Video
A Ton of Links
I’ve been busy – what can I say? But I’ve been saving stuff up to post!
- Inquisitor – Another cool looking isometric indie RPG. I hope that and Age of Decadence come out!
- The Magicians – this book looks pretty cool and based on this interview, the author Lev Grossman is pretty cool as well! He’s also writen a great article about the improtance of plot in the Wall Street Journal.
- Erik Mona is doing a new blog – there’s no RSS but Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo is going a blog over at ENWorld. The 1st entry is all about his history as a gamer.
- DragonAge‘s lead writer – here’s an interview with David Gaider! Pretty interesting stuff…
- A huge list of sci-fi – writen by people who aren’t white men.
- Tim Holman’s new blog – Mr Holman is the Publisher at Orbit. He’s writen some cool stuff including the state of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre and what gets onto the covers of fantasy books.
Phew.
Elite – one of my first obsessions is 25 years old
The other day marked the 25th aniversary of Elite – a open-world space trading and flying sim game that I played when I was a kid. I remember quite clearly going to a computer fair back in Wellington at age 7 or so and seeing this cool game. I bought (with my own money none the less) a ZX Spectrum+ (48k of memory!) and Elite. I was terrible at it to be honest but it marks the beginings of my love of computer game. It was an ‘open-world’ game in a way that very few games have been since – within the context you could do whatever you liked. There was no story or allocated missions. There was just … space.
So thanks for the memories!
(video via Offworld)
Dragon Age, coming soon!
Well perhaps not as soon as we hoped. A couple of weeks ago it was confirmed that Dragon Age’s release date had slipped into November. As disappointing as this is it does give me a little more time to save up for what certain looks like a ripper of a game. To keep things interesting here is the most recent trailer (via GameSpot) that was released at GameCom in Germany.
Enjoy!
All video game characters are all the same!!!
Apparently someone has done some research which shows that ‘Video Game Characters Lack Ethnic & Gender Diversity‘
This was news to who exactly?
One of the things I like about increased customisability of game characters is that you can make a character that looks like you, regardless of what you look like. Story lines still don’t always allow for diversity however, even if you do look different. That seems to be changing as well – Bully, Mass Effect, Fable II and a whole heap of other games allow same sex relationships. But the vast majority of games still feature hyper-masculine white dudes with guns.
I’m a white dude and I know that games are largely wish fulfilment. But it’s interesting to play other people as well. And if I can play an elf, I’m sure I can play a black woman or a gay Asian man or whatever else.
Some video game links
I’ve been collecting links but had no time to post them. So here you go!
- Regular readers know that Sophie and I are pretty excited about upcoming PC/console RPG Dragon Age and may have even picked up that we’re both planning on playing it on the Xbox 360. Good news for us then because the Kotaku writers have had some time with the 360 version and say the controls work fine!
- There was also an interesting interview with video game designer Tim Schafer about the need for games to expand their subject matter beyond sci-fi and fantasy if the medium is going to grow larger. I could give a fuck about it getting bigger, but he’s probably not wrong.
- Finally, magicians Penn & Teller have dedicated an episode of their show Bullshit! to violent video games – pretty funny stuff.
I need to read a video game blog other than Kotaku. Any suggestions?
I guess I’ll be getting Dragon Age for Xbox then…
Because the PC specs are out and I don’t meet them!
More linkage
A Kotaku article on game pricing in Australia (but with obvious NZ relevance).
A pretty fascinating Slate.com piece on the history of the Klingon language.
A World of Warcraft themed toilet/gaming room.
I am passing these on without comment…
The Dragon Age PnP RPG and Nick’s thinking
As Sophie’s posted, Green Ronin have announced that they’re producing a pen-and-paper version of Bioware’s upcoming CRPG Dragon Age. This was hyped by a series of clues on the GR twitter feed and now Chris Pramas has updated the thinking behind these clues on his blog.
GR have done a bit of a closet Mongoose thing of late, publishing increasing numbers of licensed properties alongside their original settings: A Song of Ice and Fire, Wild Cards (George R. R. Martin’s shared world superheros setting), Thieve’s World and the Black Company. More than anyone, they must know how to make this work for them financially. And Dragon Age will expose them to a great new mass of potential customers – there’s already a page up on the official Dragon Age site and presumably there will be mentions in the manual and possible even load screens and the like. Pramas specifically says that:
As for “something needed,” I was talking about a really good intro game for new roleplayers. I don’t think D&D has had that since the early 80s (hence “something overdue”) and the tabletop roleplaying hobby needs new blood. It is not a coincidence that the first release is a boxed set.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this is going to bring in these new gamers in large numbers, box set or not. The vast majority of video gamers don’t care about tabletop games – if you look at the offical forums, you’ll see that near everyone commenting on this is an old tabletop RPGer. No one has popped in to say “I’ve always wanted to play a table top RPG and now here’s my chance!”
One other concern I have is that Bioware’s best work has been with other people’s settings. Star Wars and the Forgotten Realms in particular. Mass Effect is the only game of theirs I know with a totally original setting (Jade Empire is pseudo-historical) and I was fairly under whelmed.
I have every faith that GR will do this well and that it will be an interesting game , and I’ll probably pick it up if I like the setting from the game, but I hope no one thinks this is going to make RPGs mainstream again.
Game design in CRPGs – some links
I’m on a Kotaku link buzz here, but these were interesting.
First up is how uber-CRPG designer Chris Avellone hates CRPGs and their clichés.
Second up is how horses change the design of CRPGs and why Dragon Age won’t have any.
Both of these are reasons that as long as I’ve got friends and dice, I’ll keep playing table top games.
More Fallout
Sophie beat me to the punch with her Fallout post, but here’s a bit more.
Shacknews interview with Bethesda’s marketing vice-president about Fallout: New Vegas.
Also, the next lot of DLC for Fallout 3 comes out on May 5. Kotaku has a whole bunch of info on it.
I still haven’t finished Fallout 3 but have decided to get back on the main quest so expect some more reactions soon! Once I finish the main game then I’m planning to get all three DLC packs as well.