Interactive fiction - that is: games that use pure text for input and output - seems not to be the topic of a snazzy movie.
But against all odds, GET LAMP, a documentary film on the very subject looks to be very interesting indeed. Jason Scott, the director, has previously put together a well-received documentary film on the bulletin board systems communities.
The recently released trailer for GET LAMP is not exactly action-packed, but a neat dissection of the first ever internet community I actually participated, back in the early nineties, when USENET was king of the hill.
Matt Barton started his history of computer roleplaying games in GameSetWatch, bartered it to Gamasutra to expand the readership, and has now expanded the subject into a 450 page book.
Dungeons & Desktops just went on top of my Amazon stack, and based on what I’ve seen on the web, will be good reading.
The two first XBLA takes on board games (Catan and Carcassonne) have been pleasant indeed, and there’s no reason to doubt this wouldn’t succeed as well. After all, there’s already a successful digital adaptation of the game, created and hosted by the company behind the boardgame.
The fourth season of Lost kicked off on finnish television last week.
And continues directly where the third season ended, with a rift-inducing arrival of “rescuers” and flashforwards. The identity of the former is very much under wraps, but seems not to be of good news to all inhabitants. As to the second point, the main storyline still seems to occur on the island, I’m using that as the zero-point in the timeline.
For new arrivals on the scene, the production company has put together a nicely compressed view on the first three seasons. Its duration, at a mere 8:15, should not deter any viewers.
Via Domus, the Lost video game is out in Finland also (seemed to enjoy a rather delayed release), but following mainly lukewarm reviews I’m in no hurry to pick this up. With the sizable backlog that doesn’t diminish by itself, this wouldn’t get much playtime right now.
I’ve been playing a couple of games of Scrabulous on facebook lately.
The legally quite contested take on the classic Scrabble word game works well, and is recommended to all fans of the game. This version of the game is optimized for sneak peeks during the working day, since the interaction between players is minimal and there’s absolutely no need for simultaneous activity (there is a token messaging mechanism for gloating).
The game works as expected, and keeps statistics across the tens of million games played. Sadly, the statistics on used words is not available, since easy browsability would lead to rampant cheating. That is, if looking for words outside the game IS indeed considered to be cheating.
Dictionaries are available in three languages, and I seriously think whoever’s been using words like “SINGHIOZZEREBBE” (worth 2000+ points alone) to outscore his opponents has probably has probably been shooting for this word since the very beginning of the game - the fact that the same guy has used the word in multiple games is even scarier. My top word’s been worth 36 points thus far, “JETS” hit both a triple-square and used the “s” to complete another word - hence the unexpectedly high take.
Kevin Kelly argues that a thousand fans are enough to support an artist. Where the definition of a fan more or less is determined by his willingness to spend one day’s wages annually on something the artist supplies.
If that’s the criteria, then there aren’t many causes I can consider myself a fan - after all most bands produce a single album per a couple of years, and tour Finland even less often. And unless there’s a considerable backlog to pick up of an author, single books don’t break the limit either. Games might come close, but they’re hardly the products of an individual artist these days, rather a sizable production company.
Nine Inch Nails, whose new album Ghosts I-IV was released on tuesday in multiple formats broke all the expectations with the most expensive variant - the 300$ alternative was sold out in a day.
Missed the tournament last year (though being half the world away is an acceptable excuse), had great fun back in 2006, even if the results were not exactly top-shelf.
The attached image is of Pat Lawlor’s Safecracker, the curiously short-cabineted boardgame/pinball combination that has evolved into one of my favorites lately.
If the prospect of a postmodern webgame that concentrates on the wrong side of the internet culture appeals to you at all, ForumWarz is heavily recommended.
ForumWarz is a beautifully realized implementation that emulates the whole internet in a single browser window - be it forums, instant messaging, misanthropic people, suspicious webstores or spam, it’s all here. And as a game it’s a great parody
Me, I’m a third level troll, on track to pwn as many forums as possible with tools such as spoiler generation and gratuitous ASCII art.
EDIT (16.3.2008): Andy Baio < href="http://www.waxy.org/archive/2008/02/25/forumwar.shtml">interviews the authors. It’s not your average interview:
We used to drink beer and go out for dinner at every meeting, but after a couple of months that got expensive and unproductive.
Spent saturday evening enjoying some quality electronic entertainment in good company.
Amongst the pinball machines there was one change, Getaway had been replaced with World Cup Soccer, celebrating the 1994 cup played in the states. The game was very pleasant, spent perhaps 80% of the pinball time on it, and liked the flow of the board a lot. It took a while to get used to the field, and by then I had miraculously lost the ability to hit the television shot - which meant that high scores were not easy to grab. Ended up with a 748M high, inadequate for a replay.
Twilight Zone was its old tough self, even with the ballsaver enabled it’s a cruel game to play. No heroics on the board, apart from the game where the power was defeated thrice - like with World Cup had trouble with some of the shots and didn’t play many games.
Broke into the vault in Safecracker once, but failed to get a decent score on both the assault and regular modes.
The big new addition videogames-wise was Donkey Konga. Three drumkits on a table put up quite a cacophony, and neatly drowned the music. This is one of those rare games where watching the players is almost as fun as actually playing the game. All video clips of the hours spent on this have been incinerated to protect the innocent.
Had my first exposure to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and found it a very pleasant FPS to play. Only hacked through a couple of 4-way deathmatches, but that was enough to convince me that this game so needs buying. Once the current backlog subsides a little.
NHL08 and Virtua Tennis 3 proved that I still can’t play either. The games this time did resemble the actual sport more than on previous occasions, so at least some of the participants have been learning. Was almost held scoreless in four Pro Evolution Soccer games, but snagged an ugly goal off a corner in the last game. As with the previous duo, our football games are definitely improving with time.
Games Workshop did not waste too much time licensing out their non-book, non-miniature portfolio that they abandoned late last month.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t Green Ronin who licensed the games (here’s Chris Pramas’ thoughts), but a new arrival on the Warhammer scene, Fantasy Flight Games. Their press release, while very much on the positive side, does not state anything concrete about how the publication schedule will carry over, but it would’ve been unfair to expect that so early.
I’ve been a happy FFG customer in the past (and will be, for any future Arkham Horror bits at least), so I’m not too concerned over the identity of the new marshall witchhunter in town.
I missed the release of the Zork Trilogy in a single package back in the late eighties. The games have been in the collection for ages, but only as single entries.
The main attraction of the collection is an actual zorkmid coin minted for this release and this release alone. The presence of the coin is the reason why complete in box instances of this product pull in hefty bids on eBay.
The trilogy is obviously sold out long ago, and the coins thus limited in number.
Sadly the effort to reproduce the coins in mass quantities ground to a halt earlier. Though the idea of interest in geocoins having lowered the barrier of entry seems interesting.
Finished Valve Software’s Portal earlier this week, and was impressed by the little game. Very impressed.
Initially the first-person puzzle game seems like the weakest link in the cornucopia that is the Orange Box, but towards the last few rooms this was the game that kept me going until the way too wee hours of the morning. The mother game of the collection, Half-Life 2, never had such an advanced hold.
The basics of the game are more or less easily explained, but not easily understood. After all, a game that plays fast and loose with concepts such as teleportation and gravity takes a few moments to swallow. The main story takes less than ten hours to play through, but after that the game moves into challenge mode, and significantly alters the parameters of the missions.
And the sudden appearance of Mike Patton towards the very end was very much appreciated as well. As is the song “Still Alive” with which the game ends, it is easily found in Youtube for those lacking faith in their puzzlesolving skills.
Heavily recommended, available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
And Valve certainly is not about to kill the golden goose, quite the opposite, they are looking into serious expansions and not merely new levels. Which is good, but it also means that the developer is going to take the same “no scheduled release date” policy as with the rest of their products. So, it’ll be a while or seven before the game actually materializes (possibly with the forthcoming Episode 3 of Half-Life 2, possibly not).
Just when the Black Library had announced that the first printing of the Dark Heresy game had been sold out in a day, follows the announcement that the entire role-playing game line of the company is effectively terminated.
No proper explanation is given, just a vague statement to the effect that the company will focus its resources on fiction and fiction alone. But a good assumption is that the financial distress of the parent company is the root cause.
As expected the relevant fora - both in-house and independent are bursting with perplexed and pissed off gamers, a good fraction of whom suffered under the definitive period of non-support for the preceding fantasy game for two decades.
But after the significant commercial success of both games, I would be very surprised if they wouldn’t already have suitors lining up at the door eager to pick up the licenses. My bet is on Green Ronin, who actually wrote the games - Black Industries acted merely as publishers.
Interactive fiction - that is: games that use pure text for input and output - seems not to be the topic of a snazzy movie. 
The fourth season of 
I’ve been playing a couple of games of 
The games will be held in late may, 23-24.5. to be exact, in a location to be disclosed later. 
If the prospect of a postmodern webgame that concentrates on the wrong side of the internet culture appeals to you at all, 
