Month: September 2005

Shuffling off these Retail Chains

After the rants about the problems of the game industry, Greg Costikyan is now forming a company with the goal of promoting indie games:

And its purpose, of course, will be to build what I’ve been talking about: a viable path to market for independent developers, and a more effective way of marketing and distributing niche PC game styles to gamers.

Manifesto Games.

Following what I have commented previously, I think a crucial part is building public awareness that there is a special set of unique, interesting experiences to be had from “indie” games. Players need to know that they want it.

Best of luck to Greg, who promises to blog the process.

The GameGame is Out!

Aki J?rvinen has released his game about games, the GameGame.

The GameGame is a crazily recursive idea of Aki’s, to make a game about game design, where the cards of the game represent ideas and components in the game design process. It does make sense, and I completely believe it can work as a teaching tool.

  • The objective of the game to collect cards which make up a design for a game.
  • The Best Design Wins!
  • The cards represent game elements, i.e. ingredients a game.
  • You as a player collect generic elements and improvise your own game based on them.

Hamlet – The Game

I used to think you’d never see it, but here it is: Hamlet as a text adventure.

It does sort of work as far as I’ve gotten, but probably because the juxtaposition between the play and the text adventure is so jarring as to be fun.

> n
Balcony
A ghost is here.
An exit leads south.

> tell ghost “hello”
“Hey Dad,” you say cheerily. “What’s up?”
“Hamlet,” says the old man after a sigh, “you remember how I was found mysteriously dead in the orchard a couple of weeks back? Well… it’s like this. Your uncle Claudius poisoned me so he could become king and marry your mother. I’d be awfully grateful if you could kill him for me.”
“All right,” you say, “I’ll do it!”
Your life suddenly seems to have purpose.

Update: The game has been relocated to http://rdouglasjohnson.com/hamlet/