Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Recently, we had the wonderful fortune to post GDC’s magnificent #1ReasonToBe panel in full. It’s a powerfully eye-opening thing – regardless of which “side” of the equality “debate” you fall on – and you should absolutely, definitely give it a watch if you haven’t already. One person, however, was missing from its lineup: industry writing vet Rhianna Pratchett, who – in addition to whipping up words for the likes of Tomb Raider, Overlord, Mirror’s Edge, and heaps more – sorta, you know, created the #1ReasonToBe hashtag in the first place. She wasn’t able to make it out due to scheduling conflicts, but this is why they invented the Internet: so we could do anything from anywhere at any time. Thus, we bring you Pratchett’s #1Reason – not to mention her viewpoints on why equality’s very different from ‘pinking’ games, why the industry’s failing to attract female talent, what controversies surrounding Tomb Raider taught her, and how we can ultimately make games better for everyone.      
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THIS WEEK: Scifi survival sim. Dark Souls but with friendly ghosts. You threw 100 candies on the ground…? (;_;)

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I Get This Call Every Day is a simple Flash game for Windows and OSX about working in a call centre, based on the real-life experiences of David S. Gallant. It achieves absolutely everything it needs to despite being a simple Flash game. I’ll just need your name, address, previous address, social security number and date of birth, and then you can read all about it.
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Wakey-wakey, rise and spend! Jackie is blowing her utility trumpet because she wants the world to know that three old wargames have just had their prices slashed. As conveying detailed sale information with valveless brass instruments is notoriously tricky, it will be left up to Jackie’s assistant Jean (Out of picture. Armed with a Glockenspiel 17.) to explain that the games in question are John Tiller’s Battleground Civil War, Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War and The Great Battles Collector’s Edition. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most fascinating and enduring things about EVE Online is the depth of its economics. The player-driven economy has got a full decade of history behind it, operating on its own strange breed of anarcho-capitalism. In Free Market economics, there is an idea called the ‘invisible hand’. This is the idea that the marketplace ultimately regulates itself, whether it wants to or not. But in EVE’s case, there are two such invisible hands. One guided by the players and the other hand – one which players barely ever notice – guided by CCP’s in-house economist, Dr Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (or Eyjó for short).
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Defiance describes itself as an “online open-world shooter”, but it can’t pull the wool over my eyes – I know it’s really an MMO. Look at it, pretending to be something new and different even while thousands of players sprint around chasing experience points and killing infinite, infinitely respawning monsters. You can’t fool me, Defiance! I defy your description of yourself. I DEFY IT.

Defiance also a tie-in to a new sci-fi serial on the Syphilis channel, but as the trailers suggest it’s a sort of grey pantomime I currently have no intention of watching it. Perhaps an hour* with the game, which as far as I can ascertain is designed to be standalone as well as tie-in, would change my mind?
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On some levels, so much effort must have gone into Mars: War Logs. Not into the name, clearly – that’s an act of self-sabotage that can only have emerged as the result of some unconscious perspicacity as to the game they’d made. But it’s a big, long RPG, albeit one made of tight near-identical corridors, and they don’t just appear. And that’s just a bit sad.

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I went to EVE Fanfest, where I mostly walked around pretending to be a real journalist. A lot of my time was devoted to finding one person: a space captain called Chribba. Talking to various EVE players, I soon discovered that this man was something of a celebrity in New Eden. Not only is he one of the most well-known players, but he is also possibly the most well-liked. Which is a strange thing to be in an MMO for which all the advertising focuses on being a treacherous dog and where most of the in-game celebrities are not famous but infamous. What made Chribba different? Was he really a philanthropist, like everyone kept telling me? Or was he simply a cunning master of interstellar diplomacy? I talked to him to find out.

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I don’t entirely know how to justify why I’m enjoying Neverwinter quite so much. Why I’ve found excuses to play it nearly the entire weekend, stay up late playing it this week, and even get annoyed that they were doing server maintenance at 8am when I tried to sneak in half an hour before starting work. There’s no question that it’s very good – it’s a superbly made MMO, predictable ongoing server teething problems on launch aside (I’ll get to those at the end). It’s enormous, jam-packed with so very much to do, extremely approachable, but elaborately complicated if you want it to be. I suppose its biggest crime is to be traditional in its structure, and it turns out that was exactly what I was looking for.

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A happy coincidence. I had recently installed Grid, having never played it before and feeling a craving for velocity. I’d gently eased myself into the world of cars wot drift when Codemasters appeared in my inbox, offering a preview code for the sequel. Before playing Grid, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time with any racing game for a couple of years, but the series seems to be pitched at those, like me, who want something more complex than a kart game but less intricate than a sim. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre – and we’re off.

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“I’m looking for a guy called Chribba,” I said, and watched as the eyebrows of the other poker players rose. By all accounts, these were Bad People I was dealing with. Scoundrels, backstabbers, the lowest of the low. That’s right – EVE players. Everything I had learned about this incorrigible species of interstellar riff-raff had taught me not to trust a single one of them. EVE was the kind of game where you spent three years making a new best friend, only to steal all his money and crash his favourite space-Porsche into a moon. EVE is a game for villains. Which is why I needed to find Chribba so badly.

“Who did you say?” asked a well-dressed American to my left. He toyed gently with his poker chips and glanced at my press badge.

“Chribba,” I said, “Do you know him?” The three players in earshot began to chortle.

“Oh, yeah. Everybody knows him.”
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