With over 300 hours invested, I’ve lost patience with Team Fortress 2. As a team based, class based shooter, its original focus was that of a competitive but organised multiplayer experience, which required cooperation between you and team mates in order to be successful. The result of its mutations and gradual evolution over many years however, is that Team Fortress 2 is distinctly lacking two key elements: team-work and organisation.
A few weeks ago Armand from Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming inspired me to check out The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, a game I’ve been curious about for years but never felt compelled to pick up. After a quick dash around some of the local game shops I found a copy of the Bloodmoon expansion tucked away amongst a neglected pile of second-hand titles and miraculously, a few shelves down, Morrowind and Tribunal, all for the …
A question I’ve been mulling over for years now, is why is there not a Pokémon MMOG? It’s startlingly obvious and has genuinely remained on my mind for far too many hours lately. Considering Pokémon has sold in excess of 100 million units world wide, since the launch of Pokémon Red and Blue, I am stunned it isn’t already in production (although it should be noted Nintendo have squashed some fan attempts). What is even …
I’ve been playing Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword. I like it a lot.
I like it because I think I get what they were trying to do. They didn’t succeed all the time but you can perceive their intent, pulsing just under the gloss veneer of the game itself. Not only do I get what they were trying to do, I respect it, and because of that I’m going to reward them by buying Enslaved – which we learned today has sold a pitiful 460,000 units worldwide.
Well, it’s semi-old news by now, but Square-Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2, only the second time the developer has produced a direct sequel to its storied franchise. Typically each Final Fantasy takes place in a different world, full of different characters, but in this instance XIII’s director Motomu Toriyama determined that there was call for a sequel. It was in part, he claims, to allow the protagonist Lightning to find “a happy ending.” Sigh.
The article below represents months of work and appears in Well Played 2.0, a game studies textbook published by Carnegie-Mellon University under the guidance of Professor (and Celebrity Guest Editor) Drew Davidson.
Each chapter of Well Played discusses a single game or franchise, with both meanings of the well-played phrase in mind: the game must be well played as a book is well-read, and it must provide something to better the medium as a whole. Beyond that, the analytical expectations are dependent on the writer. My chapter was about the STALKER franchise, which I know and love well.
I really wanted to do a “director’s cut” version of the article for Tap, including self-made, narrated gameplay videos and the like, but a recent computer crash has eaten up all my STALKER saves. It’d just take too much time to put a project like that together. Instead please accept the odd embedded YouTube video, plus some additional pix and multimedia that don’t appear in the book.
This is a textbook chapter, not a blog post. As such it’s even longer, boringer, and more pedantic than I usually write. It even has footnotes. Enjoy!
A recent article on Jezebel got my attention – “Superheroines Always Get Superboobs.” Iris Ophelia quite rightly rails against the limited selection of body types for female avatars in the upcoming new MMO DC Universe Online, which are limited to “tall and busty,” “medium and busty,” and “preteen and busty.” Where’s “athletic?” Where’s “lean?” Where’s “pear-shaped?” Admittedly, DCUO is a comic-based MMO and this sort of thing has gone on in comics since forever. But it’s also …
Drew Davidson, who is clearly better than me with deadlines (given that I kept him waiting 21 weeks past mine to deliver an article for Well Played 3.0), returns to us with another fascinating cross-cultural look at games. Inspired by the concept of bite-sizability and just as low on time to game as the rest of us, today talks about how snacks and games can co-relate, and what we can learn from each when thinking about good design. You’re on, Drew!
— S
Chalk this one up to another prediction Steerpike got wrong. Microsoft’s motion sensing Kinect hardware has moved a stunning eight million units in 60 days… far, far more than the company’s prediction (one that I at the time thought bombastic, absurd, and unbelievably out of touch) that it would move three million units by the end of 2010.
Professor Drew Davidson, Ph.D., Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie-Mellon University, can be a little intimidating when seen from across the room. A big bear of a guy with a beard and long dreads, he doesn’t match the traditional vision of “college professor.” I’d be quite surprised to learn Drew owned anything with elbow patches.
I first met him at SIGGRAPH several years ago, when I was sitting on a panel and he was giving some papers. We happened to share a table at the evening’s drinking and snacks networking event, and as we got to know each other I found that while he may look intimidating, he’s one of the nicest, most sharply curious, and most intellectual people you’ll meet in this field. He loves discussing games, chewing them like gummi to break them down and find their meaning. It’s no surprise that he’s the mad genius behind the Well Played series, which thanks to him I had the honor to be part of. In this Celebrity Guest Editorial, Drew remembers the time before the end of secrets, and what it will mean for game design. Take it away, Drew!
— S
Shame on me. I finally succumbed to purchasing my first Team Fortress 2 item several weeks ago. I justified the transaction by wanting to pad out my Steam wallet with £10 so I could buy A.I. War, while still having enough change left to get my grubby mitts on a vanity item of my choosing. Having sunk hundreds of hours into TF2, absorbing its free content like a sponge in water, I told myself it’s …
Well kids, it’s mid way through December, which means you’re soon going to be seeing a lot of the following three things in particular: 1.) Father Christmas, and/or adults pretending to be Father Christmas 2.) Drunk relatives 3.) Game Of The Year lists So what is 2010’s Game of the Year? More to the point, who cares? I’m calling this one right now; Fighters Uncaged has got this years award in the bag. What’s more …
I was playing through Aliens vs. Predator the other night when I saw my good friend and gaming insider Matt Sakey (a.k.a. Steerpike) on Steam. Ah, Steam. You allow me to intrude on my friends at my whim. I sent Sakey a one-sentence review of Metro 2033: “I’m punishing Metro 2033 for being a stupid, stupid game. STOOPID.” To his credit, Matt did not immediately log off and instead responded: “Is that stoopid as in …
Every year around the holidays I post a message about Child’s Play, the charity founded by Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Child’s Play collects toys and monetary donations for distribution to children’s hospitals all over the world – getting games, books, and toys into the hands of sick kids to help make their time in such places a little more like home. The charity is important and special regardless, but this year, for …
As those who tap the forums already know, I had LASIK a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of an amazing procedure. Totally painless, though you do feel… something, something unpleasant, but “pain” is the wrong word. It’s more like you’re aware of being sharply uncomfortable for a few seconds. Admittedly the smell of your own burning eye flesh is disconcerting, but it doesn’t hurt.
For the next eight hours after surgery, though, your eyeballs feel like they’re being rolled in a slurry of sand and lemon juice. A great, noble, self-sacrificing friend of mine took me to the surgery, then took me home, then narrated a game of Civilization V to me (I’d been told not to open my eyes) while I fidgeted and growled and pawed at my liberally running eyes as they lay protected beneath the silly plastic shields they’d made me wear.