No Time To Play

Work has ramped up as of late, preventing me from working on my projects much. On the plus side, I’m in a mood to write code again, though not on my existing games. But mostly, I’ve been thinking about art.

Among other things, I joined OpenGameArt and contributed some art I had laying around. For all that people make fun of programmer graphics, one of my submissions was actually appreciated. Having been made with a clear purpose in mind must have something to do with that.

I’ve also made another raytraced scene, and thinking of more. One of these days, maybe I’ll have enough of them to inspire an adventure game.

But first, to get my work/life balance back into shape. See you around.

I know I am a little late to the party (seven months a bit too late perhaps), but now I think is a good time for me to say something about a “little” game called Rift. I will not speak here about the game itself (that will happen in a future article), but about the hype surrounding it and the market in which it has grown its own segment. Some may have heard of Rift, some may have not, but at some point it had a shiny trailer which ended with the phrase: “you are not in Azeroth anymore”.

OK, now I am getting to some familiar grounds. For most gamers Azeroth is already famous thanks to World of Warcraft. Unfortunately many people do not seem to know there are other MMORPGs besides Blizzard’s mammoth. Heck, some of them don’t even know what the term MMO really stands for. Or the fact that WOW copied the key elements form a pretty famous game called Everquest. Or the fact that MUDs were the basic ground on which the whole “MMO” thing grew up to become what they are today.
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While there is a continuing trend to market games to a larger audience by basing them primarily on gameplay that is quickly learned and satisfying, there remains something to be said for interesting storylines in interactive media. How a storyline is presented, however, is as important as the story itself. Bad cut scenes that keep a player from playing the game might as well be loading screens.

There has been a tendency, historically, for games to try to emulate movies in the story telling department. Games will pause, a short video advancing the story will be played, and then the gameplay continues. There are a number of problems this creates in a gaming medium.
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