Game talk

Dani Bunten named to AIAS Hall of Fame – News at GameSpot

To this day, M.U.L.E. is my favorite game ever. I have a major soft spot for Seven Cities of Gold as well. I have both of them running in emulation on my phone, actually. I made the head of programming for the Sci-Fi Channel light up with glee when I showed him that.

I never got to meet Dani, alas. The first GDC event I went to was the one she had to cancel because she was ill. She passed away just a few months later.

I’ve lost count of how many times I have pitched “M.U.L.E. Online.” A lot.

Heather Chaplin, co-author of the excellent Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, has an article up on the New York Times website examining how Slamdance actually went, in the wake of the SCMRPG! controversy. A few samples:

Read More “NYT on the Slamdance aftermath”

Viva Pinata

As my stalkers know, my Xbox Live profile has come to be dominated by pinatas — not because I am obsessively playing Viva Pinata myself, but because my kids have been. Endlessly. Perpetually. Mind-numbingly.

(Let me take this moment to apologize to Matt Mihaly for the death of the critter he sent us. We locked it in a box because it was testy and kept attacking other pinatas. And apparently it starved to death in there.)

The interesting thing about Viva Pinata to me is that it isn’t what you think it is. It looks like yet another take on the whole pet thing — virtual critters, only this time you have a garden to keep them in. But it’s nothing nearly so innocuous. No, you see, Viva Pinata is actually a game about animal husbandry in the “raise ’em and kill ’em for food” sense, and all of the cute little hats you can buy for them and amusing nicknames you can give them are just ways to tug at your heartstrings in the moment before you casually put them to death.

Read More “Pondering Pinatas”

The rumor has been going around, but now Slashdot seems to have official confirmation.

All this will do, of course, is push more to independent resellers.

I don’t really have time to comment on these much, except to point them out:

• Critical Hits asks, What Is A Good game Anyway?, referencing my game grammar material.
• Yehuda asserts that Wiinning as a Goal is Incompatible with Art; and I disagree, but the reasons why are long and complicated.