Here’s a few articles that I’ve been reading over the past few weeks that I highly recommend for any of you in the field of thinking about games or even just those with an interest in games.
- An excellent post by Yehuda on his blog entitled “Games are Not Supposed to be Fun“. It’s a very well-put exploration of games as a medium instead of a genre (fun games being a genre), like many have argued that comics are the medium and superheroes just happened to be the best-selling genre within it. It also ties into a very controversial post I made months ago about Games as Art, where in the comments we touched on the subject of fun.
- Roger Ebert was at it again when he defended his stance that video games are in no way art, and making the implicit point that nothing interactive can be art. Well, an editor at Newsweek struck back on these criticisms and makes some excellent points, if perhaps sinking to Mr. Ebert’s level a few too many times.
- Zero Radius Games is a studio working on designing their own boardgames, but includes some notable game designers from video games (first sent to my attention because of the involvement of a Fallout designer.) – [Thanks to Briosa for sending this one our way. ~ Bartoneus]
- Master Mines came to my attention because of the involvement of my friend Mike Sugarbaker, who is one of the staff over at Ogrecave. It’s a groupblog of individual indie rpg designers who talk about the process, seek advice, and post updates on how their games are doing. (And apparently, most of them have podcasts.) The “new style” indie RPGs are definitely something I want to get into soon- but I find it hard to convince my existing groups to try them, and don’t have the spark yet to work on my own.
- Finally, saying that Raph Koster has insightful ideas about the gaming industry is like saying that water is wet. But his presentation “The Age of the Dinosaurs!” is awesome, and even though it’s focused on the industry as a whole, there’s a lot in there that suggests that games should strive to be way more simpler and elegant than they are currently if the gaming industry is to survive.
That all is what I’ve been mulling over lately. Hope you find something interesting!
I’d be more than willing to try these “new style” indie rpgs you speak of, even if I am ignorant of what they actually are and how they differ from “old style” rpgs.
That is, if I wasn’t up here in the Great White North defending myself from ninja polar bears, bug hunts, and the like.
That might be a column for another day, but I’ll see if I can dig up some links that explain. For some example new style games, “Dogs in the Vineyard”, “Mountain Witch”, and “Primetime Adventures” are some that I like.