The Poetics of Super Mario World

June 5, 2009 in Artful Games, Game History, Game Psychology, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

smw-sm

Although I am still living in exile from my beloved blog, I did manage to get an editorial piece published over at Toronto Thumbs. In it I reflect on the problem of “nostalgia” and whether playing old games is a case of wearing rose-coloured glasses, or does it have to do with something something deeper..

Thank you to the Toronto Thumbs staff for giving me this opportunity to write something for them, especially to Sir Jamie Love for the impetus to try writing this in the first place.

Bye for now. Miss y’all!

The Great Disappearing Act

May 4, 2009 in Site-related | 4 comments

Until my dissertation is complete, I cannot manage to keep up with the currents in gaming. I will return, hopefully dissertation in-hand, on the subject of video games towards the end of 2009.

Until then, please read some of the wonderful articles written by the authors I’ve linked to on the right side of the page.

À la prochaine, mes amis. It’s been peachy.
- Chris

Ye olde Sierra Adventure Games go Online!

April 23, 2009 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

sarien_netJust a short, but exciting, piece of news. GameSetWatch already apparently reported this, but I can’t help pass it along in case you don’t read the major news services.

Although many of you probably did not grow up in the 80s with text-based and graphical adventure games, my sister and I did. We practically grew up on a steady diet of King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, and Space Quest games. The days of huddling in front of the 13″ VGA monitor and solving puzzles together are gone. My sister lives an entire continent away, and we don’t play games together much anymore. Until today, that is.

Which would you prefer more:
A) being able to play your favourite Sierra On-Line adventure games in a web browser?
or
B) being able to play those games in a multiplayer environment?

A + B = Martin Kool’s Sarien.net

Much in the spirit of Jet Set Willy Online, this means that you can now play a handful of Sierra’s old adventure games in a browser-based multiplayer environment. Imagine having 100 Roger Wilco’s walking around, exploring the Arcada. Imagine solving puzzles in The Black Cauldron with a friend 1000 miles away.

And all done by one guy (with the help of a friend). Spectacular.

So head over to Sarien.net if you have a chance and enjoy the ride. The only thing I’d love to see would be names above the avatars (so we can identify each other) and perhaps picking different colors for our characters. It gets tough figuring out who’s who on a screenful of Roger Wilco’s.

Re-thinking Interface “Design”

April 16, 2009 in Game Psychology, Mainstream Games, Philosophy | 18 comments

notoolsMatthew Gallant posted an interesting commentary that confronts video game interfaces with Donald Norman’s ubiquitous book on design, The Design of Everyday Things. There is some sense in the three design principles that Norman distils from his analyses of well-designed everyday objects, and Matthew has done a wonderful job of translating them for game designers.

In this article I try to plead a case against ”good” interface design. Rather, I would like to see interfaces that frustrate the gamer and encourage them to explore the game’s world creatively, rather than instrumentally.

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Searching for Imaginative Space? Apply From Within.

April 15, 2009 in Artful Games, Game Psychology, Philosophy, Retro Gaming | 12 comments

infocom_ad1The recent excitement, and subsequent furor, over the new Legends of Zork browser-based online roleplaying game inspired me to think about how much we have changed as a gamer culture since the days of text-based adventure games.

For many of us, Zork hangs among our earliest memories of computer games. In many ways the series’ massive fanbase - in its entire gamut of casual and hardcore and obsessive players - is our miniature equivalent of the Star Wars fanbase: it is rabid.. it demands quality.. it cannot tolerate any deviation from canon.

So designing a new game based on the Zork franchise was a dicey and dangerous decision, especially considering the close ties the series has with the history of video games in general (it was among the first games derived from Colossal Cave Adventure). Stakes were high for everyone involved.

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A Trip to id Software, circa 1993

April 6, 2009 in Mainstream Games, Retro Gaming | 1 comment

box-doomOn Christmas eve of 1993, I crowded around my uncle’s 17″ monitor as his friend Jeff played a new 3D shooter game on his brand new Pentium PC.

As the game loaded, Jeff said, “This is gonna be the biggest game of the year.”

He cranked up the speakers and blared metal synth midi music; the rest of the family in the other room yelled at us to keep it down. KABOOM! The first panicked shot from the shotgun exploded snargling imps into giblets.

“Over to your right! It’s coming! SHOOT!” we shrieked as another imp advanced on Jeff.

We had never played anything so fast before… all of us broke into a nervous sweat as the man in the hotseat explored the rest of the level. For the first time in our collected lives, we experienced terror playing a computer game.

My uncle picked up the phone and dialed the 1-800 number listed on the exit screen to purchase us a registered copy of the game. We had to have it.

Fast-forward over 16 years.

Yesterday, John Romero edited and posted a video of a trip that Dan Linton (sysop of The Software Creations BBS) took to id Software way back in 1993. The video features composer Bobby Prince giving a demo of some of his work (ie. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3-D, etc), and John Romero playing an early version of Doom.

What I like the most about the video is that the folks over at id show so much passion and energy for their work. They love what they do, and they’re having fun doing it. There is something very familiar about watch Romero play Doom, as his friends and co-workers crowd around the monitor and express their enthusiasm. That kind of excitement and communal gawking is something I sorely miss now that games have become a much more individualized form of entertainment.

I highly recommend checking out the video for a blast to the past, even if you weren’t a Doom fan.

GDC. Day Five.

April 1, 2009 in Game Events | 6 comments

3:55pm.

I am struggling to write a summary of Day Four and falter, over and over. A man dressed in a maintenance jacket tells me that I have to give up my bean-bag chair. He leans over and grins, “Sorry fella! Show’s over!”

I have run out of time. I had planned to stop over at the IGF exhibit in the expo earlier in the day, so I pack up my laptop and walk towards the expo area. Like a gargantuan rock show, the roadies are scurrying around like ants and dismantling towers of aluminum and unhinging LCD screens from the walls. Business cards and discarded flyers litter the floor. I step past it all, hoping that a few of the indie displays are still up and running. A man wheeling a stack of unlabelled boxes excuses himself around me as I search the booths. Nothing is left. No one is here.

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GDC. Day Three.

March 27, 2009 in Game Industry | 2 comments

7:19pm.

My sandals are unevenly clacking down the marble floors of the Moscone Center South as I run towards the Independent Game Festival award ceremony. Late again. Anticipating the room’s layout, expecting a few hundred hardcore indie developers and their fans, I plan to quietly sneak in and find a seat in the back. A yellow-shirted Conference Associate greets me at the door, and kindly waves me in.

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GDC. Day Two.

March 25, 2009 in Artful Games, Indie Games | 1 comment

11:52am. 

“To me, part of the art is really understanding the story… to me, if you boil music down to one element that’s a really important thing when it comes to emotion… it’s tempo! Tempo is what conveys emotion and conveys energy. You find tempo in speech, speech is musical.”

I nod, encouraging him to go on with the thought, doing my best not to interrupt with the thousands of ideas he evokes in my mind as he speaks about his music. We order a couple more cappuccinos and try to concentrate on the conversation… we are becoming drowned out by the shrill cackling of the cafe patrons beside us. I slide the microphone a little closer to him, angling it away from the next table.

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GDC. Day One.

March 24, 2009 in Artful Games | 1 comment

1:20pm.

The sun is high in the sky, and I’m jogging toward the Moscone Center - a large, sprawling building with one foot in art deco architecture, and the other half in post-modernism. I briefly glance at the hundreds of intellectuals, gamers, coders, writers, students, artists and sound engineers, all meandering aimlessly with black “GDC 09″ tote bags slung over their shoulders.

I told Jenova Chen that I’d meet him in the main lobby in ten minutes — that was fifteen minutes ago. My cell phone rings again, and the VOICEMAIL message flashes intermittently. I see a young man twenty feet ahead of me, dressed carefully in a brown corduroy jacket, sliding his iPhone into the inside breast pocket as he moves toward the exit. It has to be him.

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