Roderick

Taken from A Story Concerning Originality: There may be an interesting rant on Captain August for all the artists here, and everyone in general who has an interest in cute little theses. It's about originality, and it deals with the supposed copying of work in general and my drawing inspiration from Invader Zim for the comic in particular. Tell me what you think.

On second thought; my schedule is filled with probing Morrowind's every minute intricacy which should take me far into 2006, before I'll be able to even look at any other game again.

I don't really have a holiday budget, I just buy games when I feel like it. I'm interested in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Paper Mario 2, Alien Hominid, Psychonauts, Resident Evil 4. And probably more. The thing is, it may very well be I won't buy ANY of the games when they're out. Because I don't have the funds. And wait for budget versions of them. And secretly hope they'll all fail so their prices will drop shortly.

Get him to sponsor a print version of Idle Thumbs, and it'll rock his world.

He is. He really is.

You had me fooled as well.

Thou art, in the words of Jake, onsanie.

I haven't yet. The Hitman franchise has held my interest in all its incarnations. But I haven't come round it. Would it refocus my thoughts about savegames in a way that no other game could do? Or are you just proposing a good game to us because you want us to have quality gaming experiences because you care about us?

It's been steadily gaining ground in the Netherlands for the past three years or so. I'd say it'll take another five years before it really gets incorporated into the public mind. I doubt if we'll ever see big entertaining parties in the cities though where everybody's dressed up. That'd be nice.

I completely disagree with that. I think it's the duty of any gamedesigner to carefully construct every tiny aspect of his game. To neglect something of such impact as savegames would be to create a hole in your design. It's both sloppy and bad designing ethic to simply say: let the gamer think of how he's gonna play my game* *this has nothing to do with offering the player freedom of course, as portrayed for instance in Morrowind. Freedom comes from offering the player ingame choices on a multitude of levels, saving is not one of those levels. However, saving can of course impair or augment the freedom of a game in the way you play it, but that is all the more reason for the designer to think extra carefully about where he wants to go with it.

I think I agree on this one. I barely register quicksaving, how would that affect the immersion more than say, scratching your nose during play? But I'm not at all opposed to games with a save-strategy, because then it becomes an ingame playmechanic. The thing is, if not well exectued, both can blow up in your face. So hell yeah, it's for a part the responsibility of the designers. How could it not be? They're the ones that are making the game. They obviously cannot decide how we choose to use their game, but we gamers don't carry around a 900 page designdocument, they do. What they put in their games affects us, not the other way around* *Note that this is not an excuse for total apathy towards shaping your own gaming experience

Well that's really the cool thing about it: Romero never explains just what is happening. I don't want to know if it's a virus or a curse or if it came from a monkey or was bioengineered... who cares? The less you know, the more timeless it gets. Anyway, I'm also oldfashioned when it comes to zombies. They must die first. If it's a virus that kills them and returns them, fine. But none of that rabies thing.

In all honesty, I'm looking forward to seeing how Tasty Bacon shapes up.

You got me

The annual Christmas rush is pissing off the designers as well (Hell, I wouldn't want my game to be snowed in either!). But seen the long development cycles, I'd say it'll take another three years or so before this abberation will start to get addressed. It won't ever really go, because in the fast-buck-minds of the publisher it's still a fact that statistically, more games are sold in the Good Season. Even though they don't seem to get that that doesn't necessarily equal 'good sales', if there are about a thousand other titles coming out then

I just finished reading the first in a line of graphic novels by something-something Kirkman (creator of the infamous Battle Pope) called "The Walking Dead". It's a zombieromp in the best traditions of Dawn of the Dead: not just feisty bloody fun, but also satirical and reflecting on the way we live. It seems to roll up everything from every zombiefilm and use it. Full of things that'll remind you of this or that movie, but it still manages to have its own (small) identity. Oh yeah, my point being: in this particular zombietale, zombies identify each other by their smell. Not warm human flesh. The protagonists rub themselves in with dead zombieblood to safely traverse into the infested dead cities. Yeah it was a pretty nice thing to read

,,A vote for Kerry is a vote to die in your own bed at the hands of Dick Cheney."' XD

The end is NIGH!

It is, by the way, indeed amusing that my little rant should fall alongside the article about quicksaves. Different sides of the medal, don't you agree? A quicksave would have prevented this. It's amusing also because in the article it's stated amongst others that quicksaving spoils a gameplay because you're constantly reminded of the saving. But in these cases, it's the absence of savepoints that spoils the gameplay and makes your mind wonder constantly to the fact where the savepoint is; making you see the experience even more strongly in terms of mechanics, instead of as a game. Also, I read some Grumpy Gamer back catalog yesterday night, and one of the articles ("Why Adventuregames Suck") posed the theory that savegames are bad in general. That it detracts from any experience whatsoever, making for a bad game. Ron Gilbert then presented the challenge to create a game that doesn't need savepoints (only if you want to quit playing to save progress), but is still interesting and challenging. Really, it will take some time before there's a solution that makes everyone happy, if that'll come at all. But neither of the extremes is going to work out in 99% of the cases. Until then, we'll just have to comfort ourselves with what we have.

You can expect a whole lot more intricately designed mono- and dialogues in the future, good sir

Bill Murray starred as the lovable innocent hero Bob in "What About Bob".

Quickly, close this thread before Divine comes and pays us a visit!

It was only a moment of weakness, I'm sure. He'll soon see that golden calf for what it is.

I am so gonna leave this place and emigrate to Tasty Bacon. Just like the indexpage has indoctrinated me into doing. (unfortunately the site won't open)

Which is stupid because gothic has nothing to do with being evil. They just pretend to be