Portico

In lieu of Gameblogs...

2006-08-26T18:27:00.000-04:00

Since Gameblogs still hasn't processed the feed for my new location, here's a reminder that there is over a week's worth of strategy gaming discussion at Flash of Steel. Here's hoping that FoS gets approved soon.

Move almost complete

2006-08-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

The transition to the new domain is close enough that I will now begin regularly posting over there. So, update your bookmarks and feeds for www.flashofsteel.com. The template will change a bit over the next couple of weeks, including a fancy schmancy new logo.

See you in the new digs.

Forge of Freedom

2006-08-14T18:51:00.000-04:00

One of 2005's biggest disappointments for me was Crown of Glory from Western Civilization Software by way of Matrix. The ambitious Napoleonic Wars game had too much of everything except clear documentation and feedback. It has just been patched again, but I don't have much of a desire to load it up and see what has been fixed.

But there was enough positive feedback from users that Western Civ and Matrix are teaming up again for another historical strategy game, Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War, 1861-1865. Allen Rausch has an early preview over on Gamespy.

At first glance, the political subgame inspires fond memories of the SSI classic No Greater Glory. The battle engine looks much improved, too, though the two hour tactical battles in Crown of Glory had me reaching for the auto-resolve button every single time.

Still too soon to tell if the game is any good, of course. No release date yet. Stay tuned for more news as I find it.

More than a feeling

2006-08-13T22:00:00.000-04:00

Between finishing up an article and doing some much needed house cleaning, I found the time to learn three new board games. My friend and colleague Bruce Geryk is always introducing me to new stuff, either because he pities my mostly board game free existence or because he just likes finding new people to humiliate.

The titles of the games themselves are quite evocative: Lost Cities! Ra! Thurn und Taxis! Well, that last one isn't very evocative since I'm not quite sure what it means. But Bruce told me it was about delivering the mail across Germany.

Only it wasn't. Ra wasn't about the Egyptian Sun God either. And Lost Cities was only peripherally connected to the exploration of uncharted lands for undiscovered civilizations. For all three, the mechanics of the game were only tangentially related to the themes surrounding them. Thurn und Taxis could have been about map making or road paving, since it was about tracing routes on a map. It didn't have to be Germany, but it is a German game.

Brett Todd was playing a couple of the games with us, which is interesting since we'd recently engaged in correspondence about the recent Roman city builders and Glory of the Roman Empire and CivCity: Rome. (You can find his reviews of both on Gamespot.) One of the central points we are both interested in for a city builder is whether it "feels" right. Is the historical ambience there? What connects the player to the setting?

No one has these sorts of expectations for a good board game. The very best board games (Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, even chess) are able to exist simply as rule sets with themes only loosely attached. There are exceptions, of course. Many of the greatest Avalon Hill games were perfect blends of theme, rules and playing pieces.

How many computer games have that luxury? If Stronghold didn't focus your attention on the building of a castle, players would be miffed. Caylus, a game about a castle, can be won without building the castle at all.

It's easy to say that this is natural because board gamers can't process all the stuff that a computer can, but that's putting the question backwards. Abstract design is discouraged and the setting of a computer game becomes the determinant of what goes in and what stays out. Developers seem to start with "let's make a game about World War II" and then try to find a way to make WW2 happen on screen. I doubt anyone sat down and said "We need an Egyptian board game" and then decided that it should involve bidding on cards with point values.

One is not better than the other. And I'm not going to give Glory of the Roman Empire a do-over because it might have been trying to keep things light and abstracted. But it is intriguing that computer game designers clearly put the setting at the beginning of the design phase where many great board games do not.

Oh, and all three are very good games. Ra was being billed to me as "the best 3 person game ever" and pretty much lived up to that billing. It probably helped that I didn't embarrass myself too much in any of them.

While I'm talking about awards...

2006-08-10T14:30:00.000-04:00

My homeland has announced the nominees for the first ever Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts. Dubbed the "Elan" awards, they will honor Canadian animators and game makers for their work.

Ubisoft cleans up in the nomination count, but I find it a little worrying that the only PC games they could think to recognize were the good but not great Supreme Ruler 2010 (from Battlegoat) and Doodlebops Club House Games (a Cookie Jar game based on a very colorful children's show).

Not sure what the release date cut-off was, but the absence of Canadian superstar Bioware (Jade Empire was a month earlier than SR2010) is surprising.

Good luck to Battlegoat. My CGM review called their game a "first draft of the future" and the germs of an excellent strategy game developer are certainly there. (I wish no ill to the Doodlebops game, but I'm still not sure what exactly a Doodlebop is.)

Gphoria 2006 fails to amuse

2006-08-10T11:19:00.000-04:00

Not having cable, I missed Gphoria 2006. Even if I had it, I'm not sure I could have stomached much of it, if Kyle Orland's summary is reliable - and I am confident it is.

The strategy nominees were Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Battle for Middle Earth II, Star Wars: Empire at War, and Age of Empires III.

I'm not too familiar with Fire Emblem and only dabbled with eventual winner Empire at War in the demo. I think Battle for Middle Earth II is the best strategy game of the year so far, but the Gphoria nominees stretch back into last summer when the 2005 awards were held.

Age of Empires III was in Autumn 2005, released a week before Civilization IV.

Which was not nominated.

How can the game of the year for 2005 - not just strategy game, but game period - not get nominated in this category? You can't blame the graphics, since it looks better than either of the console nominees here. It is turn based as are Advance Wars and Fire Emblem.

Now I know I shouldn't take Gphoria seriously. I couldn't even find a list of the winners until today, well after the show aired. And they have awards sponsored by Mountain Dew and Garnier Fructis. I can't quibble with their Game of the Year (Oblivion) since almost everyone is telling me how amazing it is.

But guys. Play Civ IV. And do a recount.

Commander - Europe at War

2006-08-09T13:31:00.000-04:00

Slitherine Strategies has unveiled the first shots of its new World War II grand strategy game, Commander - Europe at War.

Though many people would point to Paradox's Hearts of Iron as the ultimate WW2 game, I always look back to SSI's Clash of Steel, a thirteen year old grand strategy game with a simple economic and political model. It had nowhere near the options available to me in Hearts of Iron, but it did have a certain simplicity that let me pick up and play with very little need to invest time in figuring out what I was doing.

Not that I mind the planning phase in HoI. It's just that there are no really good beer and pretzel grand strategy wargames for this most celebrated of conflicts. As much as I love a good, deep game (Europa Universalis II never leaves my computer), there is a lot to be said for just getting down to invading France without trying to make sure I have enough iron coming in.

Judging from what Slitherine has said so far, this could be that game.

Slitherine's games to this point have ranged from good (Spartan) to unimpressive (Legion: Arena). Despite their emphasis, to this point, on my favorite stomping grounds of ancient history, these charming British chaps haven't quite won me over. I passed over Cult of Mithras entirely.

But all of a sudden I am excited about Commander. The look is simple, the demands on the player seem to be few and it has hexes. Slitherine's games have always played fairly easy, though their battle engine has a lot more going on than it appears.

Commander has tech research (even Axis and Allies had that) but only 50 techs over five areas. Only 12 unit types, and somehow I doubt there is going to be a lot of national variation. Terrain, morale, leadership...all the things we expect from war games in this day and age.

No word on a release date.

September CGM is out

2006-08-08T10:19:00.000-04:00

It's a big issue for a big month. School starts again (but not for me, it seems) and the console section is very thin. So there is a lot to read in the issue that interests me.

My own contributions are minimal. I have a preview of Dominions 3, a review of Hearts of Iron: Doomsday (with an embarrassing typo in the final paragraph) and my Alt.Games column covers Flatspace, Crusaders in Space and New Star Soccer. OK, maybe not minimal.

The big preview is the cover story on Sid Meier's Railroads by Tom Chick. I had the good fortune to see Tom at work when he did this story and the resulting article and interview demonstrates why he is in such high demand as a writer. I'll admit to not being fully sold on the idea of yet another railroad business sim, but the game looks good and, in my brief experience with it, it seems to have that Firaxis polish.

Lara Crigger continues her solid work on social issues and gaming with an article on religious expression and games. Naturally, there is a lot on the upcoming Left Behind game, probably my most highly anticipated game of the fall because so much can go wrong with it. I also look forward to the tortured phrasings of my colleagues if the game part actually seems to work well.

On the transition front, there have been some inexplicable stalls on the other end, demonstrating why friends should be careful working with friends. I may just go for some other hosting option, since I have a logo and everything now.

Expect more frequent updates until I can get everything sorted out.

Another brief update

2006-07-26T10:09:00.000-04:00

The friend handling a lot of the domain transition stuff is going through a rough time, so the big move will have to wait until after I deal with some family stuff of my own. So, early August - a full month after I'd intended to complete the move.

I've been holding back on posting here because I want to save a lot of content for the relaunch, plus I am planning semi-regular features for the new blog and I need to get some outlines squared away for that.

One thought - who at 2k Games thought it would a great idea to launch two games aimed at similar audiences on the same day? Both Civ IV Warlords and CivCity: Rome hit store shelves yesterday and I think that the city builder will get the short end of a lot of sticks because of the piles of awards that Civ IV won. After the uninspiring Glory of the Roman Empire, I would love to have a good city-builder, and both Yahoo Games and IGN seem to like CivCity well enough. The Gamespy review is more worrying; in spite of the good score, the text raises some interesting issues.

When I get back, I promise to have full reports and reviews. And a new look before the school year starts.

Still Alive but Still in Transition

2006-07-18T10:31:00.000-04:00

The last couple of weeks have been busier than I expected and the migration to the new location is taking its good sweet time. I have a ton of writing to do before I head to my ancestral home for a brief visit, and a ton of writing to do while I am there. I hate being idle, so I guess it's a good thing.

For any Gamesblogs readers, I have been trying to contact the management there to see if I can find a way to merge my stats there with my new domain. I know it can be done since Kyle Orland managed it when he made the leap off blogspot. So if anyone can give me a contact address for those guys (not the site's contact address because no one seems to answer that...) I would appreciate it.

When I start blogging in earnest you can expect a review of the Warlords expansion to Civ IV, some reflections on Gal Civ 2 post-updates, and a long commentary on Pox Nora. As well as some new regular features.

Preparing to Move

2006-07-05T10:11:00.000-04:00

Be ready to reset your RSS feeder if you got it. If you've visited Portico in the last day or two, you probably noticted that it looked a little funny. I had switched it to a default template so I could archive the posts in a way that Pivot could understand.

Because, finally, I will be moving to my new domain within the week. The logo is ready, the server is ready and my ideas for how the site will be changing are percolating. When the time comes, I'll leave this notice up, but it will simply redirect after a month or so.

So, no new posts until that's all set.

Glory of the Roman Empire

2006-06-30T10:02:00.000-04:00

Even though the score translates as average, so far, I'm the big, bad Hun when it comes to evaluating Haemimont/CDV's Glory of the Roman Empire. I found it much too easy to be interesting, and too boring to be worth playing for longer than I had to. CDV says that it is targeting casual gamers with Glory, but I think their idea of casual gaming is quite a bit different from mine.

My wife calls historical city builders "ant farm games" and there is a lot to this. You want to see your citizens changing the landscape, go about their business and live almost - but not quite - independent from you. Glory tries to make a lot of this easier on you by not letting buildings degrade in status - only upward mobility - but also requiring you to scatter your city with altars, statues and temples which only push the real estate further up the chain. So you end up with a fishing oriented suburb full of villas. Which means that they will demand a bath. In short, your entire city ends up looking just like what Hollywood in the 50s thought Rome was all about; marble buildings as far as the eye can see.

My review makes a lot of how easy the game is, even in its supposed difficult settings, and there is nothing wrong with easy. For some gamers the entire point of city builders is the sandbox. Start with abundant money and resources and build the city of your dreams. But when the entire game is like that, it loses a lot of the purpose of city builders - to plan ahead, to measure your pace, to keep supply and demand in balance. Glory of the Roman Empire is all forward momentum.

The resource construction and economic model is very similar to Children of the Nile, one of the best city builders in recent memory. But where Tilted Mill's game would let you taste the bitter tang of failure without pushing you over the edge into despair, Haemimont's Rome is nothing but short term success after short success. There are no monuments or wonders to work towards, only small scale challenges based on how many people you have in your city.

Oh, and I'd like to thank the two Game Rankings readers who voted to give my Games Radar review a single star. I'm here to serve.

Fall From Heaven

2006-06-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

The great hope for Civ IV was that its open architecture would lead to a lot of creative and unusual mods, taking the basic design of the game in interesting directions. For the most part, Civ mods have still emphasized adding more historical units, people fitting in their own countries as major civilizations, or adding a little bit of chrome, like my personal favorite, the Great Person Mod. There is even a Total Realism mod, though I have no idea what realism even means in a game as abstract as Civilization.

Fall from Heaven is something special, though. It is a fantasy world adaptation with almost everything remade. New resources, new tech tree, new civs, new skills, new units...but the thing is, FFH has a driving mythology in which the whole thing works. The Civilopedia is a delight to read because the modmakers have taken this job so seriously.

It certainly has its problems. Like many user created adaptations, it errs on the side of too much. The tech tree is so made over that I had to go back to Chieftain level to find my bearings. Though the techs themselves make sense in their own hierarchy, it's not obvious what Arcane Lore will give me. The new religions are a mixture of Tolkien tree-worship and other straight rip-offs from fantasy lit (there is a Cthulhu religion called "Octopus Overlords").

But these adaptations never seem forced. It becomes conceivable that these fantasy societies would have different religions, religions that even shape the look of your cities. Since the modders aren't bound to follow a particular author (though I'm sure there is a Middle Earth mod out there) or a certain established mythos, they take a bit from here and a bit from there, even creating elaborate justifications for the new wonders. Originality and creation and not necessarily the same thing.

The civics are also given some serious teeth. One religious civic offers huge benefits to your state faith, but penalizes you for every heretical religion in your city. Instead of the Civ 4 method of making each civic merely attractive in a different situation, the modders have given you the temptation to mold your civ to fit the needs of an upcoming development.

And it has dragons.

I think that this is what Firaxis had in mind when they said they wanted Civ IV to be mod friendly. This is a wonderful achievement, and I'm not one drawn to radical makeovers of my games. I have yet to finish a single Fall From Heaven game because there is so much I want to see that I get bogged down in the details. What does Mana do? How do I upgrade my Adepts? Why are Great Works worth so little in culture? Is that a hell hound?

Civilization IV was, of course, in no danger of disappearing from my hard drive. But more intriguing mods like this could mean that it never leaves.

The Ten Best Years

2006-06-27T14:50:00.000-04:00

Next Gen has an interesting story on what they see as the ten greatest years of gaming. I won't spoil their story by listing the punchline here. You can click on your own. Warning: It's been Slashdotted.

Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh proceeds chronologically, freeing him from the burden of ranking all these years in some sort of hierarchy. The story itself, however, is very console heavy, especially once we get past the 1970s. The PC isn't absent but it's a footnote. Lip service is paid to the shareware boom in the early nineties and the boom of 3D in the mid-nineties, but even here there is a concentration on the contribution of shooters to the industry. The story would be better sold as "ten years of platform wars".

Mostly devoid of non-business commentary, Waugh cites the division between "technologists" and those who want games to be more culturally significant as being in 2001. This split is certainly older than 2001, so I wonder why that topic is raised at all, especially in that year.

There is a risk inherent in any list of this sort, especially if you focus on the games, like I would. Hall of Fame goaltender Ken Dryden once wrote that everyone's golden age is when they were twelve, when things are fresh and new. The golden age of baseball for me is the mid-80s, for example (Schmidt, Ripken, Hershiser) and there's something to that when I think of my best gaming years.

I think of 1990-91 when some of dorm mates got seriously into computer gaming and I discovered the glories of F-19 Stealth Fighter, Civilization and Wing Commander. A great year, to be sure, (I still think of years as determined by the school calendar) but primarily because it was my first deep introduction to the hobby.

I think of 1996 when I first had near complete control over a PC of my own, meaning I could game for as long as my new wife would let me. Also the year of Civilization II, by the way; a game that almost completely consumed me.

I think of 2000, when I began writing for a now defunct website (on a volunteer basis). People started sending me games - good and bad - but I thought it was just cool to have a small audience interested in my opinion. And here I am now blogging for (at most) a few dozen regulars and, more importantly, reaching a larger throng through Computer Games, Games Radar and Strategy Zone Online - all of whom pay. Imagine that. It's also the year that I went out and bought Europa Universalis on release day.

Of course, with some research I could make an objective case for a lot of events with no personal connection. The founding of Electronic Arts. The bundling of game software with new PCs. The last wargame sold at EB. I could just point to a list of good games released in any given year, but this would be inevitably colored by the way that those games fit into my life at that time.

Strategy Games of the Half-Year 2006

2006-06-26T09:13:00.000-04:00

It's been a good six months for strategy games. So good that I've had a hard time winnowing my list down to the top three of the year. I helped myself by excluding expansion packs from qualifying unless they introduced major new gameplay elements. This knocked both Hearts of Iron: Doomsday and Rome: Total War - Alexander off my list. Both are very good and highly recommended for fans of the originals.

I have also disqualified any game that I haven't finished diagnosing yet, possibly knocking a credible European RTS from the list. OK, it was a long shot, but it's not fair to include any game I haven't played extensively. To that end, games I haven't played at all don't count either, same as before.

I've also decided to leave off board games I just happen to play online or on my computer, putting Caylus and Ticket to Ride (the CD-ROM edition) off the radar.

And that still leaves me with at least five games I want to reward. But this is all about the hard decisions. The two games that just missed the cut are Birth of America, an excellent wargame set in 18th century America, and Take Command: 2nd Manassas, the sequel to last year's third place finisher.

Number 3: Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (Big Huge Games/Microsoft) - I'll admit to being a little disappointed that this wasn't the runaway winner. RoL is the sequel to, in my opinion, the best designed RTS yet. And it took me a while to get over the disappointment that the game looked very little like the glorious screenshots. Now, there are a lot of criticisms that can be made about Rise of Legends. Its multiplayer is broken for some people, the end game takes on the swirling mass of crap look, the factions suffer from a cool imbalance with the Vinci being the kings of the neat-o units. But there is a lot going on here. The sides are very balanced in term of options, they are cleanly distinguised from each other in look and strategy and even if the end games all look fairly similar, there's a myriad of ways to get there.

Number 2: Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (Stardock) - A lot of observers were surprised by how well GC2 sold in the early going. This is your typical "long tail" game; releases to some buzz but continues to sell based on word of mouth. This isn't a blockbuster title with a huge ad campaign, after all. I was not surprised. Not only was the community starving for a good 4x game in space, it knew where its next meal would come from. After the acclaim for the original GalCiv, the sequel could hardly be a surprise. No should people be surprised by the constant updates/patches/enhancements that have streamed from Stardock since the game's release. Like Rise of Legends, there was a sense in the first couple of months that every game would end in the same general manner. Because it happens in space, there is less to distinguish one session from another than there is in Civ IV. But every update, every tweak, every addition makes GalCiv2 even closer to being the perfect turn-based game.

Number 1: Battle for Middle Earth II (New Line Cinema/Electronic Arts) - I feel a little dead inside putting a movie licensed game on the top here. But there is no denying that, aside from last year's game of year, Civ 4, this is the game that I played the most. I played it the most in single player, I played it the most in multiplayer. I played all the factions. I played the freaking campaigns. The "War of the Ring" mode is the game's single misstep; it's a convoluted effort to integrate a turn-based campaign similar to the Rise of Nations campaign mechanic. BfME2 is not only beautiful, it is in your face with decision making at all times. What power do you burn those palantir points on? Is it worth building a tower in that pass to channel my enemy somewhere else? If I go for the ring, can I protect it long enough to summon my super-unit? How far into neutral territory do I build my economy? All of these are major decisions, all must be made quickly and many simultaneously.

This list is very different from last year's six month check in. Last year we had a bunch of developers saving their energies for the last quarter, when a spurt of major titles were released. So my top three games had two indie titles and one obscure still underappreciated RTS. 2006 has one plucky indie TBS that is hardly obscure and two RTS publised by industry behemoths. This shows, I think, just how wide and varied the range of quality strategy games is. No other genre can boast as many good games made by marginal players as well as strong and serious attention from the giants.

Profiling Gamers

2006-06-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

Only a Game has released some of the results from a survey they took of gamers. The intent of many of these question is to establish whether gamers who prefer certain genres approach games in different ways. Judging from the results, strategy gamers tend to enjoy messing around in a game world, whether or not progress is being made (Question 3) and want to take care of a game character (Question 8). This latter finding is attributed to an "X-Com effect", but sort of presumes that these gamers remember what X-Com is.

And that leap of logic is my big problem with this survey as it is presented. Even when coupled with data on the hardcore/casual distinction derived from the same data set, there is a lot we don't know about these gamers. Even leaving aside that the sample size is only 319 gamers, split into a number of overlapping catergories, the deciding factor in what gamers look for in a game might be determined by more boring stuff than genre boxes.

How old are people who prefer progress to sandbox games? Are student gamers more or less sociable than adult gamers? Until this basic and obvious question is answered, you really can't draw a lot of firm conclusions about what gamers are looking for. How long have they been gaming? How many games do they buy a year? Console or PC?

In fact the Demographic Game Design 1 survey used as the basis for this study doesn't even track this sort of information, sort of missing one of the big parts of demography. Gender, education, etc. - these sorts of things determine who has the time to play certain types of games and the environment in which they do so.

But real insight into what types of experiences certain gamers prefer is clearly not the purpose of the study. The purpose of the DGD is to slot gamers into four archetypes of game players (Conqueror, Manager, Wanderer, Participant) so that designers can build around these archetypes. I'm a Wanderer (according the survey) but this is based entirely on the boxes I clicked in regards to what I look for in games.

Take a look at the DGD. It asks the respondent for three games they like and a single game that captures what they don't like about gaming. (My responses were Civ 4, EU 2 and with Baldur's Gate with Superpower 2 as my bad experience.) There is no way that this information can be used to generate the result unless the surveyor knows what I like and don't like. After all, the design documents for Superpower 2 and Europa Universalis 2 are pretty similar. How can the computer survey slot me in as a Wanderer without asking me what separates these two broadly similar games?

The survey is too short to be useful in drawing any meaningful conclusions about gamers, especially by using mere percentages as your analytic tool. While I support and encourage the use of data collection and analysis by anyone interested in gaming, no one should make too much of the DGD.

Sid Meier is always right

2006-06-21T15:40:00.000-04:00

I was at Firaxis yesterday, mostly tagging along with a fellow scribe as he worked on a preview of an upcoming game. He had a chance to talk to Mr. Meier about a wide range of things. One of the topics touched on was how nice it would be to just plop a disk into a computer and have the game just start. You know, like a console game.

At the time, I smirked a little on the inside, mostly because I don't usually have enormous problems installing games. We have a wide range of machines with a wide range of abilities. I like this flexibility and the install time gives me opportunity to read the manual.

But today I spent well over 90 minutes trying to get a single game to install. First the game was on a 16x DVD-R, so that ruled out the first machine. So I moved up a level and the installer kept starting and stopping. Starting and stopping. Sometimes not starting at all.

Then it started well, but prompted me to register. No problem. I always register. This crashed the install.

Finally I get it on the computer. But wait - it has to update my DirectX. Actually, it doesn't since we keep Dx up-to-date at all times, but games now require that you use their Dx installer. Fine.

Oh, and it's Starforce. So it has to install "additional libraries". Install those. But before I can play, I need to reboot so that installation can complete.

Done. Everything installed. This being a press review copy, I put in the "start disk" (some European thing...) so I can actually launch the game.

"The code you have is invalid or incorrect. Please enter a code or contact customer service."

Code? CODE!? There is no code on any of the stuff they sent me.

Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed.

A Sense of History

2006-06-18T15:23:00.000-04:00

I've been listening regularly to the PC Gamer Podcast for the last month or so, and it is getting a lot better. The addition of a single female voice helps a little in distinguishing which male is which, and since the voice is the learned Kristen Salvatore, even better. There is a better sense of an agenda and many fewer in-jokes. So, kudos to the guys at PCG for giving me a reason to keep listening.

But the most recent episode caught me short when Editor-in-Chief Dan Morris said that he wasn't sure who Chris Crawford was.

This admission came by way of commentary on gaming's Jeremiah once again emerging from the wilderness to say that gaming has lost its way and that it can only be saved by innovation, whatever that means. The PCG discussion followed the expected form of talking about what innovation there was in the industry, a recognition that there is a lot of me-tooism in the industry and some curiosity that Crawford can make these claims when he cops to not really following the game industry that closely.

But the EIC of computer gaming's number one publication saying that he didn't know who Crawford was stuck with me. True, he hasn't made a game in a very long time. But this is the founder of the Game Developer's Conference. One of the fathers of war and strategy gaming on the computer. The first real analyst/practitioner of electronic game design.

I'm not going to say that these credentials mean that his opinions on the current industry automatically have merit. I think he's a bit of a crank, divorced from the market pressures that exist today and blind to all the great stuff going on in the industry.

I will say that a man of Crawford's stature should at least have his name recognized by computer games journalists/analysts. If this is the fate of Crawford, who emerges from his cabin to rant every year or so, what has become of the reputation of the late Dani Bunten, probably the single most creative and wide-ranging talent of the early days of the hobby?

In a way, this is a result of the now-ism of the hobby. It's mostly about "what have you done for me lately?" which is perfectly reasonable if you see your job as a critic to simply be reporting on what is on the shelves. But not knowing what has gone before makes it impossible to recognize how far game design has come.

It is the mirror image of Crawford's problem. He was powerful and important when the industry was in its infancy; a time when everything was new and everything seemed possible. Games had little hope of going mainstream. So he sees everything around him today as a pale shadow of those glorious days of invention and creativity. Could there be a time in the near future when journalists forget when there were no RTS games? When MP was either absent, unreliable or hotseat? When Sid Meier made flight sims?

The historian in me naturally thinks this sort of stuff matters somewhere along the line. No, your average gamer doesn't need to know this; your average American doesn't need to know about the Shay's Rebellion to be a good citizen, either. But a little perspective on where the hobby has been can give game journalists and critics some clue as to how it has gotten where it is.

In other words, to know Crawford, you must know his opinions on Balance of the Planet and why he thinks it failed.

Firaxis podcast

2006-06-17T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm an admitted Firaxis fanboy. Though I will often take shots at the company for resting on Meier's past triumphs, I can't deny that the re-imaginings and revisions of his classics are irresistible and addictive.

If you want some insight into the company, they have a podcast now. I mean, why not? Everyone else does. It's pretty short - less than a half hour - and will be monthly. The purpose behind the podcast seems to be to show how cool Firaxis is as a workplace. But there is also some insight into how the games industry works with some discussion of what exactly a producer does and how QA may not be the most exciting job in the world.

Stay till the end for the Meier Minute. The podcast looks like it will be slowly releasing information about an unannounced Firaxis game.

Developer Interview: Xavi Rubio

2006-06-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

I recently noted that Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War has some of the best RTS naval mechanics around. And, considering the dearth of good naval simulations out there, it's nice when anyone pays attention to that military arm that Mahan considered the sine qua non of real power.

To that end, my latest developer interview is with Spanish wargame developer Xavi Rubio, the brain behind Hyperborea's upcoming ancient naval wargame Galley Battles.

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Naval warfare is an underserved topic, and ancient naval warfare doubly so. What brings you to this period?

In fact I think that this is probably one of the reasons to make a game about this topic. There are no games about these battles, that I think have plenty of room to make an interesting game. Moreover, I'm interested on ancient warfare, in fact part of my research is related to it, so I tried to create a game focusing on an interesting yet not touched before topic.

Ancient naval warfare is pretty simple stuff. Ram another guy and either board or sink him. Is it a challenge to make this material compelling?

Is not that simple, and this is the main reason why I think the topic can be enjoyable. Galley warfare was, on a microscale, similar to the aerial duels of the 1st World War. Individual galleys try to maneuver in order to make a good position to ram the enemy without being rammed. Boarding techniques are more rough, but the fact is that you need to create superiority points where you have more ships than the enemy on local zones, in order to break the opponent's formation and make his morale sink.

Moreover, reading ancient primary sources you notice that there were complex "multi-ship" maneuvers, like kyklos (hedgehog formation), periplus and diekplus (flanking attacks, deep formation attacks), etc. so in fact the type of battle was quite more technical that the ones of other naval eras like Napoleonics or First World War.

What experience do you have in developing wargames?

This is my first title, so I don't have any previous experience as developer of wargames.

Except for the high points like Salamis and Actium, the ancient sources are mostly vague in how these battles transpired. Do you find the lack of solid material an obstacle to design?

Sometimes it is, as we don't know exactly how the galleys of Carthage were, or the composition of the persian fleet in Salamis. But, on the other way, it gives the developer more interesting options, as we need to read every article and book about the topic in order to make things historical (at least as it can be on a computer game).

The screenshots of your game look, frankly, old - something from the early 90s at best. Is this a choice, or just a stepping stone to something better?

It was a choice, and we don't think that the game interface looks old. I mean, of course it doesn't have 3D graphics but it was our choice, because a battle with more than 200 ships each side could be difficult to manage with other views. We thought that the 3D topic wouldn't improve the game enough to waste our time on it, so we decided to go on 2D. Anyway the artwork is, in my opinion, quite good, and the animations of the galleys, sea, weather, etc. will make a dynamic battlefield, trying to avoid the "board" effect of most of computer wargames.

How did you come to work with Shrapnel?

We sent some pics of the original engine, and the concept behind them to some publishers, and the first of them that contacted us was Shrapnel Games. They are the best help a "rookie" game developer can get, I can assure you :-)

Time and money are always issues for the indie developer. How would you describe your process so far?

Time is the decisive factor. I'm working on a research group, so I'm trying to divide my time between both activities. Is is not easy, and I think that every developer that wants to start an indie project should be quite sure
about it, because it's a tough task!

Wargames are tough sell, and hard to make profitable even when costs are low. But you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't have some hope. Who is your audience?

In fact I didn't started the game as a profitable project. Programming is a hobby for me, and I started this game as some people construct models or see films. It was a creative way to improve my programmer skills and enjoy with it.

After realizing that some people could be interested on the result, I contacted with Ruben Zubillaga, the artwork designer, and started to make it a professional product. As the game has been focused on a "niche" sector of the market, we know that we won't get millionaire sells, but we are sure that there exists an audience insterested on this kind of game. In fact, the existence of several publishers of this kind of indie games is the proof.

What has been the most difficult decision so far?

The change of the movement system. As you can see in the first screenshots, we started with a classical hex-grid system. When I tried to develop formation-complex movements I realised that the system wouldn't work well with only 6 headings for a ship, so I started to search for a more flexible system. The result is a movement and combat engine that combines real physics
(acceleration, weight, inertia, ...) with the common factors of wargames (maneuverability, toughness, etc.).

If a mysterious investor showed up and gave you 15,000 dollars to spend on the game, how would you spend that money?

Tough question. Maybe I would like to sell the game with some additional values like printed maps of the battles represented in the game, and diagrams of the ships. This kind of objects have disappeared from modern games, as I recall that some years ago every game was sold with the manual printed and some valuable items like maps and so on. In fact, Shrapnel Games sell its games with printed manual, one of the topics that decided me to sign up with them.

As a developer, which other games or game designers do you look to for inspiration or ideas?

I have played quite a lot of games (specially wargames) in my life. Some of them are classics, like Operational Art of War and Panzer General. I suppose that they are part of my inspiration, but talking about modern titles I would choose Combat Mission and Highway To The Reich. Galley Battles is similar to CM in the fact that the player gives orders to units that try to accomplish them (instead of move like automatons). The turn system is WE-GO, too (orders are executed at the same time). HTTR is an impressive game with the best AI that I've seen ever on a computer game. We are trying to make a competitive AI capable of making tactical plans
and surprise the player.

When will we finally get a chance to see Galley Battles in action?

It depends on the time I will be capable of invest of the game. We expect to publish it this year.

School's Out

2006-06-16T09:02:00.000-04:00

The last exam taken, the last form submitted, the last tearful farewell from a student and my year of teaching has come to an end. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot about myself and my tolerance for bureaucracy and public school expectations.

But I can't say that I'm sad that it is over.

Plans for the summer:

1) Finally get this blog on to my own domain.
2) Deliver all my promised articles on a more regular schedule.
3) Get a couple of chapters written on my book.
4) Get this blog on a routine, with regular weekly features.
5) Clean my house.
6) Play more games.

Top of that "play" list is to play more Gal Civ 2. This is one of my favorite games of the year so far, but I haven't had much time to play it since the review was written. It has been continually updated since release, and the new 1.2 update is supposed to be a big one. Stay tuned for my opinion on that.

Rise and Fall - Between Good and Average

2006-06-14T17:17:00.000-04:00

You can read my review of Midway's Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War here. Actually, this is Stainless Steel Studios' game - the final game from the people that brought you the highly overrated Empire Earth and the greatly undervalued Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. As you can see, their titles never got very creative.

At Gamespot, Jason Ocampo ruled it "fair" - a 6.6 score that would have given me an out if I was allowed to use decimals. Over at 1up, Tom Chick ruled the game barely average with a 5/10, though the conclusion sounds like he almost gave it a three. There is actually quite a bit of difference in those two reviews, but both are let down by Rise and Fall. I wasn't, but then my expectations were really low.

I went back and forth a long time on what score to give R&F. I know that the score isn't the important thing, but I was held to a pretty strict word limit (and still went over...) and there was a lot I wanted to say about R&F. I had to decide whether this was a good game (a seven) or a solid game (a six). Then I had to choose my text to fit the conclusion.

Why the indecision on my part? Because, in many ways, those guys are right. Rise and Fall fails at a lot of what it sets out to do. The action part of the game is cool for a while, but ultimately unfulfilling. There is no sense that this is anything new or novel; it's the same historic RTS that people have been making ever since Ensemble made Age of Empires. The campaigns are terrible.
But for me, the good outweighed the bad. No other RTS this side of Cossacks promises you huge armies and epic sized battles - and delivers. Sure, battles degenerate into swirling masses of crap, but that's true about Rise of Legends, too; the big difference is that BHG's swirling crap is usually very large and easy to notice. The siege warfare component is excellent - you can man the ramparts with archers and force your opponent to build weak ladder carriers to take them out. Civilian advisors are hired by spending "glory" a precious resource that can only be rapidly increased by going into battle. Choosing when to posess your hero can turn the tide of a major battle, or not if your opponent holds of on posessing his/hers until your Cleo in a miniskirt is seriously drained.

And, unlike some observers, I think Rise and Fall is actually a very attractive game. The trees wobble when struck by an axe, the flora and fauna frolic, the battles are appropriately gory. The buildings are a little dull, but really that's about it as far as graphics complaints go.

None of this, however, makes me blind to the problems that neither Ocampo nor Chick spent much time on. (Ah, the tyranny of the word count.)

Take hero selection. Each nation gets two heroes, but for some of them there is only one real choice. Alexander is always a better bet than Achilles, Julius Caesar always trumps Germanicus; both favored heroes are faster, stronger and better with a bow. The Persians have the crappiest heroes (which isn't surprising since they're not even Persians) but Sargon's Bow of Many Killings is almost always a wiser choice. They could have easily made this decision more interesting by making one hero cost more than another, making you choose between an early hero attack or a later one, or giving you the option to switch from a lame hero to a cool one once you had amassed a certain amount of glory.

Take naval combat. This game has great naval combat. Galleys ram each other, troops have to disembark and not just leap off en masse, you need drummers and sailors to perform sophisticated maneuvers...all very cool stuff. So why are there so few naval maps? Or so few maps that balance the new and wonderful ramming battles with the familiar archer/spearmen/horse-dude circle?

So, as you can see, I'm still a bit on the fence between good and average. (I'm on the fence about Rise of Legends, too, but it's in a better neighborhood.) And this is why I wish I had more words. There are never enough words, even on the infinite page of the internet.

How did I finally decide? Well, I took my screenshots, wrote my two or three drafts...and did not uninstall. In fact, once the review was sent off, I played it again. And again. Is it the pull of material that I find inherently interesting? Considering my rapid uninstall of Legion: Arena, I don't think so. Yes, I wish the AI was more aggressive. Yes, I sometimes wished the early economy wasn't so weighted towards waiting.

But mostly I wished for a little more stamina so I could finish off those elephants.

Peace, Love and Understanding - Zero Coverage

2006-06-12T20:43:00.000-04:00

This month's CGM has my review of Breakaway Games new "serious game" A Force More Powerful. And so far, it is the only review of this title.

This has nothing to do with me. I was curious about the title, but was waiting on requesting a review copy until my desk cleared of other stuff. My editor pre-empted me by asking if I would write it, so there I was. And, if you are familiar with the magazine, it even gets one of those gray backgrounds that make it look special. (I use the "give peace a chance" line twice because...I'm an idiot, I guess.)

The game itself is good. Not great. It has some repetitive bits, and I think succeeds more as a management sim than as the edutainment title it pledges to be. But it is undoubtedly a game - a strategy game even. It's just one with an overt message.

The lack of mainstream gaming press coverage of this, admittedly marginal, game is a little disappointing. I know that "serious games" are usually outside the bailliwick of the gaming press, but I think that A Force More Powerful is actually something special in spite of all its faults.

A Force More Powerful works as a game because it takes its message completely for granted. There is never an option for your movement to escalate to violent action. Usually constraint of action is a bad thing in a game; you want to give players lots of options. But this overarching constraint doesn't limit all the peaceful actions available to you. Do you rally the troops this time or call a press conference? Does Susie need more training? Is getting that newspaper out more important than passing out pamphlets in the boonies? These are make or break decisions.

And there is no single way to win a scenario. The government response to your action may vary from game to game, and you might have assets available to you at a crucial time this session that were lacking in the previous session.

I won't re-review the game - I have misgivings that were given ample airing in CGM. And you should buy the magazine anyway. (Not for me, mind you. Do it for the children.) But I would like more people to give AFMP a look. It looks ancient, but plays out today's headlines and reinforces an important point that all us bloodthirsty strategy and wargamers should be reminded of from time to time.

King and Gandhi remade the world without firing a shot.

What I've Written for Games Radar

2006-06-09T21:10:00.000-04:00

Previews

Rome: Total War - Alexander

Reviews

Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War
Glory of the Roman Empire

Macedonia: Total War

2006-06-09T21:05:00.000-04:00

You can read my hands-on preview of the new Alexander expansion to Rome: Total War at Games Radar. This is my first, but hopefully not final, piece for Future Publishing's new web venture.

The download only Alexander expansion has none of the innovation of Babarian Invasion but it does put the phalanx in its proper place as a major military innovation. Rome left open the possibility for a powerful line of spearmen, but there were so many swordsmen and cavalry available that these brave front line troops were often easily outflanked and destroyed.

This is actually pretty common in wargames. GMT's Great Battles series - both in tabletop and computer form - were often criticized for underestimating the strength and longevity of a phalanx on the battlefield. Strong up front but weak in the rear and flanks, phalanxes were easy rout points if you could make a gap somewhere in the line. Though intended to be the anvil to a heavy cavalry hammer, phalanxes are often stuck in place and then routed in a gaming exchange.

A big part of this is the inevitable result of hindsight. Though contemporary Romans described the Macedonian phalanx as one of the most terrible sights they'd ever seen, modern historical wargamers know that the low mobility and poor performance on rough terrain means that the phalanx is dead meat to a group of disciplined swordsmen or light cavalry.

Hindsight is a big problem in most historical strategy and wargaming. Unless design forces it, who would repeat Pickett's Charge? Or Dieppe? Who would waste Me-262s as fighter-bombers instead of bomb group destroyers? Or underestimate the value of gunpowder weapons?

So we are never really "there" no matter how much game designers promise it. I would tell Pompey to charge at Pharsalus. I would tell Ney to move faster at Waterloo. And I would tell Darius to draw Alexander into the hills.

New Paradox Expansion

2006-06-07T19:44:00.000-04:00

Victoria is the ugly stepsister of the Europa Universalis games. It's good, but fatally flawed in a number of ways. Even the much vaunted regular patch reputation of Paradox couldn't fix the problems associated with a Byzantine economic engine, the population management system and armies that swelled to incredible sizes.

It looks like they have finally straightened out the kinks to their own satisfaction. Victoria: Revolutions will be available later this summer. It extends the calendar into the interwar period (making a converter for Hearts of Iron II a no-brainer) and revises many of the troublesome areas of the game.

Colonization will be slowed by requiring states to reach tech levels consonant with living in the severe climates of tropical Africa. Certain government policies will restrict the amassing of a large mobilization pool or the construction of factories. The election system will be reworked, hopefully to the point where the player won't be able to manipulate it so easily.

Victoria was my first print review and it was a modest recommendation. I haven't played it much in the last year or so. Crusader Kings - a much better game - followed closely on its heels and the patching team at Paradox seemed to be at a loss when it came to fixing their sad little 19th century strategy game.

Part of the problem is that Victoria tried to set Europa Universalis in an era that was ill-fitted to that model. Hearts of Iron has the war already pre-ordained, so the diplomacy and domestic policy it sets for the twentieth century can be shallow. The entire point of the game is to win a war. But Victoria has to have domestic policy to reflect the shift from monarchies to democracies, the rise of nationalism, the effect of railroads on industry and mobility, the migration of hundreds of thousands of people for a better life...all the things that make the 19th century the 19th century.

So they threw out the simple economic and military models of EU - too abstracted to capture the radical changes in post-Napoleonic Europe - and tried to capture every major trend in what was a pivotal hundred years in human development. The result was confusing at best. You could tax your lowest class at 100% with no negative effects. Historic events were few and far between, and those that were there never fired right. Immigration was hard-coded to certain geographic regions, frustrating those who thought Australia could be a land of opportunity. Great innovations like the domestic politics model seemed to be only partially implemented.

I am glad that they are taking another crack at it though. Victoria has been cast aside for too long and it has too many interesting ideas to not get another chance.

CGM Summer Issue

2006-06-03T23:56:00.000-04:00

Computer Games Magazine has a combined July/August issue this year, which makes sense since they are trying to launch their MMO mag. One less CGM issue to produce probably means more time for the new publication.

Lots of great strategy stuff in this issue, including a delicious preview of Medieval 2: Total War by Kelly Wand and a preview of the three upcoming Roman city-builders, co-written by Alex Handy and Cindy Yans. My interview with Firaxis' Jesse Smith is there, too. The wargame Birth of America gets a big thumbs up from Bruce Geryk.

Two reviews from me this month. I gave Take Command 2: Second Manassas a strong endorsement; Mad Minute Games should start getting some serious money behind them, because I think they could do some great things if they had things like a staff.

The other review is of the non-violent edutainment title A Force More Powerful. I have some issues with the game, but this is my favorite review of the year so far. AFMP is a game with ideas, and I'll write more about it later. The review was hard to write since the game fails in its primary mission, but succeeds in ways I wasn't quite expecting. Not a great game, but an interesting one.

Be sure to check out Steve Bauman's opening editorial, wherein he writes that New Media sucks. Well, that's an oversimplification. But he makes some very good points about how New Media isn't all that new, and is held to different ethical standards than the print media.

Then there were three...

2006-06-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

Paradox has postponed the release of Roman city-builder Heart of Empire Rome until the first quarter of 2007. No reason was given for the delay, naturally. Heart of Empire hasn't been getting nearly the press coverage that CivCity and Caesar IV have which suggests that they have less to show at this point than two games that were announced months later.

Reading interviews and seeing screenshots of the Roman SimCities still leaves me with the disturbing sensation that there will be nothing to distinguish one game from another. If I had to bet now, it would be on Caesar IV being the best of the three, mostly because of Tilted Mill's beautiful and underappreciated Children of the Nile.

In the meantime, you can build modern cities in the new release City Life from CDV and Monte Cristo. It has been getting good reviews, even from the hardasses at PCGamerUK and Eurogamer (the Old World is mean).

It's the little things...

2006-06-01T16:57:00.000-04:00

Gamespot has a nation preview of the Persians for Midway's upcoming Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, Stainless Steel Studios' final game.

So they go through the units and the heroes and something is a little off. Well, more than a little off.

Persia, like all the nations, gets two heroes. Theirs are Nebuchadnezzar and Sargon II. Two great rulers. Conquerors, diplomatic masterminds, both builders in their own way.

Of course, neither is Persian. Nebby is the great Babylonian king who hauled Judah into exile and promoted the prophet Daniel as his right hand man. Sargon is considered the most important of Assyrian kings.

The rest of the article makes reference to Persia's wars against Greece and Macedon, so they know who Persia is.

Is this just a nitpicky point that doesn't really affect the game. Sure.

But it's not like there is a dearth of great Persians to choose from. Where's Cyrus the Great, the builder of the Achaemenids? Darius who reformed the administration and suppressed the Ionian Revolt? Stick a Sassanid or two in there. But a Babylonian and an Assyrian? Both of whom died before Persia was even an empire?

Things like this bug me. Not enough to write off the game, but enough to make me roll my eyes once or twice.

Irrelevant?

2006-05-29T12:54:00.000-04:00

There are lots of reasons to criticize Game Informer, Gamestop's pet magazine.

Subscriptions are often pushed on consumers (It's the world's "#1 Computer and Video Game Magazine" because of its brick-and-mortar discount, not its editorial chops), the reviews are usually quite short and descriptive, and it uses some .25 based scoring system that is even more ridiculous than a one-hundred point scoring system, exaggerating the fineness of their game quality antennae.

Of course, these sorts of things can be said about many magazines. GI is no better or worse than any of the "official" console magazines. Nothing says fair and balanced coverage like the word "official" in your title.

But Kotaku has held up Game Informer's inability to keep up with console naming conventions as evidence that the entire print magazine world is irrelevant. GI calls the upcoming Nintendo machine the Revolution and not the Wii. Therefore, the print world can't keep up with the fast paced world of game marketing.

This implies that it is the job of magazines to keep up to the minute with news and information. Publishing lag means that the print world would have to stay ahead of the news to compete with gaming websites and blogs. Plus, the prevalence of review websites means that readers can find out about the latest games the day they hit the shelves and not wait a month to see what PC Gamer thinks about them.

The tension between the internet and print gaming press has already led to some changes. Computer Gaming World has changed its game review policy, ditching scores altogether, in favor of more detail analyses of particular games. The magazine covers fewer games than it used to, but in greater depth, leaving the mass coverage to its sister site 1Up.com. Some articles refer the reader to the website for the complete story.

PCGamer's website is mostly editor blogs and a place for their user forum. The podcast is an attempt to supplement their magazine. Parent company Future Publishing has recently launched Games Radar as a review site, so it will have an online presence to compete with rival Ziff Davis.

Computer Games Magazine has the smallest online presence, with a website apparently only tangentially connected to the magazine. You can subscribe there and complain about the Vanguard beta codes in the mostly desolate forum.

Each of the magazines offers content that is not available online, but not because it can't be. CGW's editorials and features could be done online, as could those of the other magazines. Still, magazines persist, and they probably will into the near future.

In my house, magazines are still an event. Every month they arrive and the house stops while me or my wife read. Even though it is possible to write a long feature for a website - Gamespot does it regularly - it is still much more comfortable to read them in paper form. We call our internet windows "browsers", but no gaming website is really set up for casual reading. You go there with a purpose, not to leaf through until something strikes you. Magazines make it easier for me to find bylines - there are some reviewers I will read even if I have no interest in the game itself.

Blogs will never replace magazines, especially if they print every rumor that comes down the pike. The peril of infinite space and the demand for constant content makes many of the more popular blogs, including Slashdot and Kotaku, of minimal utility for me. I only visit if Gametab gives me a headline worth clicking on.

Print irrelevant? Not for me.

Any good gaming pod/videocasts?

2006-05-26T16:12:00.000-04:00

I love talking about gaming almost as much as I love writing about it. I don't pretend to know all there is about the subject and there are a lot of intelligent people out there with some interesting opinions. And, being a mostly tech literate audience, you would expect there to be a plethora of great gaming podcasts or videocasts out there.

But I can't find that many of them.

Not that there aren't popular ones out there. The 1up Show was recommended to me, and it's pretty good as these things go. Well produced, just about the right length, etc. But there are too many people for me to keep track of, and something like this depends on personality as much as content. A strong show should have a limited cast; following 1up around E3 was a bit of a chore.

PCGamer's podcast is quite good and is also PC focused; Dan Morris is a strong host but his guests and co-hosts vary in ability from episode to episode. The camraderie is clear, but sometimes the inside jokes can take over the conversation.

Some people have suggested the Gaming Steve podcast, but it often clocks in at over an hour - sometimes almost two. I hope the theme song is a joke, because it's terrible. Steve's enthusiasm is good, but I find it hard to keep focused on one voice for so long. The developer interviews are decent, but suffer from the same problem that keeps me from paying much attention to interviews with movie directors or actors; asking people about their work is much less interesting when they are also plugging a project.

I've been listening on and off to the Poweruser podcast. Most of it is tech news I have no interest in, but they've isolated the game segment for listening ease. It's part of the media empire of Stardock's Brad Wardell, so he is a regular panelist though moderating duties are left to someone else. Some people have found a change in quality from the point when the ubiquitous Tom Chick was succeeded by Joel Hulsey. I don't see that. I do think that Wardell is sometimes too dominant a presence in the podcast, and Chick could usually match him - though then the third guy was left aside. My major complaint is one that applies to many podcasts - I have a very hard time telling the male voices apart.

I've dabbled with others, but for the most part the limitations of the form become clear. This sort of thing really depends on personality. It's one thing to read a guy's 1000 word review of a game, but a really different skill to come across in conversation as an interesting person. People need personality and not everyone does, no matter how well meaning or enthusiastic they seem. A lot of chemistry can come across in video, but it's not easy to demonstrate this on a radio program.

Plus, as interesting as games are, if you need to fill forty minutes it's almost impossible to avoid hitting the same topic over and over again. Episode 1: World of Warcraft! Episode 2: Girls in Games! Episode 3: Jack Thompson sucks! Add in an annual E3 episode and you have your schedule for the year.

I've often joked that we need a gaming Siskel and Ebert, or even better, McLaughlin Group - put some strong opinionated people in a room, give them an outline of what's being covered (too many podcasts seem improvised) and see what happens. Maybe not Derek Smart strong opinionated, but at least people interesting enough to generate some heat.

Is this too showbiz? Maybe. But few things are as dull as people who agree with each other all the time. You do want people to laugh at each other's jokes. And be professional. But why not put up some topics that gamers really disagree on? Is the Action-RPG a step back in game design? Is World of Warcraft actually bad for the industry? Is innovation dead? Is PC gaming?

These topics could get tired, too. And maybe somebody has covered them and I missed the debate. But have game developers ever been asked really interesting questions on these shows? Gaming Steve is so big on Spore that he mentions it every chance he gets - his interview with some of the Spore people was short on really interesting stuff that we couldn't figure out from the movies.

So help me. Help me find a podcast or video cast that I could listen to weekly. Because I can't believe that there's nothing great out there.

Rise of Legends Packaging

2006-05-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to suss out the nuances in Rise of Legends. I've been told this is a game for RTS wonks, which I used to be but haven't the time for now, so my initial impressions are mixed.

Since I have no intelligent commentary on the game for the moment, I'll talk a bit about the box.

First, DVD cases should have DVDs, especially if they don't have room for four CDs. Three were stuck on the spindle of the box and a fourth was in a paper sleeve tucked behind the manual and reference card. And the sleeve protected one wasn't the play disc, either.

Second, I love the artwork on the box. Stylish lettering, nice drawings. But the screenshots on the back of the box are much too small. The words "real time strategy" are on the front of the box, but someone taking this box off the shelf could still have little sense of what this game looks like or how it plays. The back of the box is taken up with literary descriptions of the three factions, each one getting a tiny a little screenshot that shows next to nothing. The Vinci one is drawn from the campaign, I think.

Third, the box says that Rise of Nations was "The 2003 Game of Year". It was? Where? The AIAS gave the PC Game of the Year title to Call of Duty. Rise of Nations didn't even win PC strategy game of the year; that went to Command and Conquer: Generals.

Rise of Nations was Gamespot's Game of the Year for 2003, so this must be what they are referring to. Makes sense. Gamespot is the biggest gaming site, so their choice has a certain cachet to it. And I agree with the choice, actually. But the label "2003 Game of Year" sort of suggests that this was some official decision by some official body like the Oscar people.

But it's still a very pretty box.

Turn based is not the same as smarter

2006-05-23T17:24:00.000-04:00

Bruce Geryk gets the Matrix Games newsletter, and I don't. If I did, I probably would have written what he did, but it would have had more insulting words in it and a vague reference to Thermopylae.

I wrote a defense of the RTS a while ago, so you can compare our notes and see that we are in agreement on this. But check out Bruce's post first. As prone to old-fogeyism as I am sometimes, I'm not so vain as to think that my games are better than somebody else's games, or that they are testimony to my superior intellect.

The Perfect Strategy Game?

2006-05-21T12:12:00.000-04:00

GameSetWatch has published a design blurb for the "perfect strategy game" as envisioned by IGDA co-ordinator Michael Lubker. His vision has the usual "more, more, more" approach to game design that would be a beast to implement and probably very difficult to design a clear interface for.

Lubker's strategy vision has elements from a bunch of other games cobbled together with no real sense of how the game would actually play. You have vehicles with riders like Act of War, custom units like Galactic Civilizations II, units requiring training and equipping like many RPGs, weather like Empire Earth II...there is not any real sense of what the goals would be, let alone the setting. This is a laundry list of features and not really a game idea properly understood. Lubker's design looks like a standard RTS in many ways (resources, vehicles, tech trees) but it's clear how the training of workers into soldiers would interrupt the flow. I know that I hate sending peasants into buildings in the Cossacks games just so I can get a guy with a gun.

Lubker is not alone, of course. If you ask people what their perfect game would be, most think of a game that lets them do everything that they want to do. But games are really about limits. You need boundaries. Structure. Rules. And throwing a bunch of different cool things into a game design means that you need a lot of structure to make sure that everything fits together properly.

Even Will Wright's magnum opus in the making, Spore, is structured in discreet units. You won't always be evolving a new creature. Once you get to a certain point, you stop evolving (biologically speaking) and the game rules shift. Now you are building a city. Then a civilization. Then you do interplanetary exploration. It looks like a game of everything, but its really not; it's a series of different games that just happen to take place in the same general setting.

GameSetWatch is looking for more descriptions of "perfect games" and you can send your vision to them at editors@gamesetwatch.com

I want my game

2006-05-18T17:38:00.000-04:00

I ordered Rise of Legends over a week ago from GoGamer. It was on sale for 35 bucks (I love 48-Hour Madness) so I snapped it up.

Then, like an idiot, I chose the the cheapest delivery option. So my game is still not here.

And this just when the reviews are starting to hit. Brett Todd's review over at Gamespot got some Rise of Legends fans upset even though, from where I stand, the review is well-reasoned and comes out with a recommendation.

If it's not here by Saturday, I'll be very upset.

Europa Universalis III updates

2006-05-17T18:17:00.000-04:00

The official Europa Universalis III forums have a weekly development update that tends to dangle little delights in the form of screenshots and brief commentary from lead programmer Johan Andersson. This week's was a modest shot of the monarch info screen, but the post describes how the nation tag system has been replaced by something much more friendly to modders.

The amusing thing about the official forums is that the fan hopes for the game are so eager and enthusiastic in light of the obvious fact that the game is already very far along. All the hopes for a Victoria style POP system, trade route economy, or guerrilla warfare are being expressed against the backdrop of a game that is less than a year away and already in beta. Most of the basics have already been established and I doubt that many major socioeconomic, military or political mechanics have yet to be resolved. So these threads are mostly wishlist things, but on a higher order than those threads that complain about the shorter time frame mostly because Byzantium won't be available.

So is this sort of thing pointless? Of course not. Vain wishes are part and parcel of the anticipation. The discussions encourage enthusiasm and, since the developer interference in discussions is minimal, these aren't expectations being encouraged by the designers - so disappointment will be kept to a minimum.

I'll admit to being a sucker for Paradox based almost entirely on Europa Universalis. Sure, I love Crusader Kings, but it's not like Victoria and Hearts of Iron are familiar friends. And the less said about Two Thrones, Crown of the North and Diplomacy the better. And I'm not alone. The Europa Universalis II forum has more threads than any other of their games, and more than HoI2 and CK added together.

Like all official communities, the EU forums are best handled in small doses. Threads can degenerate into debates over which Balkan tyrant controlled what tiny province in 1600. Sometimes there is too much being made of too much historical minutiae - a single anomalous case being held up as justification for a major change in game mechanics. But the loyalty to the developers is mostly thoughtful, the fanboyism mostly held in check, but the enthusiasm entirely genuine.

The Black Hole of E3

2006-05-11T18:42:00.000-04:00

E3 is the biggest gaming event of the year even when nothing happens. So when two new consoles are introduced, its gravitational pull is enough to obliterate all other gaming news in the immediate vicinity.

Take the release of Big Huge Games' Rise of Legends, one of the games that I've been most looking forward to playing. It was released earlier this week, so the net should already have half a dozen reviews. I should know what Jason Ocampo and Dan Adams think of this new game.

So what do we have?

Tom Chick's opinion at Yahoo Games. Sure, he's a valuable opinion (even though, in this case, the text and score don't quite match up for me) but so far the only one.

You'll notice few other reviews or analysis outside of the E3 coverage. Actually, precious little analysis inside the E3 coverage for that matter. There's no point in complaining, but it does make me wonder why anyone would release a AAA title this close to the convention. Early buzz can make a huge difference in game sales and, despite its provenance, Rise of Legends hasn't dominated discussion boards the way that Oblivion did. So it could certainly use the push of positive reviews from Gamespot, Gamespy or IGN.

Even though I've never been to E3, I'm fairly sure that it deserves blanket coverage of some sort. Very little of the coverage so far has been much beyond reporting what has been seen and said. The sensory overload of blaring speakers, crowded display floors and still quite a bit of flesh doesn't provide an environment conducive to serious thinking about what is going on. It must make it that much more difficult to focus on things outside the convention altogether.

Even the good ones can go wrong

2006-05-11T16:10:00.000-04:00

It's not often that Wargamer's Jim Zabek makes some major errors, but I guess E3 brings out the worst in everyone's fact checking, as his E3 preview of Europa Universalis III makes clear.

The game does not "cover...the Middle Ages"; 1453-1786 is the early modern period. And "Defender of the Faith" was in the previus EU title; it is not an original EU3 contribution to religion in the game.

The preview is otherwise uninteresting except for some new screens, including some gigantic and ugly soldiers.

Harpoon sets sail again

2006-05-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

Matrix Games has announced that it will be publishing Harpoon 3 Advanced Naval Warfare. Advanced Gaming Systems has been keeping the Harpoon flame alive for quite a while now, but H3 has been in "community beta"status for a while. The big deal about Harpoon 3 is that it has multiplayer.

The original Harpoon was the first game I got heavily addicted to. It remains the gold standard for naval simulation games. Matrix has now resurrected Harpoon from obscurity (though it isn't quite the same as getting Harpoon 4) and also been working on updating the Norm Koger epic game Operational Art of War.

So, kudos to Matrix for making me a very happy wargamer. The more people who play this, the better for naval sims in general.

E3 PC Strategy Game Lineup

2006-05-06T20:53:00.000-04:00

Here's a preliminary list of the strategy and wargames on display at next week's E3.
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Aggression: Europe 1914 - real time strategy game from Buka Entertainment that covers the years 1914-1945. Battle for Atlantis - fantasy real time strategy game from Play Ten interactive set in pre-classical Greece
CivCity: Rome - Firefly and Firaxis team up on on Roman city builder. Civilization IV: Warlords - The highly anticipated militaristic expansion to last year's best game. Command and Conquer 3: The Tiberium Wars - highly anticipated sequel to one of the RTS world's most recognized series.
Field Ops - genre blender (FPS/RTS) set in the war on terror brought to you by Freeze Interactive. Medieval 2: Total War - Creative Assembly goes back to the Dark Ages to maintain their bright future.
Pacific Storm - another World War II game that tries to blend RTS and flight sims. Buka Entertainment. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War - the demo is already out, so I'm not sure what's left to show at E3.
Sid Meier's Railroads - Sid Meier returns to model trains

Spore - Will Wright's genius made manifest. Again.

Star Trek Legacy - real time tactical space combat in the Star Trek universe

Star Wars: Empire at War Unnamed Expansion - you knew that this was coming

Stronghold Legends - Yet another castle building sim from Firefly with three legendary campaigns.

Supreme Commander - Total Annihiliation is many people's favorite RTS. This is it's pseudo-sequel.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - you can't trust screenshots, but if this is half as good as it looks, I may finally appreciate the Warhammer universe.

Old Games Journalism at its best

2006-05-06T10:46:00.000-04:00

Now that E3 is around the corner, we can expect a lot more bloggish criticism of how the game media does its job. And where E3 is concerned, there are a lot of valid issues. The coverage is often shallow, focused on glitzy presentations and chasing the same two or three stories.

These reports will blend into a call for greater analysis of games - some want more business stories, some want developer interviews, some want cultural critique and others want more personal insights about game culture from a gamer perspective (so-called New Games Journalism).

Me? I'd be happy to read an article like this once a month (hat tip to Bruce Geryk). Chris Farrell plays a lot of boardgames and has a lot of opinions on them. But his articles aren't just the typical good/bad stuff you find on most blogs (including my own from time to time). And this article on card deck size and what it tells you about game design has one brilliant insight that too many game critics ignore.

Many game design decisions have nothing to do with game design.

Finding that a wide range of games from the same publisher have decks of the exact same size, Farrell writes:

I would consider it a monumental coincidence if all 10 of these games, from two-player single-deck games to two-player individual-deck games to multi-player games, covering conflicts from the Reformation to the Cold War, with game lengths running from 3 to 20 turns, all just happened to have worked out such that they really required 110 cards to work properly. I find it far more likely that the designers were told, "you've got 110 cards to work with on the press sheet", and they used all these slots up by picking their 110 favorite events from the period and figuring out how to express them in game terms.

This type of observation has major consequences for the utility of certain cards, player learning curves and information management. Too many cards that do too little can make a game drag out too long or stick one player with an underpowered hand. On the obverse side, what ideas are unexplored because of a hard limit on deck size.

See how easy it is? Only it can't be that easy, since this sort of obvious insight can be applied to computer game criticism but often isn't. And I'm as guilty as the next guy/gal - my commentary on the level of this single piece is few and far between. This could not have been a difficult item for Farrell to write, but sometimes I think that this basic design analysis gets lost in writers' efforts to make things look more complicated than they really are.

Most of Farrell's blog is good, and is useful even if you don't play boardgames. His design comments are top notch and have given me things to look for in computer strategy games.

So maybe we don't need a revolution in gaming criticism; we just need more people to focus on the games themselves at a very basic level.

Developer Interview: Jim McNally

2006-05-05T16:02:00.000-04:00

Longbow Digital Arts is a Toronto based developer best known for its arcade games, especially the very addictive Breakout clone DX-Ball. So what do you do next? You make a strategy game based in Ancient Greece, that's what. Obvious, no?

Jim McNally answered a few questions about Hegemony.
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Longbow Digital Arts has focused, to this point, on arcade and light action games. Hegemony looks like a modern historical strategy game. Has this been a difficult adjustment?

I've always wanted to do more historically based games, so most of the adjustments have been with scaling up and developing our new game engine. The transition has been helped by consolidating development in-house and making a number of arcade games to hone our skills. In essence, the arcade games were stepping stones rather than a passion.

Ancient history has been pretty well trod in computer games, and some would say exhausted by titans like Age of Empires and Rome: Total War. What will set Hegemony apart?

I don’t think that ancient history has been exhausted. At the risk of oversimplifying, my take is that action games, utilize ancient history as a skin, the best example is God of War, while mainstream RTS games have their harvest, build, zerg-rush and destroy, then repeat on a new map, formulas. Although these formula RTS games are very popular and successful they still have a tendency to grossly caricature any historical time period they encompass. On the other hand, the more historically researched wargames tend to be niche, and often use outdated 2D technology engines as extensions of proven board-game concepts, or use a simplified strategy-map with battles fought on more detailed battle-maps (e.g. Rome: Total War). There’s still plenty of room for innovation and historical interpretation.

Now assuming that ancient history hasn’t been exhausted, Hegemony sets itself apart by having all gameplay on one big continuous, satellite based, 3D map with a movement and supply system that focuses strategic and empire building decisions as the logical extensions of local geography.

Philip's wars in Greece often play second fiddle to the better known and better documented wars of his son, Alexander. What are the challenges and opportunities this presents?

I started out researching Alexander then discovered that his father Philip had created the army and built the Kingdom from which Alexander launched his campaign. Philip took over a defeated kingdom, on the verge of being destroyed and assimilated by its neighbors. This makes Philip an ideal subject for a rags-to-riches wargame.

A lot of people find hoplite warfare boring. It's just pushing and poking with sharp sticks. What is the appeal of this type of battle to a developer?

There's a lot more to the era than simple hoplite style battles. First you have the somewhat autonomous Greek City-States in a constant state of war. Then you have Philip introducing the Macedonian Phalanx as the core of his battleline. Add in the development of torsion catapults and more aggressive siege techniques, plus Philip’s use of cavalry to aggressively pursue defeated enemies after battle, and you have the basis of logistics, combined arms battles and siege-craft. A less flashy but extremely significant evolution during the 4th century BCE was the increasing importance of light infantry Peltasts for reconnaissance in force and raids. Add merchant shipping, battle fleets of triremes and plenty of piracy based from the numerous island City-States of the Aegean, and as developers, we have plenty to work with. Researching around the origins of modern western civilization is an added bonus.

One screenshot shows a zoomed out view of a mountain pass and a minimap. This implies some sort of strategic overlay. Can you say a bit about the strategy side?

The minimap is always present as an aid to navigating and jump-moving on the game-map. Other than the awe effect, the more zoomed-out view will have map overlay information labels to aid in play.

Philip had a plan to invade Persia, and was setting the stage when he was murdered. Will the player have this opportunity?

Yes, one of the requirements to be declared Hegemon of Greece is for Philip to capture 10 cities of the Persian Empire and control them for 2 years. The Persian Empire controls 35 cities in the game, from the Asian side of the Bosphorus and Hellespont southward to cities such as Cnidus and Helicarnassus and Sardis. The player will be able to take them all, although a sizable Persian army supported by a Phoenician fleet, will enter the fray.

Hegemony has not gotten a lot of advance press, even on sites dedicated to this sort of game. Has it been difficult to get the word of mouth going?

Other than the initial announcement and presentation at the Toronto chapter of the IDGA, we haven’t tried to get any publicity or word of mouth going, and have been pleasantly surprised by the interest that has been expressed.

As it takes time away from development, we've been holding off updating screenshots and videos until we're into full beta-testing.

Has being an independent developer with no history in the strategy arena made it harder to find publishers and distributors?

Although a number of smaller publishers have expressed interest, we haven’t been actively looking for a publisher. We run our own servers, store and credit-card processing, so we’re in a good position to self-publish over the internet. Plus, to facilitate downloads, our new game engine has been designed to be compact and we expect the release download to be in the 80-100meg range.

We’d ultimately like to have a “bricks and mortar” publisher as well, especially for localized versions overseas. This is where proving ourselves first, becomes important to getting the "right" deal for LDA.

To more specifically answer your question, yes, it is much more difficult to find a publisher, and under the circumstances, prior to having a playable, near-finished game to show, we'd likely be wasting our time trying.

Hegemony will be moving into its next beta phase soon. Do you have a release window in mind?

Our release window should be sometime in the fall.

Preserving the Computer Canon

2006-05-03T16:02:00.000-04:00

If you don't read Game Politics, you should. Though Kotaku and Joystiq get more hits, Game Politics has become my most important source for information on how government and its citizens respond to gaming as a hobby or culture.

Today's find is a newbyte on the Library of Congress's push to preserve dying forms of digital information. Given the focus on the site, GP's exaggerated focus on the single mention of "video games" in the LoC strategy summary is natural. It does raise an interesting question, though.

If we leave aside the technical emphasis of the LoC project (i.e., keeping old media forms legible and rescuing data from obsolete disks), what do you preserve, and why?

This is quite a different question from the Desert Island Disks question that Computer Games Magazine asks. Ye olde "What games do you take with you to a deserted island?" query is aimed at the individual gamer, and so largely depends on individual tastes. If the island has an internet connection, answers change dramatically.

But if the question is "Which games do you preserve for posterity?" the issue takes a completely different turn. Civilization IV is a much better game than the original Civilization but the original is one most likely to be preserved because of its seminal importance in the evolution of the strategy genre. Similarly, SimCity would be included in any list where Caesar III would likely not.

In its role as curator of America's creative culture, the Library of Congress also maintains the National Film Registry, a list of movies considered central to the development of American society and the film art. There are now 425 protected movies, including material of historical interest like McKinley's inauguration and the Zapruder film. So some of this stuff isn't even entertaining.

What would a computer gaming canon look like? What types of technical and stylistic achievements should be noted for future generations?

Sex and the single (or married) gamer

2006-05-02T19:37:00.000-04:00

My occasional indie contribution to Computer Games Magazine continues in this month's June issue. My Alt.Games column covers Space Station Sim, Disaffected and Game Biz.

The issue's main feature covers sex in the computer gaming industry and I highly recommend. Though certainly a titillating subject, the two part story itself by Damon Brown and Lara Crigger (neither of whose work I am familiar with) is a nice sequel to an earlier CGM feature on retro-gaming.

It also comes at a coincidental moment in gaming journalism. This month's Computer Gaming World covers the same issue but different ground as does this week's Escapist. Why the sudden obsession with sex? Given the lead times required for getting this sort of stuff edited and published, something may have been going through the rarified editorial air. But features take a while to put together (one reason I am sort of holding off till the summer to assemble a feature) plus The Escapist makes its issue themes available to the public months ahead. So it's not like a single issue made editors jump up and say that early May is the best month for this sort of thing.

In any case, this is an issue that will continue to pop up for as long as mature people play games. Sex is really a non-issue in strategy games - Cleopatra Spears notwithstanding.

H.G. Wells and Game Design

2006-04-26T16:08:00.000-04:00

Greg Costikyan's article on the history of board and strategy gaming provoked me to return to H.G. Wells' Little Wars.

Actually, the full title is Little Wars: A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books. Note that we already have the quaint idea that these sorts of games are for boys and men. In the book, Wells makes reference to a female acquaintance and doesn't miss the opportunity to refer to her as a "daring ornament of her sex".

The Gutenberg version omits the pictures that accompany the text in the book, so his description of a game he completed (an early After Action Report) is missing some clarifying images. But for the most part you can get a good idea of the game from his account and an even better idea of Wells' high hopes for the game.

First, there is little shame in Wells about a bunch of adults running around with tin soldiers. The minutiae of the rules and measurements clearly takes this out of the realm of simple play, and would probably be a challenge for even the cleverer sort of boys, let alone masculine girls. Wells emphasizes standardization in the size of soldiers, something that most children would not care much about in a game of this sort, I figure.

Second, there is no denying the middle class nature of the game. Only in the "Upstairs, Downstairs" world of Edwardian England could one conceive of gentlemen crawling on the floor large enough to measure troop movements in feet. Wells proposes a lawn version of his game, as well. Wells speaks of spending an afternoon and evening on a single session - this is the purview of those who can afford to spend the time.

But there is so much recognizeable in Wells' efforts to modify his game that he well earns the title of Father of Wargaming. There were certainly Kriegspiels before; Wells refers to them. But those are for training the soldiers. Wells seeks amusement - the thrill of battle without actually having to die. Wells is an idealist positing that his game is a great substitute for war.

Look at Wells' emphasis on the historicity of rules. Unhappy that solo soldiers were encouraged to charge bodies of men, Wells developed rules that mandated that greatly outnumbered troops would become prisoners instead of Sergeant York. Guns can be captured in similar circumstance. He suggests alternate rules that would cover rifled weapons and shrapnel. Even the idea of moving beyond piled encyclopedias to miniature houses is based on the recognition that it just didn't feel right.

Wells also tries to implement fog of war rules, by suggesting that troops be moved in unmarked boxes until an opponent gets in range to see what is in the box. The suggestion is not perfect, of course; you will always see the box. But the idea of an amateur game with minimal refereeing trying to provide the necessity for scouting is a brilliant step.

In Little Wars, Wells admitted that he had not tried all the variants he mentions. And, as simple as the rules are, I still can't fathom how this sort of thing gets worked out in the absence of an umpire, who would have to know the rules. As adult as Wells portrays the activity to be, even the eccentric English probably thought that this was a little peculiar.

Still, anyone interested in game design should probably check out Little Wars. It's an early twentieth century design document that shows how a great author tried to make a game for grown-ups.

Must Read Article

2006-04-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

All strategy and wargamers should read Greg Costikyan's contribution to this week's Escapist. It's a great little summary of the evolution of board and paper games, including strategy and wargames. I don't as eagerly endorse the conclusions he draws for the computer gaming industry, but his account of the history of gaming is full of juicy nuggets.

Like, did you know that wargamers were the first to use the term "gamers" as reference to their community? I didn't.

A picture is worth next to nothing

2006-04-22T12:19:00.000-04:00

Four sim-Rome games coming out in the near future, and, based on the screenshots, not a hell of a lot to distinguish them.

Here are shots of Firaxis/Firefly's CivCity:Rome.

Here's Caesar IV from Tilted Mill.

Haemimont's Glory of the Roman Empire is here.

And finally, Deep Red's Heart of Empire: Rome.

Now, it is completely natural that the screens will be almost interchangeable. Ancient Rome is ancient Rome and it will always be marble temples, aqueducts, theaters and some wood huts.

But I wager that however similar these games look, there will be some noticeable differences between them. And that is the problem with screenshots.

In an understandable effort to cram as much visual splendor as possible into a single picture, important things like game interface and how the building relates to a larger game mission are left out. Screenshots are almost always taken divorced from any context.

I'm not talking about screenshots that may intentionally mislead ("bullshots"), though that also happens. I'm talking about screenshots as stills completely isolated from how the player will actually interact with them. None of these Roman city-builder shots give you an idea how the buildings are constructed, how the economy will work or whether there is any significant military component to the game.

Game videos are often not much better. As I type, I'm downloading the demo for Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, Midway's action/rts that marked the end of the line for Stainless Steel Studios. Almost all of the gameplay videos released to this point have emphasized the "hero mode", wherein you as the player take part in the battle on your screen. Game descriptions, however, have mentioned that this is only a single part of the game. Screenshots show traditional RTS action, but nothing besides men on ships to set it apart from the rest. Video shows a half-naked Cleopatra cutting heads off.

Screenshots, in my opinion, need to show the interface at some point in development - at least if they want to be informative. Discussion of the new Europa Universalis III screenshots in the developers' diaries have focused on the revelation of a court screen and a new economic/tech investment screen - not as much on how the trees still look stupid. Discussion on real information.

But screenshots are really about marketing, and marketing means showing as much of the artwork as possible; these are "video" games after all. But based on these Roman city shots, I so far have no real reason to pick one over the others.

Wardell fires back

2006-04-21T17:36:00.000-04:00

Brad Wardell, the big brain behind Galactic Civilizations II (one of the best strategy games of a young 2006) thinks I am wrong. Or at least focused on the wrong things. And not just me.

In my recent Round Table post on gaming friendships, I noted that GC2's lack of multiplayer handicapped it when compared to other strategy games available to us. I wrote how good MP experiences encourage me to look for this feature in the games I play. Wardell replies:

I think if we sat down and did an inventory of strategy games that have come out in the past 5 years that the multiplayer fanbase has gotten served quite well. By contrast, people like me who want to sit down and play against computer players have gotten, in my opinion, the shaft.

This is an intriguing interpretation of how gaming has developed. Have single player gamers gotten the shaft?

If you look around at gaming coverage, the 800 pound gorilla of World of Warcraft can make it appear that everyone is playing multiplayer games all the time. I know that my multiplayer gaming has increased a thousandfold in the last year or so.

But multiplayer is still very much an afterthought in strategy game design. Real time strategy game developers seem to spend more time on crafting lame single player campaigns instead of doing proper faction balancing - something that can only become really apparent after hours of multiplayer experience.

Computer wargames are almost exclusively single player oriented - it often takes some kind of masochist to want to play the larger SSG games by email. Even a game that seems ready made for MP action like Second Manassas has no way to lose to a friend.

None of the Paradox games have really worked all that well in multiplayer - especially the no-brainer Diplomacy - sometimes because of the huge time commitment involved, but as often because of poor networking.

Civ IV has a great multiplayer interface and loads of options, but the Pit Boss wasn't made available until fairly recently - about six months after release. No doubt what their priorities are.

Wardell admits that the next GalCiv will likely have multiplayer, and I am very much looking forward to Society, Stardock's upcoming MMRTS. So even he realizes that MP has become very important to people like me.

But it's not like I deducted points from GC2 because of the lack of multiplayer; I didn't. My review was almost entirely enthusiastic, with my biggest complaints reserved for documentation. I still play most of my games alone, after all. As my gaming relationship post noted, I prefer to play with friends and friends are not always available. Single player is all of our first entrees into a new game.

But the multiplayer experience is becoming more and more important to me. And games that provide it will probably have a longer life on my computer.

By the way, I still highly recommend Galactic Civilizations II.

Making the pie bigger

2006-04-17T14:04:00.000-04:00

My recent review of Birth of America has been linked over at the unfortunately named Tacticular Cancer, a sister site to the better known RPGCodex. Since they frequently link to my rants and raves, I've added them to my site list on the side bar. It's a fairly decent linking site at this point, though I hope they can soon add some original content. Some of the people there seem to know what they are talking about.

The forum post on my review has raised an interesting question about getting people interested in wargaming. I made a throwaway comment in my BoA review in which I doubted its efficacy as a starter wargame. A guy named Naked Lunch argued against that and has asked the very reasonable question "What would I recommend?"

And that's kind of the kicker, isn't it? There was a time when there were lots of beer and pretzel wargames that served as training grounds for would-be Rommels and wannabe Lees; games that were easy to understand and provided some immediate satisfaction. Stuff like Panzer General. That war-ish niche has been filled by the RTS in many respects. It looks like war, and even feels like war, but for people who prefer Korsun Pocket they don't quite scratch that itch.

It's not news to anybody that wargaming is less than it once was, percentage wise. There are niche developers like HPS and the occasional publisher like Matrix Games or Shrapnel that are willing to put some money behind things like Flashpoint Germany or the Armored Task Force series.

And it's not like there aren't some great wargames out there. Birth of America is almost great. The SSG wargames are gems that don't get enough publicity. If Second Manassas holds up to the high standard set by its predecessor, we could have an excellent introductory serious wargame company not to far from me.

So how does a genre move beyond its base? I point RTS people to Battle for Middle Earth II. I point wannabe strategy gamers to the Total War series. But wargamers? Could I be wrong about Birth of America?

Please enlighten me.

On Site Review: Birth of America

2006-04-15T20:10:00.000-04:00

It looks like a grand strategy game, but Birth of America is a pure wargame. No building of units, no construction of buildings (beyond the odd fort), no resouce gathering. This alone will turn a lot of people away from the game, despite the novelty of the 18th century setting. More's the pity.

AGEOD's first game puts you in control of one of the sides in the French and Indian War or the American Revolution through two long campaigns or a number of shorter scenarios. It plays out in simultaneous turns and gives you all of North America east of the Mississippi (plus some Caribbean fortresses) for your battlefield.

The first thing that strikes you about BoA is the artwork. The map itself is a mess of greens and browns, splotched with white in the winter. But the counters are great, with leaders having very convincing portraits and the armies having clear colors. Planned movement is indicated with with lines and little numbers marking how many days it will take the army to get to a location along the way.

The simplicity of the game hides how well it mirrors 18th century combat. Sieges can take a long time, but assaults can be effective. Supply trains are essential to long distance treks, but can slow you down immensely. Nothing breaks a campaign like winter does, and breaking fortress towns like Louisbourg will take many winters or a lucky assault.

Fog of war is connected to control of regions, terrain and the abilities of your generals. Some of your little men will be able to hide better than others, making ambushes an effective strategy. It is a little counterintuitive that Cornwallis can set an ambush in the wilds of the Ohio Valley, but the game doesn't discriminate against any one side.

(I have been very unfortunate in my efforts to get a PBEM game going. There is an error on one end that prevents us from even getting the game going. Once I can get a game running, I'll comment on its suitability for multiplayer.)

Any technical issues with scrolling and load times have been ironed out from the preview, making BoA a mostly pleasant experience.

So much for the description. The conclusion? Birth of America is a very good game. The design is wholly original, and is not an attempt to ape or mimic the design of any other title on the market (a charge that could be fairly leveled at Philippe Thibaut's other strategy games, both of which had more than a passing resemblance to Europa Universalis.) As turns move on, a greater sense of the turning points of the conflicts evolves and the strategic situation facing each of the nations involved becomes clearer.

Take the issue of reinforcements. Each side is reinforced based on historical exigencies. This poses a problem for the British in the French and Indian War. They have too few troops in place to be strong everywhere they need to be and are faced with a colonial levy system that means some forces get disbanded once their service is up. They will eventually be reconstituted, but back at colonial capitals. So, the British player has to plan his/her early movements with this in mind. A stream of Redcoats will soon arrive, though, meaning that the French player has the opposite problem - he/she has to move quickly.

The inclusion of river movement adds another twist left out of many theater level wargames. The rivers of Eastern North America give the side with the craft power to move a lot of troops quickly. So, control of port towns not only means controlling the high seas but also controlling the interior waterways.

No game in recent memory so effectively enforces the concept of "Winter Quarters", meaning that moving troops like little firefighters eliminating threats here and there won't work. You need to decide what your one or two priority targets are for a campaign season and hope to hold ground in those places your opponent targets. This makes for some serious strategic thinking.

Birth of America is not perfect. Turn results could be displayed more prominently and the rollover tooltips are often in too small a font. The entire game could be written with larger print, in fact. The music is forgettable and there are enough bugs and glitches to mean that we are now on a sixth patch - with still more to come.

Plus, if you don't like wargames this one won't win you over. It doesn't have enough of the political flavor to draw in afficianadoes of the Revolutionary Period and not enough chrome to bring in newcomers. This is too bad, since the game itself is accessible enough to newcomers to recommend to people want to give this sort of game a try.

(Full disclosure: Though uncredited, I edited the English language PDF manual.)

Good Gaming Relationships

2006-04-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

I am a very nice guy. I make friends very easily, can engage with strangers comfortably and am a devastatingly charming dinner companion. Modest, too.

But even someone as patient and self-effacing as I am has his limits. And my limit is anonymous online gaming. I hate it. I can't go into a multiplayer lobby and just play a random guy. (If you saw a bunch of twits spamming a Battle for Middle Earth II chat screen, you wouldn't either.) Even on many serious wargaming forums I am a little antsy about starting up a PBEM game with WarDude113.

It's not that I have had a lot of negative experiences with this sort of thing. I haven't. I've heard all the stories about hackers, cheaters, sore losers...the gamut of online crimes against fun. And just like I don't have to be mugged to know that I shouldn't walk back from the Metro at 1 am, I don't have to be beaten by a cheater to know that I can avoid that situation.

One big reason to avoid anonymous online people is that I have a reservoir of people I know I can game with. People I trust to be good opponents and who will provide a stress free experience.

The first sign of a good gaming relationship is the acceptance that people are of different levels. As much as I love gaming, I know that I will not be the best at much of it. I have one friend who will always beat me in RTS - though I can make it close. I have another who I play wargames with (everything from Sid Meier's Gettysburg to Birth of America, assuming we can get it to work right) who I expect a thrashing from almost every time out. Despite the predictability of many of the outcomes, there is never a sign of impatience or frustration.

The second sign of a good gaming relationship is the teaching phase. Often a friend or colleague will get a game a week or two before I will. Being an idiot, I often jump right into multiplayer. Good gaming friends will often give a word or two of advice before, during and after the match. I've done the same with friends new to one game or another.

The third sign is nagging. "You have to buy this!" Why? "So we can play it together." Is there any finer compliment in the world than "We should play this"? (I'm starting to get a lot of this nagging about World of Warcraft.)

As I think through my gaming friendships, most of them exist purely online - not in any real world context. I've met my wargaming pal only once. My other gaming friends are either Europeans, colleagues scattered through America or random names from a good gaming forum or chat room whom I think I can trust.

Good multiplayer experiences can sure spoil you, though. Galactic Civilization II doesn't have MP, Civilization IV does. Both are great games, but guess which one will have a longer life on my hard drive? (And not just mine.) I've been a single player gamer for almost my entire life, but I have finally come to the point where a lot of gamers were a couple of years ago, seeking out multiplayer in every game. Good MP experiences have also made me hungry for real world human contact in gaming. Board gaming, DnD...anything to keep the rush of shared competition going between computer game cycles.

Friends and books two things you can never have too many of. I have Xfire. Look for me. If I can trust you.

Please visit the Round Table's Main Hall for links to all entries.

Raison d'etat

2006-04-14T10:17:00.000-04:00

While finishing up my review of the non-violent conflict sim A Force More Powerful (hopefully coming to a magazine near you in a month or so) it occurred to me that it shows a side of politics that is completely missing from strategy games - the question of legitimate and illegitimate actions.

In a site that I am not always sure is parody, Right on Games notes with complete accuracy that most Civilization players would not have put up with Iran's flouting of their desires without a prompt attack. In Civ III, I've started wars over horses, iron and dye. In Civ IV, I've attacked the Aztecs because, well, they're the Aztecs. (I've also started wars over oil, but somehow that doesn't seem as far-fetched.)

There is also no domestic penalty for any of this. Sure, war exhaustion will kick in if you've been at it for too long, but the reasons you go to war are never made explicit to anyone in game. You may annoy some mutual friends (like France) and nuclear weapons really get rival nations upset. But there is no price to be paid at home for an adventurous foreign policy.

This is the analog of the "casualties/schmasulaties" problem I wrote about last year. In that post, I observed that wargames give no sense of the loss involved or sacrifice required in a battle. Battles are isolated from campaigns, losses don't necessarily carry over from one fight to the next...many modern wargames are more about equipment losses than manpower losses.

In short, as much as strategy gamers like to say that they appreciate tough decisions, they are never faced with the really tough ones. War becomes a cost-benefit analysis (in a "realist" model) and not a decision that has important consequences for anyone but yourself. In Europa Universalis II, I've started wars even though it meant that an ally would get overrun - sometimes even because they would get overrun. Nuclear weapons are always beautiful when they explode.

Much of this is because of the god-like perspective that strategy games give to the player. You are the big picture guy/gal who can't be bothered with the problems of citizens except insofar as they might revolt. There is no impression that your rule is a charge or a trust or dependent on the legitimacy of your actions.

Oddly enough, Crusader Kings - with all the divine right that the term "king" connotes - comes closest. Here, almost all of your concerns are domestic. Do your vassals respect you as a leader? Do you have a reputation for piety? If I assassinate my eldest idiot son so he can't rise to the throne, I might lose all legitimacy (through acquiring the "kinslayer" trait.) Upset the Pope and you could get excommunicated - say farewell to your kingdom as everyone around you grabs claims on it.

I've written before about how the realist notion of a state of nature permeates the strategy genre. It even approaches neo-realism in how states are billiard balls in a game centered on a balance of power. And I love me my wars - virtually, of course.

Still, I am convinced that there is something to be gained by giving the cyber commander-in-chief more to be concerned about than what he/she can get by conquering their peaceful neighbor to the north. Because if life was Civilization, Canada would be gone by now.

Civ IV patch 1.61

2006-04-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

Civilization IV has been patched, and the changes are pretty interesting.

In probably the most significant gameplay change, the "chop till you drop" strategy has been seriously weakened. Many of the most successful Civ IV players center their early game around the deforestation of their first few cities. The wood is converted into hammers, pushing production ahead very quickly. The new patch limits forest cuts and decreases their productivity the further you chop from a city. Discovering mathematics will give you a 50% bonus to the deforestation effort.

The biggest longterm balance changes, though, relate to modifications to civilization traits and civic costs. Expansive states now have extra health to let their cities manage growth better and financial states don't get the bonus that came with banks. These changes are in line with many complaints from users that financial leaders were overpowered and expansive ones too weak to really expand.

The Pit Boss and SDK have also been released, which means that there should be a revival of MP interest and lots of new mods in the coming months.

The Movies

2006-04-10T10:34:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I'm just getting to this now. It was on my wish list, so the missus picked it up for my birthday. Good of her to do that. Always marry a nerd.

Lionhead and Peter Molyneux take a lot of beatings for creating games that are high on ambition and low on execution, and, despite the mostly positive reviews that The Movies got, this game has been lumped into the morass of failed expectations by much of the gaming public.

From what I can see that's a little unfair. I haven't really explored the much touted custom movie maker yet and I can already tell that this is a pretty good tycoon game. There are some interface problems, but there is a lot to recommend The Movies at a certain price point.

What I like most is that The Movies has a sense of time and place that few other games do. The period movies you make have the right feel, the clothing looks right, nothing is garishly out of place unless you advance too quickly on the research curve. I can think of few other "historical" game that has the same clarity about where and when it is set. And considering that the time changes with every passing hour, this is quite an accomplishment. Children of the Nile managed that feeling, but it was consciously an historical simulation, and limited to one time frame. This is a business simulation.

I may end up being disappointed in the end. But even if this is not the greatest people management sim of all time, I don't quite get the dismissiveness that many gamers have for this title.

Actually, I think I do. Molyneux is still paying for Black and White. Developers that embrace publicity can never move out of the shadow of their worst game. Even as Derek Smart's spaceship sims have improved (still not enough for me to understand them, mind you), he still bears the yoke of Battlecruiser 3000. A name change might let his games escape the past. John Romero will always be stuck with Daikatana. And Molyneux is forever linked with monkeys that throw crap.

This is partially Molyneux's fault. He has a history of trumpeting how great and revolutionary his games will be, and from the man who gave me Populous, I expect great and revolutionary things. But Black and White and Fable were only partially successful in meeting expectations that he had raised.

And so, this good but not great movie making toy is lumped in with Moly's Follies even though he made none of the same exaggerated predictions about what it would be or how it would transform gaming. Unfair, I think. But gamers are not exactly known for being fair.

Developer Interview: Ming-Sheng Lee

2006-04-07T16:54:00.000-04:00

In another of my series of interviews with independent strategy game developers,
Ming-Sheng Lee of Magitech games agreed to answer a few questions about his enterprise, its past and its future.

Magitech is a Canadian gaming company that has had a bad run of luck. Its first game, Takeda, had the misfortune to arrive shortly after the almost identically themed but graphically superior Shogun: Total War. Creative Assembly has gone on to international acclaim and huge success.

Magitech has not. Its second game, Strength and Honour, languished for a long time before the company decided to go the self-publishing route in North America. It was mostly ignored. Takeda 2 was released earlier this year and has also eluded the notice of most of the press, though last month's CGM had my quite negative review of the title.
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Why did you decide to do a sequel for Takeda?

I have some attachment to the Takeda game. Maybe it is because Takeda was my first published box game, and maybe because my father used to told me the stories about the Japanese samurai at Takeda's time since I was very young. From the company's view, it is reasonable that we start the Takeda 2 because of the feedback from Takeda 1 was not too bad and because it is a setting that we don't have to do much new research.

Strength and Honor found a number of third party publishers outside North America, but you had to resort to self-publishing in Canada and the US. Did this surprise you?

It is kind of surprise us that the North America PC publishers didn't pick up Strength and Honor for publishing. Though we did receive couple of offers but we decide to go by ourselves. It is a fast changing industry and overall, it seems the overseas market is getting stronger lately.

Strength and Honor has had almost zero coverage in the gaming press - even on sites that prefer to cover the indie scene - and Takeda 2 has likewise been uncovered. To what do you attribute this lack of attention?

I guess we are just not up to the job in marketing. We are considering hiring an agent for PR next time.

Have you changed how you promote your games so that more strategy gamers can learn about them?

We didn't really put on any advertising for Takeda 2 or Strength & Honour in the North America market partially because we want to how the market reacts. As our latest title coming up, we will consider put all three products together and launch another demo kits for press.

The original Takeda was released shortly after Creative Assembly's Shogun: Total War. Strength and Honor came out just after Rome: Total War. What is the effect of having a popular series cover the same ground as your titles?

Somehow, this has a huge effect which I didn't expect it in the first place. Most people think we are a clone but the releasing date explained itself that it just happened both companies were developing the same types of game in the same time, twice. However, becoming a shadow of a mainstream game makes our games more difficult to stand out. People just comparing these titles without much knowing of what we really are.

In Takeda 2, you have abandoned much of the domestic government level micromanagement that Strength and Honour had. Why?

Basically we try to create a few different product lines. Takeda1 was a simple world mode mixed with plotted missions. S&H is an open world for players to explore. Takeda2 is a mixed of both. It's not really which one is better but we like to offer players different game-plays in these title lines. And, if players favor one more than another, we will put more work on the popular one.

How big is your staff is Magitech? Does your size pose particular challenges in developing grand strategy games?

We are a really small company that most people wouldn't believe. However, size doesn't mean we could create a lower quality game. It is very challenging and it's definitely an up hill battle. In every one of our games, we have a focus that no other games have. In Takeda series, it's the
formation. In S&H, it's the personnel system.

What have been the biggest influences on Magitech as a developer?

The biggest influences on Magitech are actually the team itself. It's not budget, and it certainly not the technology. It's how Magitech sees what the games fun part about. Sometimes, we will have discussions or even arguments about how a game should be. After clear up the ideas then we will see if we can realize the ideas using our current resources. It's like reality and dreams; budget is the reality and idea is the dream. Although budget is limiting where we can go, the dream is the one actually driving
us.

What's next for your company?

We now have our new title Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, code name K3 coming up. It's built under the same engine as Takeda 2 but with improvements on interface and adding features on RPG. The story is set on China AD189. We expect K3 to be ready by June 2006 and shall be released in summer of fall depends on the regional publishers' schedule. We are also
seeking strategic alliance with other developers and hopefully we could upgrade our games into a higher quality level for the players.

Spring Break

2006-04-07T16:45:00.000-04:00

I finally get a week to spend on some important chores, including finishing up some reviews for some important people plus the usual house stuff. (I'll also be going to my first Nats game of the season on Wednesday night.)

The shame of the week, though, is that there is no huge new release for me to sink my teeth into. Rise of Legends is still a month off, so my gaming time will be consumed by some old stand-bys - Civ IV, GalCiv2, Battle for Middle Earth II. I've played all of these a lot, so something new would be appreciated.

I will hopefully find the time to give Birth of America a serious play through, including a PBEM game with my longtime wargaming rival. So I should have a few comments about it together by the end of the week. My impressions are still very positive at this point.

Moving too soon

2006-04-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

The Rise of Legends demo is proof positive that sometimes a developer's enthusiasm or zeal to get their game before the public can be a PR failure. Complaints about how lacklustre this highly anticipated demo was were legion. The graphics don't look all that good leading to a lot of concern that RoL was just too similar in look and feel to Rise of Nations. In a quick response to the outcry, Tim Train has announced that a second, improved demo is on the way. Considering that the game is only a little over a month away, you would hope that any demo would be an accurate reflection of the final product. Apparently not.

Paradox has recently released screenshots of Europa Universalis III, a game still almost a year away. And the screens are hideous. Of course they are. The game has only just been announced and most of the artwork is in the placeholder or concept phase. Still, with a huge worldwide audience, Paradox is under pressure to release something to the masses.

Part of me misses the days before the Internet, before it was essential for a developer to have an almost continual buzz about their game. Screenshots were limited to magazine articles or game catalogs and most people knew very little about a game until it was released. Then came the Internet and there was more. Then came everybody owning a website and PR companies sending them everything they had to keep the game in the public eye. The sense of surprise is gone, and there is real risk of never feeling that you are discovering a game.

There is an upside, naturally. The public battering that Big Huge Games took for the first demo could only have happened on the Internet. This is a reminder to all of us that sometimes companies care about their customers. For Paradox, early screenshots allow the audience to play along with "what does this screenshot mean?", a popular forum activity where people take a tiny image and try to deduce what the entire game is going to be like. This can make for some interesting conversation.

I would be lying though if I said that my reactions to either of these "premature" releases were positive - or even neutral. The Rise of Legends demo was uninspiring for me, though I suspect a lot of that was because my hopes were sky high. The EU3 screenshots gave me Diplomacy flashbacks as I puzzled over why this game is being done in 3D.

Big Huge Lunch

2006-04-01T11:29:00.000-05:00

The sign of a good lunch is when you've finished the food and still want to sit and talk for another two hours. So I had a very good lunch yesterday with Portico reader and Big Huge Games Design Lead Paul Stephanouk. He was present at the creation of the gaming company, and so played an important role in Rise of Nations, still the best RTS ever.

I described this meeting as a business lunch to friends and acquaintances, but it really wasn't. It was mostly two guys talking about what they liked and didn't like in games and a lot of speculation about game design and how strategy games can move in new directions.

It's always nice to meet someone who shares your interests and opinions, and it seems that Paul and I are on the same page of a lot of stuff. Similar likes and dislikes, but always for our own personal reasons.

The highlight, I think, was hearing Paul's opinions on artificial intelligence and the challenge of developing a strategy game AI that plays like a human player and/or is able to diagnose a situation instead of having build orders and precise goals.

Or maybe the highlight was hearing that Paul has hundreds of board games and that he is an old fashioned wargamer. Envy - we meet again!

Actually, the highlight was the entire conversation with another adult game geek who is really enthusiastic about his job and the hobby. There were all kinds of little details dropped here and there, but nothing earth shattering. Since the conversation was casual and, therefore, off-the-record, I couldn't tell you anyway.

Thanks, Paul, for a great afternoon. Next time, I get the check.

On the Outside Looking In

2006-03-28T16:31:00.000-05:00

My favorite gaming forum has become infested by Oblivion. Bethesda's latest role playing epic is the year's first must-have game. It has been widely anticipated, heavily previewed and extensively screenshotted ever since it was announced. I expect that whereever you read and talk about games, Oblivion is the game de jour.

It is also one more must have game that I do not have. I don't have World of Warcraft either - the Really Big Thing for the last two gaming seasons. Or Doom 3. Or Half Life 2. I don't even have Diablo.

The lack of FPS in my house is understandable. I'm not very good at them, and as they have gotten better looking I have found myself getting more disoriented in the virtual battlescapes. The lack of RPGs is more surprising since RPGs are the second staple of my household. We do have Morrowind, after all. And everything Bioware has ever done for a PC.

The sum effect of the gaps in my gaming shelf is that sometimes I have very little to talk about. I really enjoy vicarious pleasure, mind you. The enthusiasm of others is pretty easy to get caught up in. And, one very good friend excepted, most people I trust are pretty enthusiastic about Oblivion. But I'm on the outside. I can't ask good questions about the game. I can't answer good questions about the game. And this enthusiasm isn't quite contagious enough for me to get past my lingering misgivings over Morrowind's control scheme.

This feeling isn't limited to games. When people talk about The Sopranos or 24 I am similarly out to sea.

And I have to accept that no game that really excites me (excepting the permanent outlier Civ 4) will ever have the mass media appeal of an Elder Scrolls game. Does anyone really think that Europa Universalis III or even Rise of Legends will ever spawn a dozen threads on a single forum in the first week of release? Even mass sellers like The Sims don't engender the same type of mania on most online gaming forums.

So, the mass marketing media phenomenon of Oblivion is also, in many ways, a cult hit. It has a crossover appeal to hardcore obsessive min/maxers that few other major releases do. And my niche games - unlike the indie RPG Mount and Blade - don't have that same audience. So, my interests are doubly niched, except on those few forums that are dedicated to my perverse preferences.

It's not necessarily a sad or dismal existence, and I could easily become part of the crowd by just shelling out the sixty bucks for Oblivion or caving the above mentioned friend's pleas to join his World of Warcraft fun.

But Goodfellows are made of sterner stuff than that. I survived middle school as a wallflower. This too will pass.

Battle for Middle Earth 2 rocks

2006-03-27T16:38:00.000-05:00

Or so says my review at Strategy Zone.

There is no perfect game, and Battle for Middle Earth II is no exception. But it is one of the best real time strategy games I've ever played.

In the end, it boils down to elegance. Battle for Middle Earth II has six races, each with completely unique units. There are two alignments with different power trees. And each race has unique heroes (except for the good and evil super-heroes). All of this could get confusing.

Somehow it doesn't. The units mostly fit a rock/scissors/paper setup, but this is blown apart by the addition of trolls, heroes and the occasional flying beastie. The counters are usually pretty obvious in any case. After all, only archers can hit the airborne enemies, and heroes usually fit a couple of templates.

And even if you don't precisely know which counter to use, it probably doesn't affect your enjoyment because the game is glorious in so many ways. Heroes can take stands against hordes of enemies. Fellbeasts and dragons swoop to attack and then must reorient for their next pass. Tom Bombadil sings and dances your enemies to death.

BfME2, like its predecessor, is more for fans of the movie than fans of the book. There really isn't enough random Middle Earth lore for your typical Tolkien geek. Things are meant to look good and brave (or evil and devious), so the game is solid evidence that good art design and colorful graphics can affect gameplay. Whatever "immersion" is, the clean look of Battle for Middle Earth II contributes to it.

Now, this is an Electronic Arts game and it is fashionable in some circles to hate Electronic Arts. But they gave me The Sims. And now this. So as far as I am concerned, all is forgiven.

My review of Galactic Civilizations II

2006-03-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

You can read my opinions of Stardock's hit Galactic Civilizations II in this month's Computer Games Magazine. You can also read my review of Takeda 2 - a marginal sequel to a marginal original - and my capsule reviews of Star and Crescent and Prussia's Glory - two wargames that won't have the broad appeal of GalCiv2.

Like almost everyone else, I say a lot of nice things about the 4x space game. And it was an easy call. Great games usually are.

Writing the review, haggling over the final score for it and exchanging thoughts on the game with other reviewers have cemented in my mind my distaste for the component scoring system. You know the one - those sites that break a game into individual bits like graphics and gameplay and then try to use those small bits to come to a larger score.

There are a lot of things objectively wrong with GalCiv2 as it ships. The documentation has a number of important oversights. It does not Alt-Tab well. Registering the game was a chore made more complicated by overloaded systems as everyone tried to register it. At their best, the graphics are very good; then you have the planetary invasion screens which look terrible. The story based campaign is just not that interesting - even when the bad guys show up with their super weapons. There is no multiplayer.

So, if you have to assign individual scores to graphics, documentation, storytelling, and technical stuff, GalCiv2 drops from the great to the merely good. And you end up missing the best 4x sci-fi game since Masters of Orion 2.

Bruce Geryk wrote the review for 1up.com. As I read it, I was a little surprised at how much it deviated from anything resembling a game review template. Why did he like it again? There wasn't much I could put my finger on. But the tone of the review was clear. He was enjoying this game. So, we talked back and forth a bit about the little things that got in the way of our thrills.

And none of it mattered in the end. A lot of the same objective criticisms can be made about Crown of Glory, a Napoleonic wargame that quickly wore out its welcome. Like GalCiv2, too much is left under the hood to really understand what is going on. Diplomacy can be a bit wonky. The documentation leaves out some important details. But the difference between the two is huge.

"It's the gameplay!" I hear you cry. Well, no. It's not. Since I don't quite know what you mean by that. The difference is that even when I am floundering around in GalCiv2, I don't care about all the niggling details. I am given a generous world to explore that doesn't require I understand everything that is going on. Good design allows a developer to hide some things, explain others and render others completely mysterious. (Personally, I'm on the side of transparency so long as it doesn't force me to be some godlike accountant.)

Civilization IV: Warlords summary

2006-03-20T16:57:00.000-05:00

A quick scan of the fact sheet for the upcoming Civ IV expansion shows few surprises. Here are some of the additions and some of my notes.

A new great person type: the "Warlord." -- Why go with a whole new word and not just "Great General" to go with the Great Scientist or Great Prophet thing? And will there be military specialists to go with this great person?

Vassal States -- Conquering civilizations in Civ IV is a major undertaking, so I can only imagine that vassal states are similar to the subjugating peace option available in Alpha Centauri. Instead of destroying the enemy outright, I suspect that, if you are really crushing an enemy, you will have the option to make them your puppet.

6 New Civilizations with unique units. -- Which civs? No idea and no clues from the screenshots. But here's my guess - Vikings, Babylonians, Zulu, Turks, Carthaginians and Iroquois.

Ten new leaders -- Screenshots already reveal Augustus, Stalin, Churchill and an Egyptian, probably Ramsses. So that leaves six leaders to cover six new civs. Not a lot of options for the new guys.

New Scenarios: Chinese Unification, Peloponnesian Wars, Alexander's Conquests, Rise of Rome, Vikings, Genghis Khan -- Well, the Vikings scenario confirms the Vikings as a civ, and the Rise of Rome description mentions Carthage, so two of my guesses are spot on. Three scenarios in the ancient Mediterranean and two in East Asia is pretty familiar to me. I guess it's time for me to get to work on my scenario of the Hussite Wars if I want some really new adventures.

The usual chrome: new units, new resources, unique buildings -- What types of new units? Screenshots show trebuchets and slingers. New resources should include tobacco, or something that doesn't make the musket available to just everyone. I miss fighting for saltpeter. Each civ will get a unique building, too. I'm guessing something philosophical for the Greeks. Maybe a movie theater for the Americans.

In all, a typical "more, more, more" expansion pack. It's only a few months off, and I will be there opening day buying it as soon as I can. I'm a lemming.

But I'm not sold on this expansion being necessarily great. Remember Civ III: Play the World? Well, this new expansion will include all that stuff we were promised back in the fall like the pitboss, and, I assuming, the mod tools. This too could spell disaster.

Of course, that was all fixed with Civ III: Conquests and all was forgiven. I can never stay mad at these guys.

2k Games announces the 2006 Firaxis lineup

2006-03-16T16:51:00.000-05:00

I mostly don't believe in premonitions. But I've had a hell of an odd month considering 2k's announcements.

It was only yesterday that I was complaining about the surge of Roman city building sims. So what does 2k announce? CivCity: Rome. For those keeping count, that makes four Roman city builders. In 2006. Nuts. It will be developed by Firefly Games (the Stronghold guys) with Firaxis overseeing things. By the way, since Firefly is manned by many former Impressions people, they will be going head to head on the same sort of game against Tilted Mill. Let the fur fly.

Last week I talked about the news that Poptop Games was being folded into Firaxis, reuniting hot IP Railroad Tycoon with its founding father. So what is announced? Sid Meier's Railroads! It's their exclamation point and not mine. It looks like it will be Railroad Tycoon IV in all but name, though the early artwork (naturally) is pretty train heavy.

So the least exciting announcement was the obvious Civilization IV expansion, subtitled Warlords. The screens there show some new leaders (Stalin, Churchill, Augustus, artwork for Ramsses), what appears to be new archer artwork, slingers, a trebuchet...no hint on the new civs. The press release makes me suspect a larger emphasis on the military side with new "warlord" units. This, too, was predictable given the muted complaints about how difficult conquest could be.

Not a really exciting lineup, to be honest. All that talent in one office and still no great new idea. Would it kill them to surprise me?

Even more Roman cities

2006-03-15T16:24:00.000-05:00

CDV has announced that it and Enlight Software are working on a city-building sim set in ancient Rome called Glory of the Roman Empire. Jason Ocampo has a brief preview at Gamespot. Videos of the game are also available at the site.

Ocampo writes "It's been a while since we've had an ancient-city-building game set in Roman times", apparently oblivious to the fact that this makes three on the schedule for the next year or so. So while it is true we haven't had one in a while, we've been watching the development of a couple for quite some time.

Heart of Empire: Rome from Deep Silver via Paradox will be hitting store shelves in mid-May. Tilted Mill is hard at work on Caesar IV, which we will be seeing some time in the fall.

From this standpoint, it's not clear what the differences between the three will be. All will be city-builders, all will have trade, limited combat and a scenario based campaign.

The big question for me is "Why Rome, now?" Historical city-builders have always been in short supply, and have almost entirely come from one development house - Impressions. Rome has always been more attractive for game development because of the near universal familiarity with its look and history. And there could be an element of Rome catching, since Creative Assembly's battle strategy game was a huge international hit, bringing in people who had never played any of the other Total War games.

For the former Impressions people at Tilted Mill, Rome is familiar ground. Their wonderful Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile introduced a lot of new gameplay elements that revitalized a subgenre that really had little new to offer from one civilization to the next.

Since I'll play anything with togas, all three will make my buy list. I hope they will have something to distinquish themselves from each other. It's a pain paying 150 bucks for three copies of the same game.

RTS Economics

2006-03-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

Real time strategy games are mostly, at their heart, about economics.

(I'm talking here about those RTS that require base-building and unit creation of some form - not one of the many other types of strategy games that just happen to move with the clock.)

With these games, the prevailing paradigm has been the peasant economy. You build a lot of peons and send them to resource nodes to harvest. The trick is balance your civilian and military forces in such a way that revenue is steady, but your population cap isn't blocked by berry pickers and gold miners.

This type of economy often involves a lot of micromanagement. You have to notice when your harvesters have exhausted a node, you have to consider any resource gathering bonuses, you have to measure how far you are willing to go from your base to get that stack of wood. Rise of Nations and Cossacks tried to minimize some of this micromanagement by giving you inexhaustible mines and forests, but the basic trade-offs were the same. Harvesters are cheap, weak and an essential cog in the machine.

Battle for Middle Earth II has a much different economic structure. Peasants are not cheap - they cost more than many basic soldiers so you will not be building hordes of them. There are no resource nodes. Economic structures can be built anywhere and their productivity is determined by the surrounding land. And once these structures are built, all you have to do is defend them. No slaughtering of animals or reaping of grain. You just plop the building down and off they go, making money for you.

This gives you an entirely new economic calculus. Resource growth is based on expansion and territorial control. Battles for the middle ground matter earlier, and the relatively high cost of builders means that every builder death matters more than a single peasant death in Age of Empires. So do you build a third builder? Do you build the farm first or the tower you might need to protect it? Every second matters.

The difference is subtle, but the cost-benefit balance of the traditional RTS becomes a matter of risk-reward in a game where your resource chain is theoretically infinite but highly dependent on one or two fragile units. Instead of making sure that your peasants are working on the best way to accumulate the most important resource (hunting vs. farms in AoM, handling the perennial wood shortage in AoE3, sparing guys to work oil fields in RoN) you are forced to find the best way to protect your supply infrastructure.

A lot of this is based on the real difference between the forms - BfME is a game where the point is to get into a fight as soon as possible. Act of War was like this, too. Like BfME2, it had a single resource (money) that could be gathered in a number of ways. The only infinite stream, though, was to capture some PoWs and lock them up. And the big money - banks - were usually in contested territory. None of this starting by a berry bush and a bunch of cattle.

The traditional RTS economic model, like AoE, RoN, Empire Earth, Cossacks, and Warcraft is designed to slowly give you access to the cool weapons, often through "aging up" - in effect, researching expensive techs so you can get to your side's superweapons. This means steady management of a number of different resource streams. Sure, you can rush. But remember that the most likely positive outcome of the rush is to cripple the early economic game of your opponent. Not many games today are designed with the fatal rush as a possibility in the early game.

The RTS for dummies economic model that BfME2 follows helps cement it in my mind as a great intro RTS for people who haven't been introduced to the genre. (My final review should be available in a week or so.) I don't want to suggest that it is always a better way. Strategy games that force me to think about my economic infrastructure tax a part of the brain beyond changing my rally point. The fire-and-forget harvesting model in Rise of Nations gives you all the economic finagling with very little shepherding of little shepherds.

Anyway, variety is good. Is this innovation? At the margins, certainly.When people complain that all RTS games are the same, it is often the peon management that they are addressing. Attempts by game designers to break out of the Warcraft mode frees other developers to think of new ways to control the building of units.

Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath Review

2006-03-10T17:55:00.000-05:00

My first review for Strategy Zone Online is up. Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath is a Cold War era RTS set in a world where Kennedy and Khrushchev didn't reach a peaceful settlement of the 1962 crisis.

I liked it a little better than most reviewers have. It's not a recommendation - even at a score in the high sixties. Quirks of the site's scoring system lead to a score that high. But I do think that it has something that game designers should take a look at.

CMC has an innovative turn-based campaign mode that, with a better skirmish game underneath, could have made it stand out as a major title. Instead, poor map design and some really difficult missions mean that the campaign mode will be ignored by most gamers.

What I've written for Strategy Zone Online

2006-03-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath review
Battle for Middle Earth II review

Railroad Tycoon Goes Home to Daddy?

2006-03-08T17:12:00.000-05:00

Gamespot is reporting that a conference call with Take Two Interactive revealed that PopTop, the developer of Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3, Shattered Union, and Tropico has been folded into Firaxis, best known for Alpha Centauri, the 2004 Pirates! and, of course, Civilization III and IV.

Given Take Two's latest business woes, this is an obvious cost cutting measure. Supporting two strategy development houses means that you will be paying out to two groups whose games will appeal to the same bunch of gamers and take strategy market share from each other.

The idea of Railroad Tycoon returning the stable of Sid Meier has a certain appeal, even though the series has been in great hands at PopTop. It's not clear how much downsizing this will mean or how/if Firaxis will be restructured to accomodate the new people.

Something old is someplace new

2006-03-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

Do It Yourself Games seems to have gone quiet again, which means that one more venue for my ranting has gone kaput. This is not a great loss for me since I have this place to complain, as well as another location or two that will put up with me.

The great loss, in my opinion, was the extinction of Jozef Purdes' Indie Adventure Column. No one reviews these games, and there's a good reason for that. But sometimes he turns up a real gem. And the man can write.

So it's good news that he is still doing the column, but on his own blog now. So if you want to read Jozef's opinions on independent adventure games, you can now find them here.

Developer Interview: Norb Timpko

2006-03-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

Last year's Civil War Bull Run:Take Command 1861 was one of last year's big surprises. A game that could have been just Bull Run: Total War was in fact a compelling and endlessly replayable masterpiece. I had some minor misgivings related to the low res graphics at the action level, but I was mostly impressed. And I was not alone.

MadMinute games' co-founder Norb Timpko agreed to answer a few questions about Take Command 1861 and their upcoming sequel.
-----------------------------------------------

Were you surprised by the overwhelmingly positive critical reaction that greeted Take Command 1861?

Very surprised. We worked on this thing for 3 years before anyone else ever saw it. We basically worked by ourselves with very few people even knowing what we were doing. Then the release was completely messed up, so we thought nothing was going to happen with it. The publisher didn't send out any review copies that we knew of, so we sent them all out ourselves. Then the reviews started coming in and we were blown away. This is the first time that I have ever written AI and people were going crazy over it. Saying that it was better than some of the big dev houses games. Our jaws were dropping. Our reviews were all in 4 out of 5 range. Then we won a Wargamer award and we really felt that we had accomplished something.

In spite of this reception, the game is no longer available from the publisher. Why did they discontinue it?

I can't speak for them, so I can only offer my opinion based on our conversations. The game did not sell well enough for a budget title. The keep a budget title on the store shelves, you've got to move a lot of units. We moved units, but not nearly enough. It's really too bad because it's really starting to gain legs. We just won a couple of year end awards and no one can find the game. It's becoming a collectors item. People are selling it on ebay for ridiculous sums.

How did you hook up with Paradox for Second Manassas?

They had been emailing us for a while. They said that they heard about us on their own forums. So when we decided to test the waters for a new publisher, they were one of the people that we contacted. I remembered the company because Hearts of Iron II came out about the same time as CWBR, and I remember being very impressed with the marketing of the game. Especially compared to CWBR which received none. They flew into town for a meeting and we were very impressed with what they had to say. We'll know better a few months after release.

Why another Bull Run game and not one of the more popular battles, like Gettysburg or Antietam?

A bunch of reasons really. This was supposed to be a very quick game. Something we could turn around so that people would remember us. We had a few things we wanted to change from CWBR and we wanted to get another title out quickly that didn't have the budgetware stigma attached to it. The reason we haven't done the more popular battles yet is that we are still growing the engine. We want it to be perfect when we attack the big ones. Also, we are limited in map size with our current 3D engine, so we need an answer for that before we attack some of the larger battlefields.

What can we expect in the way of changes for the new game?

The first thing that everyone is going to notice is the improved visuals: high resolution units that look absolutely awesome and crops on the maps. The corn and wheat look amazing. But what we really improved is what's under the hood. We have many ways to play open play now, there's something for everyone. The biggest new feature is carryover. A scenario designer can now link scenarios and have casualties from one scenario enter into another scenario. You'd better protect your men today, because you're going to need them tomorrow. It really adds a new dynamic to gameplay, which goes right towards our goal of wanting you to really feel what it was like to be a Civil War Officer.

Many fans have been clamoring for multiplayer functionality in your games. Is this just too much to ask for at this point?

It is too much. We still work on this game at night and on the weekends. We've been doing it for over 4 years now. It's all that we can do to keep up with the single player game. We just don't have the time, energy, or resources to do multiplayer as well. Our goal is that someday the Take Command series will generate enough revenue to allow the two of us to work full time on the game, at that point we write multiplayer.

Historically, the Civil War has been a fairly constant theme in computer games, but there has been a considerable lack of these in recent years. Why do you think that is?

Because they don't make enough money. Games are getting written by these giant companies that need huge profits to write a game. On the independent war game sites, there are a lot of Civil War Games. You just won't see them in stores too much. We figured that since the big boys can't make enough writing Civil War Games, then maybe two guys could make enough. We'll let you know how that turns out.

Besides the money, what is the hardest part about working independently? What's the best part?

It's the 15 hour days. It's working full time all day to get a paycheck, then working full time all night and on weekends for your dreams. It's just really tough to put in those types of hours for so many years. The best part is to be able to do things your own way. There's no bureaucracy in a two many company. We don't need massive staff meetings or thousand page documents. Every decision is worked out by a single phone call. Things get done and they get done quickly. We always make our dates.

Any plans for the game after Bull Run 2?

We do have plans, we just don't know what they are yet. We might do an expansion pack. We might just continue onto the next battle. We'll have to see. A lot depends on how TC2M does. Because if it does well, then we'll be talking to Paradox. If it doesn't do well, we'll have to decide what we can do on our own.

The first sign you should not review wargames is...

2006-02-28T16:08:00.000-05:00

Wargames get next to no respect. Even when they do get reviewed, they are either given vague reviews and middling "play it safe" scores or they are completely mangled by people who show neither the time nor patience to figure out what the hell is going on.

But if you name your site Strategy Informer, you should have some credibility on wargames, right? Well, maybe. But then you write something like this:

"The game will not make itself obvious, instead you will be required to decipher cryptic symbols long before you even get close to engaging the enemy. Some of your units look like little tanks in boxes, others look like ovals inside boxes. I personally find it laughable that a unit is represented by an oval. This is the new millennium, we can scan electronic code into living cells, surely game developers can come up with something more intuitive for a unit than an oval."

They are called NATO symbols, dingus. Armor is traditionally represented by an oval in a box. People who understand wargames know that you don't always use a picture of a tank.

The wargame being reviewed here is ProSim's Star and Crescent. Which does use pictures of tanks when you zoom in very closely. But for the most part it relies on the old wargaming symbols that have always been in use in wargames.

There are many legitimate complaints that can be made about Star and Crescent. Some of them are in this review by Alex Jeffreys. But to criticize a wargame because it uses icons that have been in place in games and war maps for decades is beyond madness. It's a sign that you are really out of your depth.

Interesting news from Computer Gaming World

2006-02-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

This thread on my favorite gaming discussion forum contains the announcement from CGW Editor Jeff Green that the April CGW will not have star ratings for the games being reviewed. And no, it doesn't appear to be an April Fool's joke. Though I wouldn't be surprised.

Assuming this isn't some elaborate joke, Green says that one of the motivating factors was the number of PR calls about the scores that a recently reviewed game had received, but this way out of those calls is not likely to be very popular with that audience.

I understand the appeal of the no-rating review. As a writer, I'd like to think that my words are more important than the numerical tag I append - usually at the very end of a writing session. For all the pretended accuracy of PCGamer's hundred point scale, I find it very hard to put a number to a feeling that a game gives me. Even a mostly good one will often have enough wrong with it to push it down to a three star ("good") score, though the negatives are what will stick with the reader longer. So why not just leave it all up to nuance and text? The few reviews I have on this site are not scored, and I have no intention of doing so. Is there anything positive to said about ratings?

For one thing, print reviews are often very brief. Brief is fine for very good games. Brief is perfect for very bad games. But brief does not do nuance well. A hundred words of "a little bit this and a little bit that" usually comes of sounding wishy-washy. But if you hit only the stuff you like about a game, the text will come off sounding more laudatory than you really feel about a game. Likewise with the negative. Just as the text gives the numbers context, so the numbers can give very brief text numbers.

Second, I don't read everything. I can't. (Well, I can in a magazine, I suppose. But I usually don't.) And if the game is in a genre that I don't have a lot of knowledge about or interest in, the five or four star scores are bright, neon lights saying "Look at me, stupid!" If the reviewed title is an obscure casual game, it's even more important to draw me in with an eye-catching score.

If this is a genuine experiment, I'm all in favor of it. On balance, I prefer text to scores, especially in an enthusiast press that has such a wide range of reviewing systems and ideas of what an average score is. Anything that encourages readers to actually read is a step forward. But it's not all positives. And I think that Green's readers will be a little shocked.

GalCiv 2 pre/post mortem

2006-02-20T10:42:00.000-05:00

4x strategy megasite Apolyton is running a trilogy of articles from Stardock's Brad Wardell about Galactic Civilizations II. I'm going to reserve comment on the game itself until my review hits print, but the second essay by Wardell is a must read for anyone interested in how game designers think.

First, who would have thought that the graphics engine for Political Machine would be useful for GalCiv 2? The two games look nothing alike. In fact, I wasn't sure that Political Machine was 3D to begin with. It does go to show that a lot of stuff that happens under the hood is more important to how designers and developers produce their work than the surface appearance would have we code-phobic gamers would like to think. I mean, you can look at American Conquest and Alexander and see that they are related. But it's not easy to see how the new and improved Dregin are descended from a cartoon John Kerry. This sort of insight is what separates those who play from those who create.

The most interesting bit of part two is the opening section on how Master of Orion III forced Stardock to change the original GalCiv. Features were cut because they were confident that MOO3's bigger budget meant that Quicksilver would do a more thorough job with them. So, to avoid direct comparions, GalCiv was scaled back. And then MOO3 was released to a hungry world as one of the great letdowns in gaming history.

The summary itself makes for one great designer's note of the sort that I eulogized here not so long ago. Wardell has always been one of the more accessible and outspoken indie developers - a shameless self-promoter, too, and I mean that in a good way, believe me. His success has allowed him to go out on more limbs, of course, but I think many game developers could be a lot more open about the process of designing and releasing a game. It's all part of the PR exercise that all indies need to do to get word out about their games. Introversion and Stardock are two of the best at building enthusiasm for their games through accessibility, self-promotion and word of mouth. Which is part of why GalCiv2 is going to get major coverage and other indie games are not. Yeah, Wardell has a bigger budget now, but he didn't have a ton of development and marketing money when his small team released the original GalCiv and you'll find that his media strategy hasn't changed that much.

Back to GalCiv 2 for now. The Korx are being a bit of a nuisance.

Europa Universalis III

2006-02-16T17:19:00.000-05:00

I know that the dismal Diplomacy means that I shouldn't get too excited about Europa Universalis III. The fact that they plan to use some of the stuff from the ambitious kluge Victoria should give me even more pause.

Add that they are cutting the number of years by at least thirty - now starting in 1453 instead of 1419 - and all of us who like to have more, more, more should go over to the Paradox forums and rant for a while.

And many will.

Not me though. This is great news. Europa Universalis II is as close as you can get to a perfect strategy game not designed by Sid Meier or one of his disciples. It has a lot going on at any one time, but it only takes a little practice to realize that not everything needs to be done immediately. Fighting, diplomacy, exploration...it's got the works.

So a sequel is always welcome news. EU is Paradox's marquee title, the one that made their name synonymous with deep historical strategy game. I can't resist the urge to buy another one.

The decision to start the game after the fall of Constantinople is a sensible one. Though I love the Grand Campaign of EU2, the weak starting positions of France, the Ottomans and the future Mughal Empire (the Timurids) meant that much of the world we know never took shape. 1453 gives people a familiar starting point without plopping you immediately in the rush for colonies that a 1492 start would (at least from a European perspective).

No release date yet, though serious beta testing begins this summer, and there is nothing but concept art to work from so far.

The joys of ceding power

2006-02-10T12:44:00.000-05:00

Some of my favorite games are those that don't let me control everything.

This may sound a little odd coming from as devoted a devotee of the god-game as I am. The whole god game idea suggests that some benign (or malicious) intervention from the player can set things aright. The player sets the agenda, builds the empire, raises the cash and kills the foe. Most games, in fact, leave all important decisions to the player. Leveling up a character, choosing a weapon, opening a door, picking a starting pitcher...not a lot of stuff is put out of your reach.

There is a risk in not giving the player complete control. What if those factors out of his/her reach seem arbitrary or unfair? What if even truly random events make the player feel he/she is being punished for trying something creative?

Soren Johnson's Civ IV afterword mentions that the early religion mechanic was designed to have the various faiths travel along the trade routes from city to city - much as they did historically. Christianity travelled the Mediterranean and Silk Roads, Muslim traders exported their beliefs across the Indian Ocean, Buddhism and Hinduism led to a number of syncretic faiths wherever they met. The problem with this design decision was that unless you let players control the trade routes - a micromanaging nuisance in Civ II - they couldn't control the spread of their faiths. So, missionary units were introduced. Player control won out.

Even when games go through the trouble of developing complicated AI preferences, they often default to player control. Supreme Ruler 2010 gave the player a cabinet to help make decisions. They would even override some of your decisions if they didn't match the AI's ideological profile. If you raised taxes but had a conservative finance minister, you might find that he has fiddled with the sliders. Great idea. The problem, of course, is that there were so many menus that you might not even notice. Add that domestic policy is a pretty important component of your larger strategy and you can see why most players clicked a box that said "do not override my desires, people". The mere inclusion of such a choice made the painstaking work in programming this code superfluous.

Now take a look at Take Command : Bull Run 1861. This is a civil war battle game that sort of looks like Manassas: Total War. You control the troops and tell them what to do. But the beauty of the design is that the game is much more fun when you don't control the entire army, but only a brigade or a division. It is much more satisfying to be a smaller fish, command your men and then see the entire battle develop around you. Once again, the option to control everything is there, but the design pushes you down to ground level.

Probably the best example of the tension between tight and loose reins is The Sims. Sure, the entire game is based on your bossing around a cartoon game who speaks gibberish, but the game limits you to controlling one Sim at a time. So while you tell Mama Bear to get the porridge ready, Papa Bear is out in the yard seducing Goldilocks Goth. If you turn "free will" off altogether, the game loses much of what makes it a magical title. Juggling a family, keeping them mindful of their priorities, raising the kids...all are too easy if they just do what they are told all the time. The Sims is all about recognizing the limits of player power.

Recognizing these limits is something that gamers used to accept more readily. The business cycles in the original SimCity were very basic and mostly immune to player influence - especially at the early stages of the game. SimEarth, SimAnt and a host of other Maxis games were more about making an environment for things to work in than giving those things orders to fill. Similarly, Populous was about building a setting for your Holy War - but you never controlled the soldiers.

In his epic alternate analysis of what went wrong with Master of Orion III, Bruce Geryk suggests a government management system where the virtual viceroys that run your planets would have good and compelling reasons to ignore your orders. A planet that makes a lot of money on interstellar tourism might balk at being told to shift into war economy mode. I think Geryk envisions some sort of pop-up that would tell you that Zarquon 5 has refused to fulfill your orders because of some reason and then you would have to decide whether it was worth your trouble to fire Zarquon's governor.

I think this would have been an interesting, if ultimately disastrous, design decision; not because it is a bad idea, but because I don't think most gamers would have appreciated Chancellor Spiff carving out his own agenda.

Computers today allow the player to control more. Interfaces have steadily gotten better and more intuitive (AoE 3's monster UI excepted), processing power has increased exponentially, and better graphics resolution means you can fit more words, numbers and flashing icons on the screen. Because the player is able to control more, most players and designers think that they should. So, soldiers in Rome: Total War will instantly fall back in line if you think they are going after the wrong target. Superpower 2 lets you set every social policy for your government no matter how negligible the effect is. There are never communications failures in wargames. Troops that show initiative are inevitably told to stand down. The player is the game.

Note that I am not adovcating for a game that plays itself. That would be pointless. Like MOO3. I do think that strategy games work well when the player is constrained in his/her possibilities. You can do this in a boardgame way by simply allowing a certain number of "moves" or "actions", but this can only work in a turn-based environment. But what good is telling me that my Gauls are "impetuous warriors!" if I can restrain that bloodlust with a mouse click? Maybe "impetuous" is now a fancy word for "takes orders well."

In many ways, the game philosophy of limited power is an analog to the fact that governments and generals don't control everything. Even the term god game is a little silly, since I have doubts that God himself is controlling everything down here - and if he is, I may have some complaints to register. As great as games are at making you feel like a deity, they can also remind us of the everyday constraints that even the greatest minds and powers in the world have had to confront. Interesting decisions aren't just about outcomes; interesting decisions are often about how you deal with stuff beyond your immediate control.

Please visit the Round Table's &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/round-table/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Main Hall&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt; for links to all entries

Hands On Preview - Birth of America

2006-02-06T16:28:00.000-05:00

(Full disclosure: After conducting this interview with game developer Philippe Thibaut, I was approached to proofread and edit the English language manual for Birth of America. There was no financial compensation for this, nor was any expected.)

At first glance, Birth of America is nothing at all like either of Thibaut's other PC games. Where both Pax Romana and Great Invasions were overwhelming in the amount of things you can do, BoA isn't. Here you only have a war to fight. You raise armies, you kill armies, you win (or squelch) independence.

So this is more of a war game than a strategy game. You don't build armies, they arrive as reinforcements. You build forts, but not cities. You don't worry about your economy since you don't have one. So, this is as pure a war game as you can imagine.

The preview build enclosed four brief scenarios and a tutorial with quite short time limits. No full campaign mode was available. The tutorial seemed to move along whether I followed instructions correctly or not - something that I hope got cleaned up in the gold release. The scenario objectives are noted on the map with stars, which is good because there are a lot of cities to look for.

Fortunately, the game is pretty intuitive. It uses a grab and drop interface to make moving your armies a piece of cake. The various map modes allow you to quickly get the larger strategic sense of things.

The map itself is huge. The American colonies are divided into a number of quite small bits with even tiny states being made up of multiple territories. The terrain is very clearly marked out - probably the most efficient use of scraggly trees and bumps on a game in some time.

So how does it play? Quickly. The scenarios available are pretty short - one starts in 1759 with Wolfe's army already on ship and on its way to Quebec - but give a sense of game that will require careful movement of your troops. You need to know the quickest routes to your own vulnerable cities as well as the roads to your targets. Supply issues can become very serious in the winter and it appears that commander skill matters, though it is unclear to what extent.

The game is very stable - much more than either of Thibaut's ancient themed games. I experienced zero crashes, and the only technical problem was some slow scrolling over the map in some modes.

Birth of America has gone gold and should be available from AgeOD by the end of the month.

Rise of Legends

2006-02-03T17:36:00.000-05:00

Lots of new stuff on Rise of Legends is coming out. Gamespot has revealed that the third race is a stranded alien group called the Cuotl. (Their name is vaguely Meso-American, so it's kind of appropriate that they will have a Mayan theme.) March's CGM has a great preview written by Ben Sones that goes into a lot of detail about the game with quite a few nifty screenshots as well.

Usually, aliens turn me off. But I sort of like what Big Huge Games is doing with the Cuotl. Asimov said that really advanced technology is nearly indistinguishable from magic and that's the theme they are going with. A few aliens with advanced tech crash land on a planet and help provoke a war between the forces of magic (the Arabian Nights themed Alin) and the forces of science (the Renaissance steampunk themed Vinci). The Cutol themselves are few, so they rely on human soldiers to support their own very expensive but very powerful weapons of war.

I have to say that I am getting more excited about Rise of Legends with every story. BHG took a risk by deciding not to just do Rise of Nations II - yet another historical RTS with pikes and horsies and tanks at the end. The whole "Rise of..." name is enough to twig people to the fact that this is a sequel of a sort, or at least is from the same people. But by trying to give gamers a completely new setting, they set themselves up for a sort of failure.

Face it. People like staying in their comfort zones. And most strategy gamers have little time for a new backstory. Magic needs elves and wizards, right? And flying machines should be airplanes, or at least orc built zeppelins. A Mid East motif coupled with lumbering mechanical doo-hickeys is a recipe for cognitive dissonance. Some people might reject Rise of Legends based on the look alone. Don't laugh - I know of people who refused to buy Civ 4 because it went 3D.

I'm ready though. After Galactic Civilizations II, Rise of Legends will be the second must-have strategy game of 2006.

Legion Arena

2006-02-02T16:22:00.000-05:00

My print magazine of choice (and sometime publisher) Computer Games Magazine is now available on Zinio. You can get a free peek at this month's issue here.

The print version of March's CGM also has my review of Slitherine's Legion Arena.

As the reviews of Legion Arena trickled in, I began to wonder if I was missing something. Aside from the mostly unreadable review over at Digital Entertainment News ("desari"? What the hell is that?) a great preponderance of the reviews were very positive about the game. Even the 6.9 that Gamespot's Jason Ocampo gave it was couched in pretty affectionate terms even if the score wasn't at that magic seven point - it still ended up being "fair".

Fair is about right. I deemed it average. As does PCGamer's Matt Peckham who rode to my reputational rescue with a nice 55/100 score.

Still, the critical mass of opinion seems to like Legion Arena more than I do and for the life of me I can't see why. If you are going to give me only two armies, give me a skirmish mode. Maybe this is just a matter of taste though.

Then I found a reason to dislike Legion Arena even more.

The manual lied to me.

Twice.

First, the manual promises an editor that doesn't exist. In the description of the "Options" it says:

Design: Lets you design a scenario for another player to challenge.

Nope. Not there. No design button. Not that it would matter, because there are only two armies.

Which brings me to the introduction by Simon Scarrow. I wrote earlier about afterwords and designers' notes. I should write something else about celebrity introductions. Scarrow is an author of historical fiction on ancient Rome, and so is good candidate for this sort of thing. But it is immediately clear that he hasn't spent much time with Legion Arena. He writes:

Better still, we can play out some of the most intriguing 'what-if?' scenarios by pitching Hannibal's veterans against the warriors of Britain. Or could a more adept handling of the Greek phalanxes have reversed the course of history by defeating the Roman legion? It's a fascinating prospect, and one you can experiment with thanks to Legion: Arena

No. You can't. You only encounter Hannibal's armies in the Roman campaign and you never get to control them. The Greek phalanxes you see are just generic spearmen, and, once again, beyond your control. There is no alternate history to explore since the campaigns for both sides force you along an historical path.

You can, however, do all of this stuff in Rome: Total War. You could do it Great Battles of History. Even Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles. But most certainly not in Legion: Arena.

The true shame is that the game itself shows quite a bit of skill on the part of artists and designers, but it's almost as if they stopped halfway through. Originally intended to be the debut of the engine for Slitherine's next grand strategy game, those plans were put aside when the English wargaming company realized how expensive that would ultimately be.

Though they've yet to design a game that really thrills me, I always hold out hope for Slitherine. Maybe I should stop.

The End of the Booth Babe?

2006-01-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

Brenda Brathwaite at the IGDA has noted that the new E3 rules may cramp the style of those game developers and publishers that like to dress up their dross with eye candy. (Hat tip: Utopian Hell.)

"Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the Show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the Show. ESA, in its sole discretion, will determine whether material is acceptable."

There will be one warning, after which a fine will be assessed until models comply with the dress code.

So no bathing suit bottoms and no nudity. That seems pretty clear. I'm not sure that "sexually explicit" has ever been a problem, but some peoples' definition of explicit is a little broader than mine.

Now "sexually provocative" is another matter altogether. Barring the fact that some of the attendees will get aroused by the PS3, the whole purpose of the booth babe (or spokesmodel) is to be provocative. They dress in skimpy outfits, draw nerds with cameras to their booths and maybe get a little more coverage for whatever they are selling.

It is often pointed out that many trade shows use models to attract attendees and vendors to their product. Game shows are not alone in hiring would-be actresses, low rent models or whoever else doesn't mind standing around in a vinyl dress while being gawked at by whoever walks by.

It doesn't really matter.

The gaming industry has an image problem. Even if you disagree with the blue stockings who want to sell games in plain brown wrappers, the public image of the industry is one that seems to be aimed at juvenile men who can't keep their violent or sexual urges under control. This is clearly an effort to defuse criticism of the industry that it is obsessed with sex. Almost all of the complaints from the NIMF or Jack Thompson join the issues of sex and violence in a single critique. For even serious observers of game content, the union of sexual and thuggery prowess in the GTA series makes one pause, if not uninstall.

Not to mention the much debated gaming gender gap (which, judging by the students I teach, is decreasing rapidly). Young women who might be interested in gaming can't surf a website in E3 season without being bombarded by "BEST BABEZ OF E3!!!" articles. An effort to tone down the titillation factor at the expo could be yet another attempt to reach out to an audience that has felt excluded or objectified by the industry's biggest party.

Mind you, the E3 is supposed to be for adults only. Every year, people come back with stories of clearly adolescent youth wandering the floor despite the age requirement. Maybe this was an easier step than telling some Hollywood heavyweight not to bring his kids.

Brathwaite raises the concern that this amounts to ESA censorship of the content on the showroom floor. Does "material...conduct" would include the games themselves? Would a game with sexually provocative material be limited? Is this the kind of measure that the industry guardian of speech rights should be taking?

Of course, all of this could go nowhere. There are lots of ways to look pretty and not cross the ever-so-vague "provocative" line. We won't see bikini bottoms or thongs, but you can bet that miniskirts or biking shorts will be conveniently ruled OK. The booth babe will be a little more dressed, but I don't think she's going anywhere.

Medieval II: Total War

2006-01-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

Creative Assembly has announced a new real time battle game - a sequel to their immensely popular Medieval: Total War.

Medieval II will have 21 factions, over 250 units, and an extended map to allow the player to do battle against the large American empires of the Aztecs and Inca. In an adaptation of the role of the Senate in Rome, the new game will have the Pope make demands of his Christian followers.

It looks like princesses and priests are back, which is OK so long as they don't have as many pointless civilian units as the original Medieval did. Inquistors, bishops, princesses, spies, emissaries - many necessary for very basic functions - contributed to the long and annoying end game.

New combat animations and better lighting are promised, but I'm not sure to what end. Rome looks great already and I'm not sure that Medieval needed more graphical gewgaws, especially if that means that I will need to upgrade my computer again.

IGN has some screenshots but no release date; late 2007 seems like a safe bet.

I liked Medieval but never loved it the way I do Rome. The battles were great - they always are - but the campaign game got very frustrating as the number of armies and civilian units exploded and the AI unfailingly predicted what your next move would be. Putting the design improvements from Rome into a Middle Ages setting could make this the historical strategy game to beat in the next year.

Developer Interview: Philippe Thibaut

2006-01-20T16:31:00.000-05:00

Philippe Thibaut is a French strategy game developer best known for his design of the board game Europa Universalis. He helped Paradox adapt that design to the PC, and therefore had a crucial role in Paradox's first huge hit.

He then began working on his own PC games, developing Pax Romana - a game full of great ideas but poor execution - and the still mostly unknown Great Invasions. His new game is Birth of America, a game based on that first great example of Franco-American cooperation, the Revolutionary War. He agreed to answer a few questions about his new enterprise and offer some general thoughts on game design.

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Your first two games (Pax Romana and Great Invasions) dealt with the ancient world and used similar engines. Besides the obvious difference in subject matter, what will change in Birth of America?

A lot! First of all the engine is completely different, hence the gameplay. Second the approach of the gameplay is to have something very instinctive and straight to the point. This is feasible because the scope of the simulation is more limited, except for its military aspect where it is the contrary.

Have your experiences with Pax Romana and Great Invasions changed how you approach development?

They have indeed, in the sense that we have decided to build the design around a new generic engine that corresponds better to the current tastes of the consumer. My previous games were RTS because this was fashionable to be so (in other words, the publisher asked for RTS lest they refuse to take the game). A lot of technical and practical experience was acquired too, allowing us to develop our latest game with a much smaller team in much less time too. And the key lesson is that it is far better to have a small and efficient team of dedicated players-developers than a large team of people who are doing game development like any other computer development..

How would you describe the current market for strategy games in general and independently developed ones in particular?

It is a vast question. My feeling is that we have too many look-alike games on look-alike subjects, just as if you needed a WW2 or Napoleonic-era game to face the market. A lot of developers and almost all publishers make an error when choosing a new title, by jumping into the fashionable subjects which they feel will automatically be popular, but without really looking into what the game is supposed to bring as a new playing experience. Hopefully, independently developed games are here to remind the consumer that he can get a feel of something else than the Big Artillery stuff provided by the Big Guys.

How well has your boardgame experience translated to the computer arena?

I would say this is the basis of everything. My way of developing a game is rather old-fashioned and I usually do a boardgame model of every new project. I do play it extensively with friends and the development team, and once we are confident it is fun and interesting, we take a good time to see how we can adapt it to the computer. If the boardgame market wasn’t so dead, I would even like to publish those models (which are indeed complete games per se).

Birth of America has been almost a stealth development. There's been very little discussion of or promotion for it in America even though it is about its founding war. Why such a low profile?

Secrecy is often key to victory! More seriously, the title was adapted from our latest engine some 4 months ago, after lack of financing and interest from major publisher forced us to shelve the original big strategy game project it was supposed to be (a game on the XIX^th century, with all its aspects). We did not make any comments on the project until we finally collected the required funds for its development and also had something to show. We were just not ready to speak about it earlier.

What game would be the closest comparison to Birth of America?

I would say none at this stage, even if you could find similarities of engine with some recent successes like Dominions II. The theme and the detailed military coverage of the game is rather unique.

Tell me a little bit about Ageod.

Ageod was created to make sure we would be able to complete our project and deliver the game to the players in due time, without interference from publisher’s or retailer’s constraints that should not have to be borne by the customer, i.e. the player. I wanted to avoid some past know disasters where a game was dumped on to the market, un-properly finished, badly time released and lacking any follow-up, for reasons totally unconnected to the game or its intrinsic value.

And we want to share this experience with other independent developers as well: we want to have games for players, that we promote as best as we can, and not only our games! Every game is welcome, as long as it is interesting, fun and nice, and properly made by state-of-art professional teams. We will not be the guys pushing them to the wall with market deadlines: not one single game ever distributed by Ageod will be released unless it is deemed complete.

This of course does not mean there won’t be patches, on the contrary: this is a living proof a game can always improve and has the support of the playing community.

Have you already started work on your next project?

Yes, on two of them very seriously, even if we have not yet found all the required financing. And we have at least 3 other titles pending which we would love to have some time to pre-test.

As an independent developer, what do you see as the role of the press in gaining exposure for your work?

I’d like the press to report news from our projects as objectively as possible. Also I feel that once a project has made it to the test boards of press companies, there should always be at least 2 independent reviewers for it. I know it is tantamount to wishful thinking, but some un-cautious reviewers do speedy jobs that often miss the point but torpedo the project anyway. This is all the more true when you do games that are light-years away from the usual latest-Full3D-FPC and the likes….

2006 in the strategy arena - a wishlist

2006-01-18T15:51:00.000-05:00

2005 was a good year, and I have hopes for the upcoming year, as well. Corvus's "Round Table" has asked for people to submit their wishes for the new year, and for their expected consequences. So here are my hopes for the strategy genre in 2006.

My first hope is that there will be a big, new strategy game released with no franchise attached. 2005 was full of huge franchise titles and sequels. Age of this, empire that, civ again...each with something to offer. Strategy games need a breakout hit - especially on the PC - unless we gamers want to play variations on the same titles for the next twenty years. This is expensive, of course, because of the immense risk involved in launching any game. The last new pseudo-strategy game that became a breakout, must-have game was The Sims, and that was many years ago. It transcended gaming, of course, and became a pop culture phenomenon. I have no such hopes for any game released this year. But if strategy gaming could deliver the next Civ or the next AoE or the next Starcraft, then I will remain confident in the power of my favorite genre to move minds and units. (BTW, I could call out Firaxis here for just pillaging the past and not using all the immense brainpower they have to do something surprising and amazing, but I have too much discretion to do such a thing.)

Second, I hope that the MMO-Strategy world gets its Ultima Online - a game that moves the multiplayer strategy world beyond PBEM clients or ladder games and gives us wargamers and desktop gods a persistent world to make in our image. Civilization promised me the chance to build an empire that stood the test of time, but didn't quite deliver the eternal glory it promised me. SimCountry is a detail heavy version of what a MMO-S game could look like if they could just work out some of the glitches. And maybe have bigger explosions.

Third, Rise of Legends better be good. Big Huge Games took a bit of a risk in moving away from the historical grounding of Rise of Nations to a completely new world. And I am astonished by the look and ambition of the game; it's probably easier to balance 12 similar nations than it is to balance 3 distinct cultures. Though Reynolds might not know it, a triumphant Rise of Legends
could open the door to a lot of new and crazy worlds.

Fourth, I hope that indie strategy developers get a publishing alternative to Shrapnel and Matrix Games. I have nothing against either publisher. Both have treated my inquiries with great respect and both have put out their share of good and not so good games. But I sometimes wonder about their PR or marketing strategy since I almost never hear about many of their games unless I visit their sites or I mention them in a forum. Salvo!, for instance, sort of popped out of nowhere and then I was asked to review it. Sure, I would have been better off not playing it at all, but that's not quite the point. Though I have doubts about what exactly Manifesto Games will bring to the table, I hope that Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson can provide an option for indie developers that gives some of these games more mainstream exposure. And it might push the big two to promote some of their best products (like Starshatter or Land of Legends) with more energy.

Finally, I hope that the wargame/strategy columns in both PCGamer (Steve Klett) and Computer Gaming World (Bruce Geryk) become popular and influential movers in the greater interest of strategy/war gaming. To be honest, I know little about Klett. I've liked what I've read so far, so no major complaints. My deep respect for Geryk is obvious - I check his blog daily - and I'm sorry that his CGW column is so small. But if you look at magazine covers, the twelve months are overwhelmingly dominated by MMOs and shooters. Only Civ IV and Age of Empires III really seem to get the covers, or the multiple previews. Strong advocates within the magazine structure could mean more and better coverage. Which could mean more and better games. (Like anyone listens to press...) So if you read either of those magazines, write in to support their columns and their coverage.

Please visit the Round Table's &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Main Hall&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; for links to all entries

AIAS Award Nominees

2006-01-17T16:13:00.000-05:00

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced its nominees for this year's Interactive Achievement Awards. Oddly not available on the organization's own site, you'll have to check Kotaku to get the whole deal for now.

First thought that occurred to me was surprise that Call of Duty 2 was the only PC game nominated for Game of the Year. Then I realized that they are talking about the console version - it's not nominated for computer game of the year - so the biggest category has no PC games at all. Thanks guys.

There are three strategy type games in the computer game of the year category - Civ IV, The Movies and Age of Empires III - fighting it out with two shooters (FEAR and Battlefield 2). In the strategy genre category, Civ and AoE are nominated along with Empire Earth 2. Yeah, I know. They consider The Movies to be a simulation game, though its tycoon component makes it more of a strategy game to me.

The predictability of the nominees is disturbing. Were none of the jurors familiar with the dozen strategy games from this year better than Age of Empires? I can only guess that its name recognition earned it votes. Empire Earth 2 is one of the most shocking entries I've ever seen.

Then again, We Love Katamari is in the children's category with Chicken Little and Madagascar.

Mostly, the AIAS does a better job than anyone else who passes out game awards at a show. Of course, that's only SpikeTV. But the domination of the large studios and predictable nominees in every category (except for King Kong in Outstanding Game Design...) means that either the jurors aren't doing their jobs in pushing for titles that are beyond the foreground or they just have no knowledge beyond the best sellers. No Act of War in the genre award, but they find a place for AoE III in Best Online Game Play. And it's not like they don't have room. Five action games get nominations in that genre. Five children's games. But only three strategy games and only three simulation games.

Mind you, the major magazine and website awards mean more to me as a reader/gamer. When Gamespot or CGW calls something its "Game of the Year", that means something to me. I've read their reviews so I can compare title to title and opinion to opinion. But I've heard the AIAS called gaming's version of the Oscars.

Except the biggest budget always wins.

The Art of the Designers' Note

2006-01-09T16:30:00.000-05:00

Though all of the praise for Civ IV is well-deserved, little of it is as merited as the kind words directed at Soren Johnson's afterword in the manual. It is a beautiful little essay that gives some insight into the game design process, specifically how to adapt a classic game and make it better. Potential pitfalls are mentioned, justifications for design decisions are made and the whole thing is written in a familiar style.

It made me wonder why more games don't have a "designer's note" or "afterword" in their manuals. It's certainly not new for Meier and co. Brian Reynolds wrote two excellent concluding essays for Civilization II and Alpha Centauri. Of the latter, Reynolds writes:

"...in spite of the industry's headlong rush to get on the real time bandwagon, [we believed] a strong market still existed for turn-based strategy games. Gamers wanted a new sweeping, epic of a turn based game, and they wanted us to design it."

He goes on to talk about the challenge of sci-fi settings, the important role of Bing Gordon and how the entire Firaxis team made the game come to pass. Curiously, Civ 3 had no such commentary from Jeff Briggs.

Back in 1990, Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley wrote an afterword for the Railroad Tycoon manual that paid homage to the classic board game 1830. They go into how the design changed as the game developed and what had to be done to keep the whole thing accessible.

As I rifled through my shelf, though, I found few other designer's notes in strategy manuals to compare to the Meier-esque oeuvre. Caesar III has a note from David Lester that reveals that C3 was originally going to be city building in space. (Maybe someone should try that...) None of the Paradox games have great notes, though Hearts of Iron II has a great one from the manual author. Imperialism's manual has one of the great first pages in game history, but nothing from the Frog City developers. Many wargames have designer notes, but they are rarely very insightful into game design or development. None of the Age of Empires games have notes at all.

Why so few? The growth of design by committee could have something to do with it. There is little sense of "authorship" in many games, though I suspect this would change if we gamers got a little more of a feeling for the developers. Good designer notes also let us look a little at how the design process moves in fits and starts.

The decline of manuals in general is an issue. In-game help and interfaces have evolved to the point where thick manuals are mostly unnecessary and this is a good thing. Whatever manual there is will tend to be short, full of pictures, and with no room for "fluff."

Still, I like designers' notes and want to see more of them. Even a bad note lets us understand something about the anonymous people who make our fun. There are lots of great things to imitate in Civ IV. I ask developers to imitate the afterword first.

Online journal for games

2006-01-07T13:33:00.000-05:00

The inaugural issue of Games and Culture is available online.

As a survivor of the academic world (and still a hanger on), part of me rejoices to see an academic journal devoted to game studies - ludology if you prefer the fancy word.

As a gamer, I am confident that none of this university provided criticism will have any impact on the range of game opportunities provided for me. How much has film criticism affected Hollywood? How often has literary criticism pushed novelists in new directions?

None of this is meant to suggest that ludology is not important. All human activity is probably worthy of study, and for a select audience this type of analysis will help make sense (or ascribe artificial meaning) to a major form of entertainment.

My concern is that ludology will fall into the trap of analyzing the easy. Human interactions within MMO worlds, race/gender in games, narrative structures, etc. All these subtexts of gaming have established parallels in the academic community. Moving sociology, race/gender studies and literary theory to the gaming world doesn't create new tools for analysis or a new way of understanding gaming. Just as you cannot simply take the language of book criticism and apply it to film, shifting the subject matter without changing the language could lead to a lot of dead ends in ludology.

From the articles I have read, it is not easy to determine if the authors are "gamers" or not. There is clearly some familiarity with the form, but whether this familarity is in fact a deep passion for the media is another matter altogether. Not that I know how many hours qualifies one to speak intelligently about gaming.

I will bookmark the journal and maybe print out a few of the articles. Since this blog is really the only place I get to pretend that I am still a scholar, maybe I'll even wax philosophical about an article or two.

New Old Column In CGM

2006-01-07T13:15:00.000-05:00

The independent games column/insert Alt.Games returns in February's Computer Games Magazine under new authorship - mine.

Appended to the "Mods and Ends" section, alt.games is no more than a few hundred word reviews/blurbs on free or inexpensive indie products. There's no opinion column attached, like there was when DIYGames' Greg Micek wrote this thing. You can trust that CGM will still give proper reviews to those indie games that deserve greater recognition than a small notice in a small bit.

My first alt.games contribution looks at Facade, Trash and DoomRL. All old news, but worth another mention - especially since Facade and DoomRL are free.

If you have any suggestions for the column, feel free to drop me a line. There's a lot out there I don't know about.

Not Quite the Worst. And Where's the Best?

2006-01-03T18:02:00.000-05:00

If you read gaming blogs, you've already been pointed to Something Awful's "Five Worst Gaming Articles of 2005." And you've probably already read some commentary on this commentary. Kotaku writes that the article is both obnoxious and correct while both Game Girl Advance and Mile Zero point out that game articles are actually not journalism - something that Something Awful never actually claims, though GGA notes that the whole "New Game Journalism" thing is what Tim Roger and Kieron Gillen (two of the winners/losers) are a part of. Or something.

The thing is, there are much worse examples out there. Take anything that Jessica Chobot wrote for IGN in 2005. Or a random review from Digital Entertainment News? It gives us this gem of an opening paragraph:

"The Age of Empires (AoE) series feels like it’s been around for years, almost a constitution to be associated with PC gaming. Yet the series has only graced our computer screens for 8 years; with the original specimen being released in 1997. The original is still utterly playable even after nearly a decade, but how does its latest predecessor do?"

The thing is, pointing out bad game writing is like shooting fish in a barrel. Even on the biggest sites and in the biggest magazines. Some of the bad writing is born out of pretension, some out of trying too hard, most of it from just plain lack of skill. People forget, I think, that even writing about something as ultimately trivial like electronic games is writing and requires an understanding of grammar, context, and the difference between "predecessor" and "sequel".

But why pretend that the landscape is all barren? There are many good (and a very few great) writers out there. Point them out.

I'd like to hear some nominees of the best gaming writing out there. I have personal favorites (in both print and online) but am more interested in what you, gentle readers, find interesting and good. Best written review, best turn of phrase, best insight, best interview question, what have you. Maybe then I'll share my picks.

So why do I bother?

2006-01-02T13:25:00.000-05:00

The thing with gaming blogs is that there is always more criticism than joy. This is probably inherent in the form itself. Blogs are very personal and driven by a small number of motivations. It is easier to make a gripe interesting than a celebration. Plus, criticism more easily provokes discussion than praise.

Bruce Geryk has posted a couple of interesting posts on the limits of strategy games in the last couple of weeks. He has written that strategy games aren't really able to create new and original worlds. He has also written that strategy games are generally poor tools for education. Considering that these are counter-intuitive for the great mass of strategy gamers out there, it could be seen as undercutting the Positives of Gaming camp that seeks to defend a media form that probably doesn't need all that much defending.

I agree with much of what Bruce says in his posts. I quibble with his argument on the inability of games to communicate new geographies (milieus de novo he calls them in all his academic splendor), but his case is well reasoned and eminently defensible if not precisely correct. I've been making the same education argument he does for some time now. But in spite of these limitations, strategy games remain my genre of choice with only sports management games competing, and it's not a close competition.

So here is a celebration of what strategy games do for me.

1) FPS and RPG games let me be a hero, but strategy games let me be a god.
2) Even if they fail to truly educate, strategy games allow me to appreciate what I know on a deeper level.
3) Random maps - there really is no comparison in any other genre to the thrill of pushing back a black shroud and finding something new every time you play.
4) Replayability and setup options means that a single strategy game can satisfy me much longer than a game with a beginning or end.
5) In RPGs, evil means insulting a merchant, usually with little cost. In strategy games, evil is a way of moving your country further ahead faster - and there is almost always a cost.
6) Every multiplayer game is different since so many players have different play styles. Admittedly, this is less true at the highest level of MP RTS competition, but I'm not good enough to play at that level.

There are probably more.

As time goes on, I will return to my regular bitching about clumsy interfaces, stupid patches and Cossacks. But for today, I will revel in my good fortune at the range of strategy games available to me.

The next six months

2005-12-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

Another great year for strategy gaming comes to a close and we can look forward to...well, it's not quite clear. Where 2005 had some huge sequels (Civ IV, AoE 3, EE 2) that we could rest our hopes on, 2006 has few marquee games on the horizon - certainly none with the oomph that Firaxis and Ensemble bring to the table.

Here's what we can look forward to between now and July 1. Note that all the estimated release windows are based on guesswork and a very little bit of research. Some of these titles may slip.

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Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday - This is an expansion pack for Paradox's WW2 strategy colossus. It moves the game forward into the early Cold War, meaning that you don't just have to beat the Nazis; you also have win the battle of ideas over Communism. Or capitalism. Or crush them both under your iron fascist heel. Estimated release window - April

Heroes of Might and Magic V - I'm one of those few who never appreciated the HoMM series. I never found the games interesting at all, and it's not the fantasy setting turning me off. I love Dragonshard. Anyway, this is eagerly anticipated by many people, but I'm not in line. Estimated release window - March

Heart of Empire: Rome - This Roman city builder is now being published in North America by Paradox. Deep Silver announced this game a while ago and development has moved forward despite the announcement that the former Impressions designers are taking another crack at the Caesar series. This game will have a more political focus though, limiting what the player is able to do until he gets enough status in the city. Estimated release window - June

Space Empires V - Yep. A space conquest strategy game with real time combat and pretty explosions. It is estimated to come out in March, but will have to distinguish itself from...

Galactic Civilizations II: The Dread Lords - GalCiv will beat Space Empires to the release gate by about a month, coming out in February instead of the estimated March for SE5. Stardock's original GalCiv was what Master of Orion 3 should have been. I'm generally not to interested in sci-fi settings, but this one will be a must-have.

American Conquest: Divided Nation - You can't keep the Cossacks engine down, despite my efforts to proclaim the general mediocrity of all the games so far. This is a sequel to the exploration and independence battles of American Conquest, centering on American expansion and Civil War. It could be good. It certainly looks pretty. Estimated release window- January.

Joint Task Force - The success of Act of War has softened my heart to modern/near-future RTS. With 5 separate campaigns set in the battlefields of the week after next, JTF promises lots of fireworks and "realistic physics". Like there's any other kind. Estimated release window - May

Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II - Orcs, hobbits and wizards. It could be terrible and it would still sell hundreds of thousands of copies. It won't be terrible. Estimated release window - March

War on Terror - Still a stupid name for a war, but not necessarily a bad name for a game. Another today-ish RTS which has you running around the world killing bad guys in the name of freedom, democracy and safety. I have a bad feeling about this one. Estimated release window - June

Seven Kingdoms: Conquest - A new Seven Kingdoms game and I still haven't gotten around to the earlier ones. Different human civs, different demon civs and a race for the future from the Age of Pyramids to the Age of Giant Robots. The art design looks...jumbled. At least at this point. There's some lame backstory about the Akkadians opening Pandora's box or something and the demons keep coming back to kill humans through seven ages of man. This could be very cool or the dumbest idea since calling a war a War on Terror. Estimated release window - March

Rise of Legends - If I buy any game in the next three months, this is it. Interesting new setting, a not-quite-sequel to the best RTS ever (Rise of Nations) and being developed right here in Maryland by Big Huge Games. Gotta buy local. Estimated release window - April

Cossacks II: Battle for Europe - These guys again? It's an expansion to 2005's oh-so-average and frustrating Napoleonic Wars. I'll probably have to buy just to see if these CDV guys can ever surprise me. Estimated release window - May

Empire Earth II: The Art of Supremacy - Easily the worst subtitle for any expansion pack here. New nations, new weapons, new campaigns. Hopefully some new ideas. Estimated release window - February

Act of War: High Treason - Easily the most Tom Clancy subtitle for any expansion pack here. New campaign and new enemies and now with naval combat. I want it now. Estimated release window - March.

Rush for Berlin - Another Deep Silver game that is being published by Paradox in North America. And another WW2 RTS. Aren't we tired of these yet? What about the Arab-Israeli Wars? Or some Central American civil conflict? More panzers? Yawn. Estimated release window - May

Faces of War - Except for the publishing information, ditto. WW2 RTS. The big difference here is that the campaign will try to focus on the same soldiers as they fight their way across Europe. Could make a good RPG. Estimated release window - March.

City Life - This is SimCity to the extreme. Beautiful 3D engine, the potential to see the city as your citizens see it. For city builders, this could be the one that gives Maxis a run for its simoleons. Estimated release window - May.
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I've probably missed a few. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War was supposed to be an early 2006 release, but I suspect it will slip till summer. There are also lots of indie and smaller wargames that I can't find information on at this point.

There isn't a lot of potential for pleasant surprises in this list. City Life could be one. Maybe Joint Task Force. But I don't see any equivalent to last year's Act of War or Dragonshard - two games that were so much better than they had any right to be.

Have a good New Year and I'll be back blogging in 2006.

Gamespy's PC Awards for 2005

2005-12-21T17:08:00.000-05:00

In my never-ending struggle to bring you news you already know, only spun through my own private prism, Gamespy has announced its PC Games of the Year, as well as the usual genre awards.

I have fewer issues with Gamespy's choices than I did IGN's. This is not unusual, since I have fewer issues with Gamespy as a site than I do with IGN. But I digress.

The division of strategy games into RTS and TBS categories is a little anachronistic. There aren't really enough TBS games out there in any given year. And it's not like Civ IV had any real competition in any case. Dave Kosak, Gamespy's strategy czar, reviewed both Age of Empires III and Civilization IV and gave both five stars. I liked Age of Empires III, but not that much. Age of Empires III wasn't even nominated in any of the Gamespot award categories. It also wins for best graphics and earns a nomination for best music.

Though it's not so unusual that Gamespy's game of the year is the same as mine - Civ IV - but it is interesting that Diplomacy earns their "Coaster of the Year" award just as it earned my "worst strategy game" notice. Kosak eviscerated it in his review. Having not played through all the FPS or RPG or Adventure games out there, I figured that there had to be something worse than Diplomacy. (IGN didn't name a "worst game.") I gave it two stars in my review - the game is not a total disaster, but certainly not good. Kosak gave it one-half of a star.

IGN Puzzles Me Again

2005-12-20T19:24:00.000-05:00

IGN has announced its games of the year, and the PC choices aren't full of surprises. Most reasonable people can agree on what a good game is. Plus, their ultimate choice of Civilization IV as their Game of the Year is in sync with mine.

But a few little things bother me.

How the hell is Empire Earth II anybody's runner-up for strategy game of the year? As much as Age of Empires III annoys me with its familiarity, it is at least an enjoyable little formula. Act of War is better than both of them. Yeah, PCGamer liked Empire Earth II, too. A lot of people did. But very, very few rated it higher than both those other games.

"Best game no one played" goes one better and picks two duds - the impenetrably dull Gary Grigsby's World at War and the mediocre Imperial Glory. No sign of Psychonauts. Or Darwinia. Or Space Rangers 2. Insanity.

Not sure that Civ IV, a game that almost everyone I know plays solo, is anyone's pick for best online game - besides IGN. Their runner-up (Battlefield 2) is a more logical choice, but I'll give IGN credit for going against the grain there, at least.

It's easy to pick on IGN, for some reason. You can fisk their articles for vagueness or errors, mock their choices for columnists, or simply note that many of their scores seemed to be pulled out of a hat.

But rest assured that Gamespy will get examined in this space soon.

Spellcheck

2005-12-18T15:52:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to claim to be the best speller or writer out there. Typos and me go way back. But is it too much to ask for games to have their words spelled correctly?

Case in point, Legion Arena. The battles in the game are separated by a voice-over history of Rome with a map as the background. The narration is pretty good - and the voice strangely uncredited in the manual. But as the map zoomed out for a bit on the Punic Wars, I was horrified to see "Cathago" and "Puncia" on the map. (It should be "Carthago" and "Punica".) Two of the game's battles are misspelled, too - "Claudine Forks" instead of "Caudine" and Agrigentum gets a double-G after the A. (They refer Mark Antony as "Anthony", but the H-spelling is an acceptable alternative in the UK.)

There's an odd but frequent formatting problem, too. The text that introduces each battle often runs across the box in such a way to leave a single period at the beginning of a line.

None of this affects the gameplay in any way, naturally. And we've come to expect spelling errors in our games, especially as more and more of them are made in non-English speaking countries. But Slitherine is a British company and it's not like the game was rushed out the door or anything.

Spelling errors do annoy me in games, probably out of all proportion to their importance or frequency. And considering how many words your typical strategy game has, it's probably remarkable that I haven't found more in Civilization IV. But these errors do have the effect of pulling me out of whatever zen-like gaming trance I am in, reminding me of the banality of fact-checking and how often it is left for later - and then never gotten around to at all.

Gamespot Strategy Nominees

2005-12-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

Gamespot has announced its Game of the Year nomination list. I don't know why they break it down into so many different catergories - I count 53. Sure, ten of the categories are "joke" categories like the one for excessive cursing or product placement. But clicking through all those pages is the best argument yet for ignoring platforms as a distinguishing characteristic.

The Strategy Game of the Year nominees are a bit of a surprise since there are two console games on the list: Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Metal Gear Acid. The PC entries are Act of War: Direct Action, Dragonshard and the odds-on favorite Civilization IV. Civ is also the only strategy entry in the PC Game of the Year category.

The failure of Age of Empires III to be nominated for a single category must be a serious disappointment for the folks at Ensemble. This is a marquee franchise that has brought lots of critical acclaim to the developers and they put together another good game - very good at times. Still, it wasn't good enough for Gamespot. Not quite good enough for me either.

Come January, the major sites and magazines will announce all of their 2005 best-of lists, and I'll be here to look at all the strategy relevant opinions.

2005 End of Year Strategy Wrap-Up

2005-12-13T16:11:00.000-05:00

OK. It's not the end of the year. But it's close enough. And I doubt I'll get much blogging done in the days before January hits.

It's been a good year for strategy games. The best indie game of the year is a strategy game. The best game of the year is a strategy game. The best budget game of the year is a wargame.

With every up, there's a down. Missed opportunities. Fumbled franchises. Failures to learn from history. So, without further ado...

Best Trend: Console Strategy Games - Even if it leads to the end of AAA turn-based strategy titles for the PC, the continuing success of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is now coupled with the excellent Advance Wars and better than expected Shattered Union. It's not quite enough to make me invest in a next gen console, but it is enough to make me stop looking down my nose at the machines altogether.

Worst Trend: WW2 RTS - It's not that they are bad, it's just that with Blitzkrieg II and Codename Panzer and now Company of Heroes on the way...enough already. Or at least change the formula some.

Best Idea Implemented in the Worst Way: Borders in Empire Earth II - When Rise of Nations introduced borders to the RTS a couple of years ago, they put a new wrinkle in the whole land rush mentality of the genre. When Empire Earth II did it this year, it lacked all of the urgency and importance. It had no dynamism - just sections that could be captured.

Worst Idea Implemented in the Best Way: All of Dragonshard - From the snicker-worthy name to the idea of a fantasy RTS set in the blah Eberron world, this D&D strategy title had little going for it. It turned out to be a gentle reminder that good art direction and a few changes to the old RTS formula could overcome even the most dubious of starting positions. I mean, come on. War golems?

Least Surprising Game: Cossacks II: The Napoleonic Wars - Given my tepid reaction to the earlier Cossacks games, my "Meh" tone to Cossacks II was completely expected. I opened the box, looked at the game and was only shocked by how little had been done to win me over.

Most Surprising Game: Act of War: Direct Action - Jingoistic, Jerry Bruckheimer-esque near future RTS against a tired opponent with full motion video interludes. I should have hated this game. I did not. It had an interesting single player campaign (that never happens) and had infantry in their proper role as versatile and essential battlefield units. And it's getting an expansion titled High Treason. I won't be surprised if it's good.

Best Independent Game: Darwinia - It not only looked good, in a retro kind of way. It also had some very interesting level design and some interesting game challenges. Introversion is the master of self-promotion, but at least they have something to promote.

Best Budget Title: History Channel Bull Run Take Command 1861 - Or something like that. This Civil War wargame from Mad Minute Games was a critical darling and deservedly so. It took the one battle it had (and one battlefield) and somehow made every experience with it new and shocking. The news that they are working on another Civil War game is heartening. Lots of time and money went into making Bull Run and it gets sold for $19.99. Glad to see that they think they have another one in them.

Best Game the Mainstream Game Press Didn't Tell Me About: Ticket to Ride Online - Game suggestions that come from friends can be iffy. Board games doubly so. But the friendly recommendation of Ticket to Ride Online was such a success that you have to wonder why most of the gaming press ignores the entire online board game world. TTR is not a "casual game" as is usually understood, but involves just enough thinking to make it a great strategy game. I'm already planning for the PC version's arrival. Then the game will get some press. And a year late.

Worst Game: Diplomacy - There haven't been a lot of terrible strategy games this year. You had Heritage of Kings: The Settlers. I never even looked for a Cold War Conflicts demo - Gamespot didn't bother reviewing it either. But Diplomacy gets my vote for worst strategy game simply because of all the misplaced energy. A 3D board that spins and never lets you focus on what's happening. Grunting enemy avatars. No real way to engage in private negotiations in game. Well, the latest patch includes private chat - after weeks of people defending this design decision. Given the failure of other attempts to translate the classic game to PC, Paradox deserves some credit for ignoring the past and surging ahead. They also deserve the blame for repeating the past.

Best Game: Civilization IV - This isn't even close. No other game has given me the joy, anger, thrill of discovery, and remembrances of things past. Sid Meier's name's on the box, but the afterword in the manual shows that Soren Johnson gets it. He gets what makes Civ great. I can't think of a single addition to the game that was a mistake or misstep. This will be the PC game of the year, I suspect, for most of the major gaming press outlets. Unless Gamespy does something stupid and picks Empire Earth II (they picked the first one, after all).

Some opinions matter more than others

2005-12-09T16:17:00.000-05:00

I was wavering on getting The Movies. Despite the generally respectful reviews it has been getting, all the discussion of the tedious tycoon part of the game gave me the impression that this is a game best left for the bargain bin. Many of the movies uploaded to the Lionhead site at this point are pretty silly and more in the lines of trailers or in-jokes than actual movies.

But two recent opinions have provoked me to put this title at the top of my Christmas list.

One of these opinions was a 3.5 star review. The other opinion was an IM out of the blue.

The review was from CGM's Steve Bauman. Besides being my sometime boss, he's got decent taste in games. Still, 3.5 stars is not usually enough to instantly add a game to my list. But he says a couple of things that make my heart flutter. First, the interface gets rave reviews from his pen. Frequent readers know that interface is very important to me, and anything that makes my life easier and manuals less necessary is fine with me. Especially if it gets me through the tycoon part of the game. Second, he mentions that you can make a musical (actually, a lesbian zombie musical) and I'd love to have been Rodgers and/or Hammerstein.

The IM was from my friend Kevin who hates everything. Well, not everything. But he is not easily enthused. He goes in phases, too. But when he gets enthusiastic about something I generally take notice. So when he IMs me saying that The Movies is the best game he has played in months that means something to me.

Now his idea of "best" is not necessarily one with an objective hierarchy. If he really thinks that this is a better game than Civilization IV, then The Movies must be some kind of miracle. "The best" for him generally means that this is a game that allows him to feel like he is in control. He likes options, he likes managment, he likes novelty.

Reviews from people you know always matter more than an enthusiastic review from a site where you may not know the reviewer. I haven't met most of the reviewers I trust, but I've gotten to the point where I trust bylines more than sites. People who "I don't trust Gamespot" sometimes seem to miss that some very trustworthy (in my opinion) people scribe for the leading game review website from time to time.

But, having met Steve and Kevin (only once each oddly enough), I can put a face to the review. Even a review score that Gamerankings puts at the bottom of their Movies listing is not enough to drown out the good things that Steve has to say. And Kevin's occasional crankiness about buggy AI is not enough to prevent me from picturing the joy on his face when he finds something to be excited about.

So, brother-in-law, if you are reading this, buy me The Movies. Some people I know say it's pretty good.

"So what game should I get?"

2005-12-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

The thing about teaching high school is that you get a lot of questions.

The thing about teaching high school when your students know that you play games is that you get a lot of questions about playing games.

This afternoon, one student asked me for gift suggestions for his brother. Trying to be a good person, I naturally asked what type of games his brother liked. To my total unsurprise the answer was action games and shooters, i.e., my big glaring weakness. So, I just told him what some of his schoolmates have told me: "You have to get Call of Duty 2."

I have not played CoD2. I may not for quite some time. And I feel odd recommending a game based purely on what other people are saying. (Of course, a lot of people are saying that Call of Duty 2 is a great game, so I don't feel that odd.)

A good friend and fellow teacher has come to rely on my opinions ever since I directed him to Pirates! He has since bought Rome and its expansion, both on my suggestion. A mutual friend of ours got into Pirates! as well, but was totally underwhelmed by Rome.

Recommending a game is a delicate task. If you recommend it when you are in the throes of enchantment about a game, you might end up pushing a product that you get tired of shortly. If they push for a suggestion about games or systems I'm not all that familiar with, I have to rely on people I trust not letting me down when they say good things about a game.

Plus, as a reviewer, I can't say that I've never overpraised a title. My online review of Hearts of Iron is more positive than I soon came to be about the game, mostly because I had a seven day deadline to play a complicated WWII sim. But I do know how precious my credibility is to readers and friends.

As great as Pirates! is, it gets old pretty fast. Would I recommend it now? And with what caveats?

And when they start talking about Playstations and Xboxes, what the hell am I supposed to say?

But, being a vain man who likes to see himself as some sort of professional game expert (I have many fantasies), I can't quite bring myself to answer "I don't know" when people ask if there are any games out there that they would like. So I will undoubtedly make some bad recommendations this holiday season.

I feel pretty secure about Call of Duty 2, though.

January CGM and failed Diplomacy

2005-12-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

This month's Computer Games Magazine announces "37 PAGES OF REVIEWS." That's twenty games, in case you were wondering. Some big reviews in there too. Quake IV. Age of Empires III. Civilization IV. The Movies.

And a few of mine. I review Down in Flames, Diplomacy and Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion.

There's so much in this month's magazine to respond to that I don't want to deal with the entire issue right here in a single post. All of the columns are strong, there is a flight sim reviewed (!!!) and this month's Revisionist History on Seven Cities of Gold hits a nail on the head that's been aching to be hit.

So, now that my review has been published, I'll talk a bit about Diplomacy. The relatively warm reception it's been getting has been bugging me for a while. And not just me. But this is something different.

In my review, I make the point that Diplomacy is not really about the rules of the game. It's about the people you are playing with and interacting with them. And I doubt you can do that against a computer opponent.

I can already hear some of you thinking about how diplomatic relations work so well in other strategy games. But Diplomacy is different because the negotiations aren't just part of the game; they are the game. There's nothing but deals, and qualified pacts, and feigned allegiance and the inevitable knife in the back - the knife you know is coming, if not when. Without a convincing human-like opponent, the single-player game never rises to the level where it feels like Diplomacy.

And if you are going to do a straight port of a classic board game, you have to get the feel right. Paradox doesn't, and there simply isn't enough in the board game design to make an interesting single player experience. (Oddly, PCGamer's Dan Morris endorses Diplomacy specifically for its single player mode.) The game turns into the mathematical movement of armies and navies against a clump of enemies that are usually out of position anyway. If you can survive to the mid-game, you will win.

In fact, without opponents, Diplomacy begins to look a little like its arch-enemy Risk. You just accumulate army after army until you have enough in the right places to push to victory. Yawn.

I will still look forward to the next Paradox production, but I am getting increasingly frustrated with the apparent "shove it out the door" approach that has seemed to afflict recent releases. And they self-publish now, so they can't blame "the suits".

Maybe Diplomacy is simply untranslatable beyond building a competent multiplayer setup - which can be done for a lot less money than Paradox spent on grunting avatars for this dog.

Sid Meier on Walk of Game

2005-12-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

Firaxis gaming czar Sid Meier has been awarded a star on the "Walk of Game". He'll join fellow inductee John Carmack in getting a developer star alongside last year's winners Nolan Bushnell and Shigeru Miyamoto.

First, let me be clear that I think that a star decorated sidewalk that celebrates StarCraft, Lara Croft and Link alongside developers is a little silly. Plus, before long, recognized names in development will probably dry up, especially since the industry has moved to larger corporate committee designs and away from the one or two person design operation. And no matter how often American McGee puts his name in front of a game, he's a long way from star-status.

Still, aside from the AIAS Hall of Fame Awards (Meier was the second inductee - 1999), there is little public recognition of the people that actually design the games. Even game development companies get very little recognition for their efforts. No end of the year summary has "Developer of the Year" or "Best First Game". The only names recognized at the SpikeTV awards are whatever Hollywood stars slummed to lend their voices to a game - ignoring all the considerable voice talent outside of the A and B list of Tinseltown.

I've had the pleasure of briefly meeting Mr. Meier before he and Soren Johnson ganged up on my sorry butt in Civ IV at a press event in Hunt Valley. He's shorter than you would imagine. But obviously a class act who has worked with or helped develop some of the biggest name in the strategy arena.

So congratulations to Mr. Meier and to Firaxis. I hope none of these awards make him think he can retire. I still want my dinosaur game.

More on artsy-fartsy reviews

2005-12-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

As the breast beating over why gaming reviews aren't quite masterpieces continues, Bruce Geryk weighs in with a piece that hits some of the same notes that my recent post did, especially the general puzzlement that gaming journalists spend so much time on this stuff.

Carnival of Gamers still going

2005-12-02T11:20:00.000-05:00

I've been so busy the last few months that the Carnival of Gamers and the Gaming Roundtable have come and gone without comment. This is hardly fair since both represent serious attempts to keep the gaming blog community together, encouraging sharing of material, insights and the usual linking to each others stuff. Plus, they allow regular readers to sample some new and exciting blogs.

In fact, I had almost forgotten about the Carnival altogether until Jonathan Arnold from Game Chair reminded me with a kind inquiry whether I had anything I wanted to contribute. I submitted my recent post on wargame AI and that's what you'll find at this month's Carnival.

And I'm surrounded by some great stuff. Thomas at Mile Zero takes on Chris Crawford's evolutionary approach to women gamers, Jason Preston at Flicker Gaming examines gaming in episodes, and there's another dozen posts on top of that.

Not all are great, of course. This is a chance for even the weak or uninteresting to contribute. In many ways, I prefer the Round Table since there is a single topic for all to address - it can really push the writer to his or her best when the post must be focused on someone else's question.

But I'm glad the Carnival is going strong and I hope I can contribute more regularly in the future. Thanks go out to Seth at Game Chair for organizing and compiling all the entries.