Monday, 8th July, 2013

Can crowd-funding help bring back the glory days of computer gaming?
Over the past two years or so, there has been a plethora of successful Kickstarter crowd-funded projects by high profile developers from the days of yore (in my case, 'yore' would be referring to the 80's and 90's). In no particular order, we have:

• Tex Murphy - Project Fedora by Chris Jones and Aaron Conners (May - Jun 2012, $598,104 pledged of $450,000 goal)
• Jane Jensen's Moebius and Pinkerton Road Studio (Apr - May 2012, $435,316 pledged of $300,000 goal)
• Wasteland 2 by inXile Entertainment (Mar - Apr 2012, $2,933,252 pledged of $900,000 goal )
• Double Fine Adventure by Double Fine and 2 Player Productions (Feb - Mar 2012, $3,336,371 pledged of $400,000 goal)
• Project Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Sep - Oct 2012, $3,986,929 pledged of $1,100,000 goal)
• Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey by Red Thread Games (Feb - Mar 2013, $1,538,425 pledged of $850,000 goal)
• Torment: Tides of Numenera by inXile Entertainment (Mar - Apr 2013, $4,188,927 pledged of $900,000 goal)

I suppose it is a sad commentary on the state of today's video game industry that developers who were once responsible for making some of the best games to ever grace our screens can't even get a look-in from modern publishers. But the current situation can for the most part be explained by the entertainment industry's obsession with the global teen demographic, and by the perceived necessity that each new production be 'blockbustier' than anything that has come before it. This phenomenon is well documented by my erstwhile colleague Gordon here: In the Shadow of the Monster: Adventure Games and Market Forces, and that's not what I'm intending to write about today.

Instead, what I'd like to do is kick off a series of articles following the development of the games listed above. The people behind these forthcoming games: Brian Fargo, Jane Jensen, Chris Avellone, Ragnar Tørnquist, Chris Jones and Aaron Conners, Tim Schafer, et. al., be they developers or producers, are among the most famous people in all of computer gaming history (well, they are if you're into adventure and role-playing games like I am. And you are too, or else you wouldn't still be reading this article). It beggars belief that they would have trouble getting publishers on board, but there you go. I guess we just have to accept the fact that we're a niche market, where selling millions of copies of a game isn't going to happen any longer (Bethesda and Bioware being exceptions to the rule). But as long as the devlopers can enjoy what they're doing, make a decent living out of it, and produce memorable games as a result, then that's all that matters.

It's very early days yet in the era of the crowd-funding model. It will be interesting times ahead seeing how things pan out. Speaking of which... at the time of writing I've just learned that Tim Schafer's Double Fine Adventure project may already be in trouble before it has barely gotten off the ground. Even though $400,000 in funding was originally sought, and the campaign exceeded this figure by almost $3M, Tim is now saying that this may not be a sufficient level of funding to develop the game he had originally envisioned. So I'm going to wait till the dust settles a bit before I bother to write this one up. Maybe it will be a post mortem, though hopefully not.

As far as I'm aware, none of these titles are due for release any time real soon. So we'll start with the first one on the list, Tex Murphy - Project Fedora, once I've had a few days to research it. Each of these articles will consist of three main sections: The Pitch, The Development, and The Reception (once the game has been released). Interesting times ahead, indeed. I'm really looking forward to playing all of these titles.

Monday, 6th May, 2013

Slow week
But another difficult killer sudoku bites the dust: Killer Sodoku Online Weekly No. 381 - Mind Bending

Friday, 22nd March, 2013

Diablo II review up
Well produced games have this innate abilty to draw you in and keep you playing for much longer than you really should... at my age, anyway. All of a sudden it's 2AM, and: "Sorry honey, I can't come to bed just yet. EVIL HAS SURVIVED!"

Enough already. We bring you the long over-due metzomagic.com review of Diablo II.

Sunday, 10th March, 2013

A different kind of puzzling altogether
For the past 5 years or so, my Sunday Morning Solace has been the solving of 'killer sudoku' puzzles. Believe me, once you get a taste of these, the classical ones look sorta 'meh' in comparison. If you absolutely don't know what I'm talking about, have a gander here:

Killer Sodoku Online Weekly No. 371 - Mind Bending

If, on the other hand, you do know what I'm talking about, then you're already hooked :-) Seth, who is as far as I know still the puzzle designer there, helped me out with a Hard puzzle when I was just beginning to come to grips with them. He told me that the tougher ones couldn't be solved without pen and paper. Man, was he ever right.

Wednesday, 6th March, 2013

Interview with Dag Scheve, co-writer of the upcoming Dreamfall Chapters
Funny that in all my years as a games journalist, from my adventure and RPG section co-editing years at the venerable Games Domain Review, and all through my time helping out Rosemary and Gordon at Quandary, I never managed to personally conduct an interview of someone in the games industry. Well, all that changes today:

Dreamfall Chapters - Interview with Dag Scheve of Red Thread Games

Sunday, 27th January, 2013

I can't believe this
Somehow, I find myself playing through Diablo II again. The game was released in 2000, and I first played it in 2006 or so. I was going through top 100 lists from IGN, PC Gamer, et. al. trying to decide what to play next from my burgeoning backlog when I noticed that Diablo II featured very high on all the lists, so I dragged it off the shelf and loaded it up. Tip: you need to patch it to the latest version, 1.13, in order to get it to work in XP. And then, 20 levels later...

Ankur the Necromancer surveying the spoils of his latest conquest

My favourite character type is Necromancer, where my minions get to do all the hard work and dying, leaving me free to pick through the treasure even in the midst of battle. I'd always had trouble getting past the poison spewing boss Andariel in previous forays through Diablo II, but this time I made sure I had a Blood Golem and 3 Skeleton Magi in tow and got her on the first try. Might do a review when I finish this time. We'll see.

Wednesday, 2nd January, 2013

The Secret of Monkey Island Walkthrough
I never got around to playing this now 22-year old adventure game before, because I thought it would be too primitive. Turns out I was wrong. It's every bit as good as its sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge. And, since it was re-released a few years ago by LucasArts as a talkie with updated graphics for the PC, iPhone, iPad, and XBOX 360, I figured it was finally worth playing it and writing a walkthrough for a new audience. So, here it is.