Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The awards start at 6:30 tonight, so it’s time to draw a close to our project of the last few weeks. We’ve interviewed all those who have been nominated for the short list (Except Shatter who I only realised was coming to the PC too late to arrange an interview and Heroes of Newerth, who just couldn’t be bothered answering in time and the student competition folk.) So – in a few hours time, when you want to know about who these winners are… this is where to look. Unless the winners are Shatter or Heroes of Newerth, then you’re right out of luck. Links to all interviews follow, plus – bonus – my speculation on who’ll be picking up the gongs tonight…
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Continuing the RPS trend of being up-to-the-minute with its verdicts, here’s my brain-meanderings about the recent AvP sequel/remake. It’s late because, frankly, the PC port wasn’t in rude health. Like many other owners of the game, I suffered a bug which caused it to freeze for a few seconds every couple of minutes. A patch hit last week which, though it didn’t fix the problem, alleviated it enough that I could stand to play the thing. Despite the naughty words this bug had me shouting, this write-up’s consciously penned as though it wasn’t an issue – partly because I’m sure it will be fixed, and primarily because it seems the majority of players didn’t suffer it. So, on with the words. As RPS’s resident AvP expert, it is my duty. Er. Which one’s the Predator again? Is he that robot policeman, or is that someone else?
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“Steam has done a tremendous job,” says Scott Reismanis, founder of DesuraNET. Their soon-to-be-released digital distribution platform, simply named Desura, might be competing in the same market, but Reismanis is keen to point out the worth of Valve’s own service. “Introversion software – makers of the great Darwinia game, among others – claimed they were ‘the last of the bedroom programmers’. Now, it seems that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
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This week I’ve been finding out what happens when a Ukrainian tank sim developer has a bash at WW2 strategy. If you’ve ever owned a game with War, Front or Combat in the title, you might be interested to read Wot I Think.

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I half worry that my 1999 self would be disappointed. We’re living in the last of the great sci-fi-sounding years, and he’d have been hoping I’d be playing some kind of ludicrously intricate immersive-sim derivative. But if he asked, I’d be forced to confess that I’m playing Starcraft and Freespace. He’d have been disappointed. But fuck him. He always was a snot. I’m back with two of the best games of the late 90s. And what interests me is that in two games that were relatively contemporary with one another can walk such radically opposing paths and still end up in the same place…
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Oh, Valve: they’re playing us like a harp this week, and frankly we don’t mind a jot when it’s this much fun. While everyone’s busy nattering about the Portal 2 (OR IS IT?) ARG, they slip a little something extra into the RPS inbox. That’ll be the charmingly retro-sociopathic words and pictures above, then. Which you’ll want to click on right away, in order to admire it in its full bigness. The instant response from all of us, aside from excited and grateful cooing noises, was “guh? But what does it mean?” We’re not very clever sometimes.

Then we worked out exactly what it means: Steam is, as has been recently rumoured (and supported by the recent move from hoary old IE to sprightly young, cross-platform webkit as a foundation for Steam), finally coming to the Apple Macintosh personal computer system. At least… so it implies. OR DOES IT?
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This is a heavily revised version of an article first published in PC Gamer UK, last year. It’s based on a presentation given by Ray Kurzweil at GDC 2008, and subsequent conversations I had with the author Charles Stross and the game designer Eskil Steenberg.

This article began back in 2008, when I was sat in the audience for GDC’s keynote speech by futurist Ray Kurweil. “Games are the harbinger of everything,” Kurzweil was saying, as he delivered his take on the future of everything (with slight emphasis on games) to the assembled design-masses. The controversial technologist, who regularly talks about his hopes for technological immortality and transhuman ascension via artificial intelligence, was arguing that games were where the future manifested itself. “Ultimately,” he said, “they’re going to be competitive with real reality.” These were claims I’d heard a bunch of times before. Often, in the pub, during conversations with Kieron, as he gesticulated dangerously behind a glass of wine. Other times from developers, writers, and gamers. I realised, watching Kurzweil, that it was something I was going to have to write more about: just what kind of future do games promise?

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Goodbye The Silver Lining. Our culture is formed by the sharing of ideas. Throughout history, for millennia, every piece of art, music, literature and entertainment has been the result of a worldwide collaboration. It’s been an astonishing act of creative evolution, the most vibrant and extraordinary gene pool of imagination and inspiration, from which all were free to draw and create. It has been exceptional, and in the last 50 to 100 years it has come to an end.

The tragedy of the abuse and misuse of intellectual property and copyright cannot be counted. After centuries of sharing, we have allowed a “MINE!” tag to be affixed to every thought, string of notes, doodle on a page, or merest whim. We have committed a grotesque cultural suicide. And the extent to which this has reached should be a parody. We have now allowed ourselves to be in the situation where art museums ban sketching – something that should surely make anyone whose understanding of art history goes beyond yesterday scream in fear. And it exists in our world of gaming in a similarly berserk form. And so it is that Activision has closed down work on not-for-profit fan creation The Silver Lining.

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[As you're probably aware, the Starcraft 2 Beta is ticking along. We've played it enough so each of the RPSers have their own favourites. Or, at least the one they've gravitated towards so far. We thought we'd take it in turns giving a little picture portrait of each of faction, and why we've been drawn to them and how playing them is effecting us. First up is Quinns...]

I got my hands on the Starcraft 2 beta and I chose…
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This feature was written for PC Format magazine what feels like a million years ago. It’s a very broad overview of some of the choicest morsels of PC gaming in the late 80s to mid 90s, primarily the pre-3D age, and aimed at those who didn’t grow up with a beige box rather than at those who did. Clearly too, it’s more shaped by my own experiences and influences than by anything like objectivity. My objectivometer must have been out for repairs that week. I repost it here with minor updates, and tired resignation about how many comments will say “what, no game X?” No wordcount in the world is big enough to encompass everything that should be mentioned – but it’ll certainly be useful if the comments thread becomes a juicy list of olden gems for other curious readers to hunt down.

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