There are two major modes to the game, a textual spell-casting game, and a more complex interactive puzzle mode.

Play starts with the spell game. The game has three difficulty modes. In the two easiest modes Visual Studio questers must cast spells to appease a malevolent gatekeeper known only as "the compiler," combining the text adventuring of Zork with the wizardy and magic of Loom. If the player's spell contains even a single faulty incantation, the compiler will respond with a torrent of abuse and spells of its own; the player must piece together clues contained within compiler's response to determine how they went wrong.

Alea Iacta Est, finale

Sorry for the delay in reporting...

On 2 September, I received an email containing the following:

We've reviewed Hero Roller and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because of inappropriate 'Keywords' used to identify your application.  We will not post applications that reference other applications in their search criteria. It would be appropriate to remove Dice Roller

But I cannot submit a new version because of an error.  Fortunately, on 16 September, Hero Roller was approved for sale!

So both the Lite and full versions of Hero Roller are now available on the App Store!  They are very specialized programs and I don't expect tremendous response, but I'll get around to posting some details to Hero forums wherever I can find them.

Hero Roller Lite

Hero Roller Full

Hero Roller FAQ

Alea Iacta Est

I have submitted my first app to the app store.  It's called Hero Roller, and it does basic combat rolling for Hero System games.

I'll update as this goes along.  There's no telling how long it may take or what changes may be necessary.

Gary Gygax Dies

It's all over the net now.  E. Gary Gygax is dead.

Puns abound.  "Beyond the reach of healing spells", "failed his saving roll against death", "quick! get the cleric!" and undoubtedly others.

I worked at TSR for about a year in 1980-1981.  I'm sure I have a different idea about TSR's management (Gygax and the Blumes) of that time than most paper gamers do.  I'm sure I have a different idea about Gary's level of genius as well.

The business conflicts of TSR's early management are pretty well recounted various places on the 'Net.  I was having lunch with Paul Reiche, an old friend and fellow TSR alum, last week, and I mentioned that I thought TSR had a long-term negative effect on me.  It blurred the lines between business and personal (see both The Godfather and You've Got Mail for further discussion) in a big way.  It took years for me to properly separate the two again -- probably not an unusual event for someone who works at something they love deeply.  I know now that part of the reason that happened was the inexperience of the company's upper management, who found themselves riding a big money wave they were completely untrained and unprepared for.

Regardless of his legend versus his actual achievements, the controversy of authorship of D&D, his missteps and mistakes, his humanity cannot be denied.  His effect upon the world was great, and I believe largely for the good.  Chainmail and its descendants D&D, AD&D, and almost every other paper RPG sprang from Gary and his friends and partners, and every creative spark from RPG players owes him something.  It's entirely possible that we wouldn't have the computer games we have today if it hadn't been for Gygax and friends.

R.I.P.

Art and Politics Intersecting or, Ur-Quan akbar!

From gridskipper.com:

In a gallery of anti-American/anti-Israeli murals decorating the "U.S. Den of Espionage" in Tehran (i.e. the former American embassy), I noted the clawed hand crushing the Earth appeared similar to the cover art from a sci-fi novel by Scientologist overlord L. Ron Hubbard. But an astute reader points out that the weird, bifurcated fingernail/claws actually point to the cover art for classic 1990 video game Star Control as the mural's real inspiration. Ur-Quan akbar!

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

I run into the lack of historical awareness all the time, even in contexts where you would expect better.

In the Game Design class I taught for a local art school there was, and at work (where I'm roughly twice the age of all the people on my team) there is an amazing (at least to me) lack of any sense of gaming history.  I can't count the number of times that someone comes up with a "new" concept and I go "yeah, there was a variant of that done in X and it worked out pretty well except for..." or "it tanked badly because..." or even "I don't remember much about it but you should look it up and play it with an emulator..."

Even some of the senior people I meet in the business have only 6-10 years of experience and don't remember much, if anything, before the current "a niche for everything and everything in its niche" period of console gaming.  M.U.L.E., Ultima 4 and Robot Rascals are as far away for them as Chainmail and Little Wars.

Emulators are apparently not enough.

“Globbo” Lives!

The Escapist - READ GAME

But seriously, The Escapist looks like a worthwhile gaming read.

Notes on Fritz 8

GameDevBlog: Notes on Fritz 8 was posted awhile ago, but it's interesting if you're mildly into chess, and there's some insight into game balancing issues as well.

Too Much Fun!

Deanimator