A Game For Everyone
By John Walker on April 4th, 2013.
A real high-point of every GDC is the Game Design Challenge. Well, was. Sadly the tenth year of this annual treat was the last, with organiser Eric Zimmerman bringing proceedings to an end. And wow, did it go out in style. With the apposite topic, “Humanity’s Last Game”, some of the biggest names in the industry put forth their pitches for the last game we’d ever need. And one man entirely stole the show. For a second year, that man was Jason Rohrer.
By Alec Meer on March 13th, 2013.
Huh, that was quick. Then again, everything I experienced of Jason Rohrer’s home invasion MMO-ette The Castle Doctrine last week did come across as essentially finished, so I suppose there’s no reason not to release it to the world now. The version the Passage dev has put out is billed as an ‘alpha’, in that time/Mojang-honoured tradition, and sells for half-price while that’s the case.
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Fatalist Dungeon Keeper
By Alec Meer on March 8th, 2013.
Right then. Now I’ve had a little catharsis by revealing how home invasion-themed MMO The Castle Doctrine made me feel, I want to talk a little more about its mechanics.
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An Englishman's home
By Alec Meer on March 7th, 2013.
The Castle Doctrine, the upcoming game from Passage and Sleep Is Death creator Jason Rohrer, is an indie MMO about criminals invading your home, and you invading their homes. A combination of base-building and puzzle-solving, it’s also an examination of how it feels to be both victim and villain. I’ve spent some time with an early version of the game.
I killed a woman for the sake of $21.
I killed a woman.
For $21.
I killed a woman.
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Also: Far Cry 3, preventing kingpins and the 'but is it a game?' debate
By Alec Meer on February 1st, 2013.
In the first part of an extensive, illuminating and arguably controversial interview with Passage, Sleep is Death and Chain World creator Jason Rohrer, we discussed his new game, the fascinating but sinister home defence MMO The Castle Doctrine, making virtual possessions and people matter and why he chose to include only male protagonists. In this second and final part, we pick up mid-chat about issues of authorship in games, leading to his thoughts on the divisive Far Cry 3. Then we cover his outspoken feelings about gun control, before moving on to how house and trap construction works in The Castle Doctrine, how he thinks he’s made player-generated content meaningful, and, inevitably, whatever happened to his mystery Minecraft mod Chain World.
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Love, theft, home and beating dogs with batons
By Alec Meer on January 30th, 2013.
Indie dev Jason Rohrer, creator of Passage, Sleep Is Death, Inside A Star-Filled Sky, The Diamond Trust of London and the near-mythical Chain World is a divisive game designer, because reasons. I personally reckon his stuff is reliably fascinating, bold and often important (including on those occasions that I’ve rather bounced off it), so I’ve been very keen to find out more about his upcoming game The Castle Doctrine. An MMO based around the concept of home invasion and home defence, the nature of the Rohrer’s tenth game has remained cryptic since a guarded reveal last October.
In this first of a two-part interview, Rohrer explains just what this dark multiplayer game of strategy, construction, burglary and cold-blooded murder is, how it works, its amorality and politics, the unenviable living situation and fear of vicious dogs which inspired it, and why the late-in-the-day addition of a wife and kids changed the nature of the whole affair.
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By Alec Meer on October 22nd, 2012.
About the easiest way to start a bar fight among those who deem themselves educated in videogames is to bring up Jason Rohrer’s Passage (missus), an unwitting poster child for ‘artgames.’ It worked its morose magic on me, while others found it arch and ungame, but between that and the lofty ambitions (though there are disagreements on the execution) of two-player storytelling game Sleep Is Death I suspect I’ll forever be fascinated by what Rohrer gets up to. Next up is The Castle Doctrine, “a massively multiplayer game of burglary and home defense.”
A Tony Martin sim? Maybe the Daily Mail will embrace videogames after all.
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By Alec Meer on March 18th, 2011.
In the beginning, there was a GDC presentation. Just a quiet little talk between developers, and a what-if experiment wherein a one-off, modded version of Minecraft was personally passed by Passage/Sleep Is Death/Inside A Star-Filled Sky creator Jason Rohrer to a curious audience member, who would then be the only person to see what Rohrer had built inside the game. The rules: you do not talk about Chain World. You do not keep on playing Chain World once you die in it. You then pass it on to someone who has ‘expressed interest,’ and to no other.
That was the plan, anyway. Then this secret world’s first inheritor, Jia Ji, came up with his own, rather different plan: a philanthropic auction, which closed at $3,300, and a promise to later send Chain World on to gaming luminaries Jane McGonigal and Will Wright. He told us why he did that earlier today, as well as why he offered RPS a copy (the temptation was you-would-not-believe strong, but we ultimately declined). So how did Rohrer feel about his quiet attempt at founding a digital religion being so quickly turned to a new, and very public, belief system? Did he even intend for this to become a talking point that’s infuriating as many people as it’s exciting? Were those rules he made actually designed to be broken all along? And if this is a religion, who is its god? Let’s ask him.
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By Alec Meer on March 18th, 2011.
Chain World, the secret Minecraft game that we first posted about here, has already encountered a difference of opinion that threatens to tear it apart. On the one side, you have the supporters of Chain World’s original intentions – for the world to stay closed, relatively mysterious, and for it be passed on from player to player with reverence.
On the other side you have the second custodian of Chain World, Jia Ji, who has elected to bend the rules and, rather than simply handing the USB stick with the world on it to someone who “expresses interest”, turn it into a charity auction. With the auction to be third inhabitant of Chain World ending in a matter of hours – head over now if you want to bid – we spoke to Ji about exactly why he’s so controversially changed the project and what he intends for it next…
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By Alec Meer on February 23rd, 2011.
Jason Rohrer, he of Passage and Sleep Is Death, has released a new game – Inside a Star-Filled Sky. Rather surprisingly, given his heritage of slow-paced, narrative-heavy games, it’s a shmup.
Rather unsurprisingly, it is far from a conventional shmup. I’ve given it a couple of hours so far, not yet enough to offer a verdict as such, but as there’s quite a buzz around it a few early thoughts seem more than sensible. Here they are.
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By Alec Meer on May 14th, 2010.
They’re all at it! All of them! It’s a conspiracy! They’re going to subvert global finance! They’re going to make a fortune without paying a gigantic tithe to price-fixing publishers! It’s wrong! It suggests traditional models of capitalism are outdated and near-sighted! We’re doomed! I’m worried not even a single sentence of this post won’t end with an exclamation mark!
Oh, there you go. Yes, the latest indie game to jump aboard the high-speed pay-what-you-what bandwagon is Jason Rohrer’s splendid 2-play storytelling game Sleep Is Death. He’s set a minimum spend of $1.75, but apart from that, lob him whatever you think the game’s worth in return for two copies of the splendid thing. The RPS Hivemind will have to decide how frequently we cover these sort of deals if we’re to avoid every other post documenting bargains, but as this one is so soon after the game’s release, it’s definitely An Awesome Thing. Get to it.
