Back when I was in high school, I first played Sim City 2000 on our family’s first real computer.  It was a revelation in gaming that quickly became an obsession.  To date, it is still one of my most-played games.  Since then, I have generally followed the series, and spent quite a lot of time […]

Just a quick note that due to a significant influx in the number of spam posts, I have added a captcha to the comments section.  I’ve set it up so that it should generally be readable without too much effort – if you have issues with one of the captcha images, just hit the refresh […]

Some things which I am finding interesting in the world of gaming, as of now: -I came across the game Nitronic Rush recently (http://nitronic-rush.com/).  It’s a racing game with a very nice aesthetic and I hope to try it out tonight.  Also, it’s totally free, so why not download it?  Also free?  It’s entire 23-track […]

Yup, it’s another RPS link, this time about a studio head reiterating that DRM doesn’t really accomplish much.  However, the comments thread sums it up even better, mentioning how it comes down to a simple principle: in an industry with almost entirely up-front costs and little to no manufacturing or distribution costs, the only thing […]

Admittedly, despite my grousing about Steam and its somewhat-dodgy update process, it still remains one of the best, and certainly most prolific, game download store available.  However, it’s important to note that, while Steam itself provides a certain level of DRM, many games sold through it contain their own, third-party DRM, some of which can […]

While On the Media normally covers issues in journalism, they released an interesting show this week covering a number of topics in gaming: The Influence of Gaming (listen to show via streaming) (download podcast) While the whole episode was interesting, I was especially fascinated by the excepts from a TED talk given by game designed […]

In a previous article, I mentioned Minecraft, a retro-styled independent sandbox game which is quickly becoming a bit of an internet sensation.  I recently started playing it, and I’ve been writing an account of my experience starting out in the game.  The following chronicles the first four days (and nights) of game time, and my […]

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/04/22/thoughts-on-difficulty-settings/ Some fairly interesting commentary on variability in video game difficulty settings.  I would agree that Half-Life did have some strangeness to its level of difficulty (as I recall, I finally found the balance that I liked by using console codes to specify the exact percentages of damage that my weapons and enemy weapons would […]

The Difficulty of Difficulty It’s a very good article, which outlines many of the different types of frustrating difficulty that people encounter in games, and it makes a good point about the difficulty of a game needing to feel fair to the player.  I would add to that the notion that the difficulty should feel […]

The most compelling case should be for game-ness An excellent article, especially in the last two paragraphs.  Overall, I think I agree with most of the points in the article, especially the notion that games should be considered an experience in their own right, rather than having to specifically measure up to already-established art forms.  […]