Last week I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Jeff Shaara, author of several excellent Civil War (and other) novels. My interest in the American Civil War thus stirred up, I resolved to do something to capitalize on said interest. I’m not really into the Civil War re-enactment thing, and the movie Gettysburg, [...]
Things were looking grim for my undead warlock in World of Warcraft. I was out of spell components and thus could not summon the familiar upon whom I depended for protection. I was far, far away from the nearest friendly Horde outpost, and had inadvertently stumbled upon an enemy Alliance encampment. In the course of [...]
This is a very well-done, and quite amusing, video about the FPS experience. It may require a bit of Counter-Strike knowledge to make complete sense, but a lot of the gags–laggy internet connections, pathfinding annoyances–will make sense to anybody who’s ever ventured online with an FPS. (Hat tip to The M-Pire Strikes Back.)
There are games that seem impossible to beat, and games that really are impossible to beat. That’s the story with the recent Bubble Bobble Revolution, which includes a game-halting bug. Apparently the big boss battle in Level 30 isn’t much of a battle at all because the boss never appears, meaning that the game just [...]
Although it’s updated somewhat sporadically, Scott Miller’s Game Matters is one of the more thought-provoking game blogs out there. While catching up on my reading there, I came across an interesting post suggesting that World of Warcraft‘s extreme popularity is due at least in part to the fact that almost alone among massively-multiplayer games, it [...]
Admit it–my Warcraft character has a cooler hat than you: Took me quite a while to find that thing, but I think you’ll all agree it was worth the effort.
Earlier this month, voice-actor Tony Jay passed away from cancer. Chances are you’ve heard his voice in a video game at some point in the last decade; his IMDB page lists out the various projects to which he lent his very memorable voice. I first read about Jay after playing Planescape: Torment (which boasted an [...]
I experienced my first guild breakup last week. I logged into World of Warcraft after having been offline for several days, and what I found was quite a surprise: guild membership had been slashed by half; guild chatter was abuzz with stories of backstabbings, betrayals, and emotional outbursts; and there was talk of new “splinter [...]
A friend informs me (ha!) that the long-awaited version 7 of the Inform game-writing language has been released, and that it’s quite a big deal for the interactive fiction community. I’ve only glanced at it so far, but I’m inclined to agree: it seems to represent a complete overhaul of the text-adventure-writing process. The most [...]
A new post over at the Empires of Steel developer’s diary offers some interesting thoughts about incorporating religion into strategy games.
