Comments on: The Sunday Papers

By: Graham Goring

Graham Goring — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:19:13 +0000

Pff! CircleMUDs ftw!

By: Muzman

Muzman — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:41:18 +0000

Kieron Gillen says:
They don’t necessarily want their brand connected with gaming.
(i.e. Gamers are geeks)

I guess we don’t expect much besides ads for guitars and amps in Guitar magazine (although bourbon now and again..).
Games might be mainstream-ish but talk about games isn’t. Plus the occasional controversy flare-up and it’s a fringe niche clique on the margins. Must be kinda frustrating.

By: marilena

marilena — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:24:38 +0000

Some of them are good and the article is good just for bringing them up. There’s never enough praise for Another World’s setting, for instance (even though the game was a bastard hard trial and error thing).

Still, part of it is pretty weak, unexpected from a guy who I normally find very interesting.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:45:46 +0000

I dunno, most of his examples are pretty good. But then I adore Alpha Centauri, so I’d be prepared to let it slide if the rest of the games were just Star Wars licenses.

By: marilena

marilena — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:21:57 +0000

How do you edit? I meant Rise of Legends :P.

By: marilena

marilena — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:21:29 +0000

A bit disappointed by Tom Chick. His examples aren’t great at all. I knew he’s a slave to Empire of Legends and Bioshock, so I’d let these slide (just like will *almost* let slide that he used a Fallout 3 screenshot for Fallout), but then he goes as low as TRON 2.0. I liked the game, actually, but it wasn’t exactly a bastion of originality, was it?

Some games that I think he missed:

- Beneath a Steel Sky (emulating the style of a certain period in SF, yeah, but doing it brilliantly and vividly and with its own story and setting)

- I Have No Mouth and I must Scream (brilliant idea for a game, imo, and brilliant story, penned by Harlan Ellison, rather badly implemented, though)

- Beyond Good and Evil

There are probably more, those were off the top of my head.

One thing I will say in his defense is that Bioshock is most definitely science fiction. Not great, science fiction, but that;s another, interminable discussion that I was probably better off not getting into.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:09:10 +0000

Muzman: From what I’m told over the years, they’ve no interest in advertising on game sites. It’s not as simple as demographics. They don’t necessarily want their brand connected with gaming.

(i.e. Gamers are geeks)

By: Muzman

Muzman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:58:29 +0000

Re: That Bramwell piece. Why do games sites etc rely so heavily on games advertising?
Getting the cash from elsewhere doesn’t really avoid the problems he’s talking about, but it would at least reduce the conflict of interest.
Off the top of my head, I guess then they’d have to do more demographic analysis in order to sell themselves to different advertisers, which would be annoying and probably expensive. Still, it seems like keeping arms length from the industry’s money would be helpful. Or not?

By: Aftershock

Aftershock — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:08:03 +0000

Failure is not inevitable!
You must keep trying hard!

By: Heliocentric

Heliocentric — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:05:54 +0000

Game tap just announced that as of the 22nd they drop all free game content of any value.

Just uninstalled it.

By: Xercies

Xercies — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:54:10 +0000

I also felt the sci-fi piece missed The Longest Journey, though the two world thing could be considered comeing from another science fiction story. Though they did have their own twist to get around that fact.

By: Homunculus

Homunculus — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:10:39 +0000

2009, year of the voxel renaissance. RPS, leading the voxel charge.