The Artful Gamer

When I was 12 years old I received $25 for my birthday from my aunt. With the $5 I had saved from the previous weeks worth of allowance, I had a whopping $30 to blow on something frivolous. I convinced my mother to drive my sister and I to the largest computer store in the city (40 miles away) so I could buy myself a new computer game. After searching through the racks for almost an hour, I gave up – the games I really wanted were over $60, and the games selling for $30 or less looked unappetizing. I had given up and was ready to leave when my sister grabbed a copy of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge off of the shelf and handed it to me: “Buy this one! It has monkeys!” At first glance I wasn’t interested, but the screenshots on the back of the box reminded me a little of my other adventure games like King’s Quest IV and Police Quest II. I reluctantly agreed to allow my sister to chip-in $20 to buy it, and pouted the hour-long ride home as my sister opened the box and pawed through the ‘feelies’ inside. Sitting in the den in front of our 286 I unenthusiastically installed the game, and loaded it up. Within minutes my sister and I were transfixed upon the monitor and practically rolling on the floor laughing at the ridiculous conversations and character expressions. Monkey Island 2 quickly became one of our favorite PC games and was the gateway to a larger world of cinematic adventure games. Within weeks, I convinced my parents to buy me an AdLib sound card for christmas so I could hear the glorious midi music. In this article I look at LucasArts’s seminal iMUSE system – the Interactive Musical Scoring Engine that was used in every LucasArts adventure game from 1991-2000.
(more…)

Although Keira posted a comment several months ago in response to the rather dystopian sketch I scribbled of the BioWare sale, I accidentally overlooked her blog, Write the Game, until recently. A writer, musician, composer, and seasoned gamer among other things, Keira Peney has the uncanny ability of consistently writing thoughtful and organized articles.

I’ve spent the last few days reading her impressive back-catalogue of posts and while I think all of them are certainly worth your time, her six-part composition on the history of video games stood out for me. These articles demonstrate Keira’s intimate knowledge of retro games, a keen eye for details, and impeccable research skills. For someone born in 1984 (the year of King’s Quest I, Championship Lode Runner, and Seven Cities of Gold) she sure as hell knows her Dune II and Command and Conquer – two games that I spent countless hours playing and subsequently debating about with my junior high school friends. If you’re at all interested in reading a thoughtful piece on the history of video games (and their developers) with some interesting analyses, be sure to read the entire series of articles (start at the bottom).

Edit: Keira posted a reply to the lively ongoing discussion started by Michael over the Brainy Gamer on “photorealism” in video games. I’m hoping to continue the discussion in my next post, and attempt to outline some new ideas on the subject.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to another province. One of the first friends I made in our new community was a kid named Fraser. In a far corner of Fraser’s basement, his parents had a Macintosh 128k covered in a protective plastic sheet. Although it was strictly taboo (the Mac was only to be used for word processing!), when his parents were busy upstairs Fraser and I would sneak into the room and quietly load up a few games he had copied from our school’s library. Two of the games that we secretly giggled over in front of that monochrome screen remain burned into my childlike mind to this day: ChipWits and Dark Castle.

ChipWits was an edutainment game that was released in the early days of the Macintosh. One part puzzler and one part GUI-based programming teacher, ChipWits used an icon-driven programming language (IBOL) to command a miniature robot on rollerskates around a room. Through combinations of operators and arguments, the robot would traverse the room picking up, eating, or frying objects at your maniacal whim. I don’t doubt that games such as The Incredible Machine, and more recently Chibi-Robo, gained much of their inspiration from this classic.

Dark Castle was a mixed action/puzzler/platformer that put you in the shoes of the bumbling adventurer Duncan in his quest to defeat the Black Knight. The game featured eery waveform sound effects and wonderful character animation reminiscent of later ‘rotoscoped’ animation. (Interesting side note: Co-developer Jonathan Gay later came to pioneer the now-ubiquitous Flash animation software. The designer and illustrator Mark Pierce later became the co-founder of software giant Macromedia. Holy jebus!) Full of slapstick humor and frustrating puzzles, Dark Castle is probably one of the least known indie masterpieces of the 1980′s.

Unfortunately, neither of these games have been playable on modern systems without frustratingly clunky emulation software. That is, until now! I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that both have been remade into modern sequels by indie developers:

(more…)

Pictured above: ‘Sigil View’ by Fuflon, courtesy of deviantART.

A few weeks ago, Michael over at the Brainy Gamer wrote some final thoughts on his play-through of Planescape: Torment, a cRPG that many consider to be one of the best role-playing games to ever hit the PC. The beginning of his post caught my attention right away:

Planescape: Torment is a text-based RPG. True, it manages to squeeze every bit of isometric splendor out of Bioware’s Infinity Engine. And yes, the game occasionally treats you to a pre-rendered cutscene. But these are merely window dressing. Planescape: Torment places all its narrative eggs in one giant 800,000 word basket.

In this article I begin to explore the idea that photorealism in games ultimately detracts from immersion and gives players the feeling that the story and characters are contrived and un-real. I suggest that immersion and dramatic investment aren’t a product of good technologies, they are a product of good artisanship.

(more…)

Martin, author of Digital Tools Magazine, recently contacted me and I wish I had found his site sooner! Martin’s short and eclectic articles bring together an impressive range of writing, from in-depth interviews with a wide range of developers, to technical inspirations normally found in the workshop of a mad clockmaker. His interests in the mechanical, retro, conceptual, and algorithmic, should inspire any fellow artist or creative mind to pursue their own unique development style. I found his how to make games article particularly interesting because he describes four very different methods of development that generate, in my opinion, four very different kinds of games. It goes without saying that certain kinds of games demand certain development methods – for instance a 50-hour RPG won’t be very interesting if all you do is spend your time on the engine without a strong, suitable narrative (ahem, I’m looking at you Oblivion!).

As I reported a few months ago, the Ultima VII engine emulator Exult was ported to the Sony PSP by The Food Sucks team. Not only was it fantastic to see the classic RPG/adventure game ported to a handheld gaming platform, but the quality of the homebrewed port itself was stunning in every respect. (If you aren’t familiar with Exult but you own a Sony PSP, I highly recommend heading on over to the development team’s page and give it a shot.)After playing Ultima VII: The Black Gate for several hours on my PSP, I felt compelled to thank the team with a small gift in appreciation for their tireless efforts punching deck. Although it took a few months, they finally received the gift: a uh… somewhat new.. Nintendo DS Lite! I can only hope that it inspires the team to work on another quality homebrew project…