Results tagged “fpses” from The Gameshelf
I wish to make an extended footnote on last Monday's post, regarding further similarities I see between the comics and video game markets. When I was in high school I went through a profound comics-geek phase where, beyond the typical obsessive book-hoarding, I undertook to learn everything there was to learn about that medium's history (a full decade before Wikipedia came 'round, my son). I've long since sold my longboxes full of Mylar-bagged pulp, but that knowledge remains, and I can't help but get very tangential when I have reason to compare comics to any other medium. Having thus further established my nerdboy bloviation credentials:
I see Valve Software today holding the same position in the overall media landscape that Marvel Comics occupied in the early-mid 1960s. In both cases, we have two experienced studios, neither the mainstream-recognized giants of their fields, who made an unusual decision: they chose to spend the creative capital gained from prior commercial success to quietly revolutionize their respective medium's dominant genres, rather than take the safer path of grinding out more derivative sameness.
Ego-surf du jour: fans of (a mod of) the multiplayer shooter Battlefield 1942 discovered the Diplomacy show, and it inspired them to give the game a whirl themselves. They started a game over on webdiplomacy.net, and recent posts on the original forum thread are now devoted to international saber-rattling circa 1901.
The sight of hardcore FPS fans getting excited about discovering a board game (even one played electronically) due to a Gameshelf episode quite honestly delights me.
In other news, I've bought my registration to PAX East. I look forward to seeing what IF-related plans coalesce over the next few months, and to meeting lots of y'all. Eager to see the show beyond that, too; not counting SF cons, the only game-related event I've attended is the rather modestly sized Origins Game Fair, so I'm prepared to be completely unprepared for PAX.
Personal goal: by mid-March, I want to be able to say, with a straight face, that I produce a TV show about games. I can say that now only with a lot of hemming and hawing about how infrequently it's published. So, I'd like to get at least a couple more episodes in the can by then.
I've begun production of episode 9, insofar as there is now a stack of index cards on my desk that more or less seems to outline the next 30 minutes of the pure gamish elucidation that only The Gameshelf can provide. With fairest winds, it'll be done before January. Stay, as they say, tuned.
Screenwriter Todd Alcott looks at the difference between Doom and Half-Life, two first-person shooters from the 1990s with nearly identical plot setups, and yet one tells a so much more compelling story than the other. He argues, basically, that while the former game contains a series of thematically consistent levels, the latter game uses the tried-and-true three-act narrative structure that's supported countless films and television episodes - applying it with great success to a series of thematically consistent game levels. Recommended reading to all interested in writing interactive adventures of any sort.
