No Time To Play

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Good Old Games (GOG.com) has released the first and second trilogies of the Ultima series.  This is significant because for many people, Ultima was their first delve into computer RPG’s.  Not only that, but the Ultimas for better or worse have shaped all the RPGs that have followed it.

Some things that are staples today in what is considered an “expansive world” (like the ability to cook, or NPC schedules) started or at least became popular in the Ultima games.  And Richard “Lord British” Garriott, creator of Ultima, is a model for many developers who would like to strike it big in the world of game development starting from nothing but lines of code and a PC.

So, whatever your opinion of Ultima, it has a lot of historical significance.  And so I bought the two trilogies on GOG.com and started playing through them.  This article is going through the ones I have played, comparing my recollections of the games with my actual playthroughs and noting things that are interesting in each title.

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I think it’s safe to say that anyone who is passionate about tabletop games has at some point tried to design their own. And anyone who did try knows it’s not in any way easy. But what goes into the rule system of a game? How do you make it fun? How do you make it balanced? Come to think of it, what do “fun” and “balanced” mean, anyway?

I had to answer these questions while designing a system of rules for Dungeon Romp. Which was a choice in itself, as the more obvious option was to go with an existing system. But it wasn’t the right one.

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The Bastion Narrator Looks Like the KFC Guy

So I’ve been playing Bastion lately (By Super Giant Games and available on Steam), and this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  The biggest reason is that it’s an “Action RPG” and that’s a genre I don’t play anymore, and yet I’m playing this game.

What’s so bad about Action RPGs?  Well, I find its kind of a tired genre.  I’m talking about games like Diablo or Torchlight; real time games where your primary action is clicking at hoards of monsters.  This is distinct from Roguelikes which, generally speaking, are turn based and more “tactical” in a lot of ways.  Action RPGs are sort of repetitive stress disorder games, where you pick the best weapon or spell and “spam” it until everything is dead. (continue reading…)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen;

Felix has been kind enough to give me permission to make a mess of post on this site, so in the proud tradition of programmers everywhere: Hello, world!

Let me warn you; the first part of this is going to read a little bit like a rant, but I promise it gets constructive.  And I’m not ranting against things I hate, I’m ranting about things I wish could be better.  Things, in fact, that I love.  To my mind, this is vital for game developers to see; we, as a collective, need to always learn and strive to make better products.  We need to learn from the good and from the bad, and always play with an open mind.

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Is it ironic that a MMORPG designed to piggyback on social networking services reached me via someone in my real-life social network? Such is the case with Echo Bazaar, a browser-based title still in beta as of 13 February 2011 (two years after it apparently won an award from Escapist Magazine, hmm).

How about the fact that she has a Facebook account and I have a Twitter account, so initially we couldn’t interact at all in the game? Because, you see, Echo Bazaar is entirely dependent on these two services for authenticating players. That’s good on the one hand, as you don’t need to remember yet another set of credentials, and bad on the other, as many people stay as far away as they can from either.

But I’ll return to that later. For now, let’s see about little things such as story and gameplay.

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What is it with people waking up in 2011 to declare they know what CRPGs (computer role-playing games for the acronym challenged) are, better than anyone else? It’s doubly annoying, as the genre is rich and diverse on the one hand, and solidly anchored in a tradition of pen&paper games on the other hand.

The latest to try and squeeze countless games into a narrow definition (and complain about it) is this write-up from an online magazine I hadn’t heard about before. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, that’s okay, because the tl;dr version is right there at the beginning.

None of these games (ed: DA, Fable, Final Fantasy) are role-playing games. They are, in fact, nothing more than story-driven strategy games.

At that point, I almost stopped reading, because the author is criticizing a bunch of very different CRPG franchises for… capturing the essence of Dungeons and Dragons itself.

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It’s only natural for a gamer to dream of making their own games. The good news is, the means for doing that are available to just about anyone nowadays. The bad news is, many people shy away at the thought of having to learn programming. And while that fear is completely unfounded, getting help as a beginner is of course useful.

In part one of this article, I mentioned a number of game-making tools that make game programming much, much easier than starting from scratch. This time I’m going to look at the kind that seeks to eliminate programming altogether, at least for the most part.

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There is a gap in my videogame repertoire. Specifically, I don’t do RPGs.

Oh, I’ve played a few of the classics (Fallout 1&2, Planescape Torment, the first Ultimas) as well as the occasional MMO. Roguelikes might count as well, depending on your definition. But for the most part I’ve played RPGs in ways that only involve computers incidentally, or not at all. Namely via forums, text based virtual worlds, or simply around a table with a few friends.

You caught me; I like to read and write a lot. But even if you’re into glitzy graphics, pen&paper RPGs (a.k.a. tabletop) might hold some points of interest for you.

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I’ve been playing a couple of MMORPGs lately. Now, that’s not usually my thing, but sometimes one needs to try something out of the daily routine. And since we’re talking free-to-play, it was only going to cost me time. What I find interesting is that both games appeal to me considerably, despite being not just very different, but polar opposites in some regards. So I decided to try and review both side by side, and see if that turns out any useful insights.

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I’ve always been a sucker for the written text, ever since I’ve learn how to read (sometime between the ages of 4 and 5). Oh, I’d watch a movie or two with starry eyes, but then I’d always return to reading books. No wonder, then, that nowadays I am fascinated by text-based computer games. You know, those things many people believe to be a thing of the past. (Which isn’t exactly true: roguelikes are alive and well, interactive fiction is experiencing a revival, and even MUDs are doing fine.)

But I never realized just how important they were in the history of computer games until I tried to draw the diagram below. Count the bold items:

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