The Most Dangerous Gamer The Atlantic profiles game developer Jon Blow, most famous for creating the acclaimed and philosophical
Braid, now working on "puzzle-exploration" game
The Witness.
Blow aims to make The Witness a groundbreaking piece of interactive art—a sort of Citizen Kane of video games...“Things are pared down to the basic acts of movement and observation until those senses become refined,” he told me. “The further you go into the game, the more it’s not even about the thinking mind anymore—it becomes about the intuitive mind.” (
previously,
previously)
posted by shivohum
on Apr 11, 2012 -
74 comments
I remember with crystal clarity when I realized I was making more money from this enterprise than I was at my full-time job. I quickly decided to expand and hired four guys in Singapore to play 24/7. I paid them unreasonably well for the time, almost 3x as much as they would for other re-sellers; this bought me loyalty, and in this enterprise, loyalty is everything."
How I Helped Destroy Star Wars Galaxies [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Mar 7, 2012 -
165 comments
National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 15, 2011 -
50 comments
In this way, Lu Yang became one of the "RMB gamers" she disdains. More than 10,000 RMB was quickly and nearly imperceptibly spent. In the game, the "queen" possessed fearsome power. She carried out vengeance for herself and her friends, she accepted entreaties, and she protected the caravans of the kingdom. At the same time, she went out with the heroes to invade other kingdoms. Her reputation spread far and wide. [...] "Long live the Queen!" People bowed to her in submission. That was the high point for Lu Yang on ZT Online, and for that one fleeting moment, she felt that the time and money she had spent was worth it.
The System is a translated Chinese article examining ZT Online, an MMORPG that has taken fleecing gamers to a new level.
posted by Kattullus
on May 6, 2008 -
34 comments
What do you get when you mix a fiendishly difficult and addictive puzzle game with the feel of a hack & slash RPG set in a cartoonish, slightly tongue-in-cheek fantasy world? That would be
Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD for short). The game is freakin' huge, with 25 levels filled with unique rooms, and it also happens to be free.
posted by speicus
on Sep 22, 2005 -
7 comments
Get your game on with Kaneva. Billing itself as
"The world’s first digital entertainment marketplace!" Kaneva is a beta launch of a concept that maybe interesting to gamers, media creators, and consumers as well. An Atlanta based company, Kaneva.com aims to be an exchange/market portal for game and media creators, who can directly create Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games using the Kaneva Framework, and for digital media creators seeking distribution. The business model is innovative, and has been described as
"a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets eBay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host." The company recently presented its concept at the June meeting of the International Game Developers Association, and back in April
Computer Gaming Magazine had an article. During the beta test phase, the site's tools are free to all comers, and there is already a limited amount of content available for those who just want to play something new.
posted by paulsc
on Jun 18, 2005 -
8 comments
The Most Ambitious Game Ever? At this year's Game Developers Conference, Sims creator Will Wright's upcoming game
Spore drew standing ovations. Not to be outdone, Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Black & White fame) revealed his own ambitious game-like project
The Room. While the top game designers have freedom to play, independents
rail (read Greg Costikyan's amazing bit in the middle) at the restrictions of the publisher system. For those who doubt
games can be art.
posted by blahblahblah
on Mar 15, 2005 -
60 comments
Lemmings! Do you miss sending hoardes of helpless little buggers into pits, and trying to free them from their own suicidal helplessness? Then this is for you!
posted by christian
on Aug 15, 2003 -
24 comments
Computer gaming ,which once seemed in danger of being entirely trounced by the popularity of console games, now seems healthier than ever, with new game engines taking advantage of speedier processors and the improved capacities of the new age 3D cards.
A mere week after the launch of the demo, the PC game
Unreal Tournament 2003 has
gone gold. Also being launched in the US is
"The Thing" which picks up on the story from the John Carpenter movie of the same name. Gamers are also eagerly anticipating
"Thief 3," "Doom 3," "Unreal 2," and
"Deus Ex 2"
posted by lucien
on Sep 22, 2002 -
59 comments
Game Studies "is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games." A well-designed, well-written site about a media that seems often poorly studied outside of mainstream press.
posted by moz
on Aug 22, 2002 -
4 comments
If you've ever wanted your first-person shooter to feel a little
less real,
NPRQuake may be just what you need. The
blueprint and
brushstroke versions are nice, but for my money you can't beat
sketchy Quake. Unfortunately, the NPR in the name stands for Non-Photorealistic Rendering, not
that other NPR, so don't expect Robert Siegel or Linda Wertheimer skins any time soon. (via
haddock.org)
posted by jjg
on May 17, 2001 -
4 comments
Remember the old Sierra Games? Remember back in the early 80's when
King Quest hit the streets? Did you ever think to your self how they created that game? Sierra used a gaming engine called Adventure Gaming Interpreter, or AGI for short, for many of their popular adventure games. This engine which was "hacked" in the early to mid 90's, and there are groups of people that still develop games to be used with home made hacks of this engine. Find out how you can make your own games like KQ or take a look at what have people created or are creating right now,
here. There's even someone saying that they are porting the
hacked AGI stuff to Dreamcast.
-Ellis of the now dead Geeknews.com
posted by ellis
on Apr 5, 2001 -
19 comments
Nethack 3.3.1 released today. This wonderfully addictive game has been under development for 15 years. That fact alone is major bonus points. Also, a quote from the d/l page: "This version might work on a 286 machine, but it has not been tested on one." Heh. 'cause they probably can't find one to test on. Well, the consolation prize is that it
does run on Atari and Amiga.
posted by syn
on Aug 10, 2000 -
4 comments
SIMbabes ain't putting out... I play
The Sims. You probably suspected that didn't you? Well, there's a
Blogger Powered weblog by the guy behind the upcoming
Blueprint program, and guess what? Copyright infringement once again rears its ugly head in cyberspace. A website called
Simcorally has downloaded objects others created and claimed them as his own. So now the
SIMbabes are on strike. The upshot of this is I'm still stuck with that obnoxious green couch. I want
something better. And that piano looks awful nice.
Simlane has more on the topic.
posted by ZachsMind
on Jun 25, 2000 -
8 comments
Alexey Pajitnov , the creator of Tetris has had a remarkable life. He developed one of the world's most recoginizable (and mind-numbingly addictive) games - and in the process, managed to survive through all sorts of incredible bureaucratic and corporate nonesense. Speaking of corporate nonesense, he's currently an employee of Microsoft.
posted by grant
on Dec 9, 1999 -
0 comments
