No Time To Play
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Weekly Links #120

Another week, another delay. If you were waiting for my latest text adventure, I'm afraid it's still in beta-testing, for reasons outside of my control, and I'd rather not lose patience and release an untested game. Maybe if the delays continue. In related news, I started porting RogueBot to the desktop, something I should have done long ago. Got plans for another port as well, to be announced when it's certain enough.

In other news, Vice magazine has an article about the importance of Doom, and Gamasutra is running a piece on action RPGs. The former makes familiar arguments, but the latter came up with a new one (for me at least): namely, that computer RPGs letting one player control an entire party misses the entire point of tabletop games, namely to let each player identify with their one character. And why bother with a party at all, since you lose the social interaction aspect in the first place? Suddenly, I'm seeing roguelikes and games like Morrowind in a different light...

(That said, I just have to point out that the original Diablo totally failed to keep the novelty level high, its generated dungeons lacking both variety and especially color.)

But this week's big story is Eurogamer's feature on Lionhead, occasioned by the legendary studio's closure at the end of April. (Warning, long read.) And you know what? This may be Peter Molyneux and Fable we're talking about, but the story of their ultimate failure is drinking game material. Take a sip every time:

We've all heard this exact same story so many times by now, studios and publishers alike really have no excuse anymore. And still they refuse to learn. So be it then. But consider how many amazing games — games out of reach for a small indie team — simply never get made because of it.