» Computer and Console Games
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Audio Report - Trends and microclimates
‘Tis the post season to be catching up, so here goes: another refugee from the holiday season, this Audio Report episode brings us back to the height of the season’s buying rush, just after Black Friday. Steve’s mind seems to have held up to the retail store pressure, but just barely. The differences between national regions, and even local retail areas, come into play during our discussions of current trends in consumer desires. We’re all over the map in Currently Playing, but both Mike and Allan have paid special attention to Portal, of all things. Have a listen, and tell us what you think.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Gameplaywright: shall Wii play an RPG?
Over at Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball’s freshly announced blog Gameplaywright, Will makes the following provocative observation that may surprise Wii owners:
The wiimote is a roleplaying prop, isn’t it? It’s a multi-functional device morphed by your imagination and direct interface into some imaginary role in an imaginary setting. Thus, every Wii game is practically an RPG, or at least contains “RPG elements,” bordering on LARP. Your acceptance of the wiimote as something other than it is - your “casting” of it into a role - flows back into you, transforming you into a roleplayer.
That’s right, Wii gamers: you’ve been drafted; we’ll expect you to make well-informed votes for all Origins Award and ENnies ceremonies from now on, plan accordingly. But honestly, I couldn’t agree with Will more - the right Wii interface can nearly eliminate the learning curve on what a roleplaying game is, and could make the entire roleplaying medium (yes, including the tabletop games) less intimidating. Now if we could just get the right cross-pollinization of socially mobilizing party games the Wii is known for with a memorable story-driven experience, then we’d really have a tool to recruit fresh roleplayers.
This also reminds me I was going to pick up Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, and get my survival horror roleplaying on.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Weisman gets new gig infiltrating physical world with old-timey modern-fantasy mecha
“Jordan Weisman, founder of FASA, has licensed the rights to MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies from Microsoft to his latest startup, Smith & Tinker.” S&T apparently aims to draw on the lessons of ARGs, the medium Weisman helped pioneer at his company 42 Entertainment, and carry them into the realm of Internet-connected real-world objects (in the form of games and toys). No announcement has yet been made that gets more specific than that. But if you put CS, SR and MW in a blender and poured the resulting paste all over a website, it would indeed look like Smith & Tinker’s.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Something of WotC’s probably headed for Xbox Live Arcade, who knows what
“Wizards of the Coast […] today announced an agreement with leading UK video game developer Stainless Games to produce an exciting new online downloadable game.” Doesn’t “leading” usually mean that you don’t do your development work under some other company’s name? Still, though, the Xbox Live versions of Asteroids and such have been big on that platform, and the note that this “exciting new downloadable game” will involve “one of the most treasured IPs in the games field” makes me think the project is an Xbox Live version of Magic Online. A second possibility is an Xbox counterpart to the D&D4 online playtable, which would be exciting but likely not anywhere near as profitable. Anyway these are just my wild-ass guesses.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Audio Report - Serving up hate with gravy
Turkey day and the resulting family obligations pushed this Audio Report episode back a bit, so we’re happy to get this one out there. We got some serious hate on for WotC’s Dungeon Survival Guide and the overall flawed 4th Edition preview marketing approach thus far. Miniatures throwing gang signs, Scandanavian LARPs, and Keira Knightley all may or may not be significant to the rest of the episode, but we certainly pimp the 2007 OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide. Have a listen, and tell us what you think.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Audio Report - Uneasy about the approach
Marketing - or to be more specific, the D&D 4e marketing approach thus far - is one of many things we dive into this episode. The death of Dreamblade, unlife of Zombie Fluxx, and everlasting love of ThunderRoad make appearances this show, as well. Plus, in his OgreCave Audio Report debut, Lee Valentine of Veritas Games Company joins in to throw some elbows with the rest of us.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Audio Report: Xcrawl Fiction Contest is go
We chat with Brendan LaSalle of Pandahead Productions, creators of XCrawl, about the new fiction contest they’ve put on with publisher Goodman Games. Yes, there are prizes, and yes, one of the judges tells you exactly how to curry favor. (It should not surprise you that the judge in question is me.) Also, Allan really likes Halo 3, Steve likes Halo ActionClix (though not nearly to the same degree), and a whole lot of other stuff too. The full version of our talk with Brendan is up on our Interviews page as a separate download. Enjoy, and please to share with us your thoughts.
Friday, October 5, 2007
James Wallis getting ARGy with Perplex City creator
Now and again, and it seems like lately it’s a little more often, I stumble across some neat little bit of info, and it may have been known to others already or by some much more obvious means, but it still makes me go “holy crap” and get all bouncy with anticipation of what could result. Take yesterday: I was reading James Wallis’ blog (Mr. Wallis, former Hogshead guy and doughty game designer, will not be unfamiliar to longtime Cave readers), specifically a post about a neat thing I’d seen a few days prior but hadn’t gotten off my ass to post for some reason, and… hey. Wait a minute. “My colleague, Adrian Hon”??? At a firm called Six to Start, that comes right out with “we make alternate reality games”? Well, damn if that’s not a glimmer of hope for a genre I was starting to lose faith in. Very interesting news for Wallis’ career as well.
So I’m all into that, but I shouldn’t keep burying the equally-interesting news that Hon and Wallis are trumpeting to begin with: Let’s Change The Game, a design contest to create a fundraising ARG for Cancer Research UK. Stories are the best motivating force on the planet as far as I’m concerned, and they seem particularly potent when juiced up with the particular energy of alternate-reality gaming - this is a smart and heartening project.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Audio Report - Coming down after con season
We still have a bit of the shakes from all the convention news of the past month or so, so we let it all out in the latest OgreCave Audio Report episode. From how Gen Con developments reflected on our 2007 Ogre’s Choice Awards to the Penny Arcade Expo, and from Rackham’s recent issues to troubled local conventions, we manage to have a theme and be all over the map. Jump into the story already in progress, or check into previous episodes - it’s all good.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Want a peek of the Gleemax online board gaming? Maybe you’ve already had it
So here was my little mystery story tonight: go by Cheapass’ news page, be surprised to find a press release from GameTable Online. In the press release, find this: “Instead of subscribers in thousands, we have yet to break the 200 subscriber mark.” Oh, wait, that’s pretty interesting but not what I’m talking about. Here it is: “The great news is that a recent sale of the license to use our game platform, now called Metagame™, and contract game work have provided us with the resources to […]” Well, wait a minute; this release was posted in June, and who might have been shopping for a board game engine around then? Ohhhh. A trip to the Metagame website confirms it: the same engine that powers GTO will be powering the online board games on Gleemax. So if you’d like a preview, I guess subscribe to GTO.
But man… 200 subscribers? It makes a kind of terrible sense, given how many of those crappy free play-by-web games are out there that people put incredible amounts of work into for no compensation at all - not even players. GTO’s offering is pretty far from terrible; it’s well-executed, attractive and solid. And I happen to know how bloody much work it takes to code that. Hell, making the crappy kind is more work than I want to do. And it still only gets you 200 subscribers. I guess enough people are willing to make this kind of thing for free that the value just gets driven down. Well, okay, and the case for subscribing to a mildly random selection of board games is quite different from, say, the case for D&D Insider’s playtable (which will run on a completely different engine, just to be clear). But it doesn’t bode well, although the analogy is still not perfect, for the financial success of efforts like WotC’s upcoming Uncivilized, or that one game I was going to start a company and do someday, or of, um, the Gleemax online board games. *sigh* Glad I could cheer us all up!
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