I took a bike ride this weekend. It had stormed the previous night, and one section of the bike path was covered in mud at least an inch high. When I saw it, I briefly panicked; I’m not very skilled as a rider, and I wasn’t sure if I should push through the thick muddy path, which might lead to a sliding bike and getting very muddy as I fell into the brown muck, or if I should get off my bike and walk it through(riding on the nearby grass was not an option, as it was probably worse than the path). I decided to bike through, and after a few seconds recognized that I had made a poor decision: my tires picked up large globules of mud and embedded them into the treads, my bike began to swerve as it lost traction, and I was getting very muddy. I changed my mind and walked my bike off the path. My shoes nearly came off my feet as I pulled myself over the muddy trail.
Both I and my bike were covered in mud. It was caked all over the bike – in the brakes, the spokes, the chain – it sprayed all about me as I rode on further, staining my jeans and backpack in brown inkblot.
I’ve never been much of an outdoors person, but I found the experience immensely satisfying. Sometimes it’s fun to get dirty: a lesson many kids learn when they’re four, but apparently I forgot. And not only that, but the interaction of my bike in the mud and water, the way it caked onto the frame, the spray of it as the moving parts of my bike repeatedly careened against the buildup, it all made me think of how far games still have to go in terms of simulating something that even faintly approximates the complex interactions of physical objects in the real world.
This was an exciting revelation. The truth is that games don’t model things all that realistically right now, especially when it comes to physical bodies of different composition meeting up in space. Think about it: there’s no processor or supercomputer on Earth that could reliably model the elaborate back and forth of interactions that occurred on my bike ride. But these kinds of things will be modeled, maybe not now, maybe not in the next ten years, but it will happen. That’s exciting, especially because of what it means for gaming.
Perfect facsimiles of the real world aren’t necessary to have fun or to make a good game – it’s been proven over and over that complexity does not necessarily equate to better games. But what it does do is open up possibilities, much in the way that the steadily growing trend of games based entirely around physics have changed the ways we think of games and gameplay. The future is bright. I’m excited.
May NPD numbers:
Hardware numbers:
- Wii - 675,100 units
- Nintendo DS - 452,600 units
- PlayStation 3 - 208,700 units
- Xbox 360 - 186,600 units
- PSP - 182,300 units
Oh hey, the Wii is still kicking everyone’s ass into outer space. More interesting are the software numbers, where we see that both the 360 and PS3 have only two(!) software titles in the top 20. The Wii has a bunch.
It must feel shitty to be racing to #2. And make no mistake, the Wii is competing in exactly the same market as the PS3 and 360 - and it’s hurting both their hardware and software sales.
I wonder how long it will be until that MS nunchuk comes out?
Stop saying that
Spore has been in development for eons. It hasn’t been. It’s been in development since 2000, yes, but most of that development has consisted of working on the procedural generation and that was done by a very small group of people. Development in earnest probably began sometime around 2004. 4 years is not that long for a AAA game.
I am excited. 1up has a preview of Relic’s Dawn of War 2 up (and supposedly a podcast coming soon with impressions) and I really like the direction they’re going. They’re personalizing the game, adding in RPG elements like consistently identifiable commanders, drops, and persistent squads, all wrapped up in a Mass Effect-esque barrito of main and side quests which can be accessed from the starship your commandos ride around on. It all sounds awesome.
These kinds of additions to the genre are what I’ve been clamoring for. I guess I’m going to be getting a new computer for this. Damnable RTSes.
I just can’t get into card games. As a much younger man, I played Magic: The Gathering until the sun came up, but ever since then, and because of those experiences, collectable card games have always had a certain funk on them that has made me perpetually apprehensive about the card mechanic.
So I’m a bit dismayed that Solium Infernum sounds so fucking awesome. It’s basically a strategy game where you vie for the control of Hell as some kind of infernal prince, using guile or strategy to win the most heinous throne. And it’s multiplayer, and it has play-by-email, which is perfect when you’re like me and you can’t get more than two gamers together to save your life. So that’s all great, right? But there’s this card game mechanic sitting right in the middle of it, and that bugs me. Apparently the cards are less important than they were in Armageddon Empires, which is good but still… collectable card games. Ew.
More Spore.
I can’t wait to slip that hot creature creator into my hard drive.
Unless you’re out of work or a college student, you probably don’t have all the time you want to play games. Lo! I offer succor for your discontent, in the form of videos about games.
The 1up network has a new show called RSVP. It’s modeled off that Dinner for Five program and features Valve’s Erik Wolpaw, the guy who worked on Everyday Shooter, and another guy who heads up the Sony studio Pixeljunk. You know, I’ve never know what RSVP stands for. Apparently it means “”Répondez s’il vous plaît,” a prayer written in the damnable language of the druids. Or French. One of those.
Here is a Street Fighter IV video. If you turn off the sound you might make it all the way through!
And here we have a video from the Spore creature creator, in which the 1up crew makes a Seymour-esque plant monster. In case you haven’t heard, Spore is going to be awesome.
Lastly, we have a Bionic Commando video which makes swinging around the devestated ruins of fictionville look pretty fun.
Thanks to Gamevideos and Gametrailers for the sloppy wet kisses of consumable video content.
OK this is the last post about Penny Arcade for awhile, but
I found this cool podcast where the PA guys play Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition with a DM from Wizards of the Coast, and it’s just too cool and funny not to share.
I said yesterday that I wasn’t sure about the combat - I am now sure. The battles in this game are
very good.
So I downloaded the new Penny Arcade game yesterday, and like many I imagine, I was struck by how good the thing is. It shouldn’t be good! This is where those loud-mouthed big-word-using web-comic-making game critics get their utlimate come-uppence, right? Actually, I like Penny Arcade, so I never wished them any ill will. But it takes a certain confidence to make a game just because you have a successful web-comic about games, or just because you’re rich and popular. Who are they to make a game?
Apparently, they’re good game designers, because so far, it’s damned good.
The game is very writerly; I append that adjective in the kindest manner possible. Besides a bit of initial spoken narrative, there’s a lot of reading to be had here, whether it’s bits of dialogue between characters or descriptions of items in the environment. The game is also presented in the context of a comic strip; movement from one part of a level to the next is done by “changing panels,” at which point the characters are transported to the next panel in a strip, which can therefore change perspectives and locations. It’s a bit difficult to describe and it works very well in practice. The battle system seems cool, but I haven’t put in enough time to make any kind of quality judgement about it.
Like a new book or CD, sometimes you just know when you first press start that a game is going to hook you, that there’s something there that’s enticing and that you have to coax it out. This game is actually making me take a break from GTA IV.