I'd guess that for most people, analyzing the mechanics of any given game reduces neatly to "this is what I like, and this is what I don't." There's nothing wrong with that, since every game must inevitably throw its players into one of two categories: the ones that are entertained, and the ones that are not. As gamers, our subjective tastes are all that we bring to the development process ... no matter how much we'd like to think of ourselves as professional appreciators of the medium.
For those of you - and you are a surly breed apart - inclined to deeper ruminations over of your chosen game, this post on Valve's TF2 blog should be somewhat fascinating.
Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.
Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 per cent a year, will start to exceed supply from as early as next year because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry websites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer.
It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an “unreliable toy”.
And the money stat:
The amount of traffic generated each month by YouTube is now equivalent to the amount of traffic generated across the entire internet in all of 2000.
Beginning Friday at 12:01 am GMT, the PC version of Left 4 Dead will be available for a free 24-hour trial via Steam. The free trial will include access to the recently released Survival Pack DLC, which introduces a new multiplayer game mode and two additional Versus campaigns. Those who wish to give L4D and the Survival Pack a try may now pre-load everything needed to play with no obligation to purchase.
1up.com has the dirt on MAG, an online modern-era FPS designed to bring the murder on a scale that's nearly incomprehensible. You read the headline correctly: the game is supposed to accommodate 128 players per team. If Zipper Interactive can make this work, we'll have to stop calling the playground a "map," and start calling it a "theater."
MAG was once an acronym for "Massive Action Game," but the marketing gurus have decided that the shorter name fits the game better. I suppose that a head full of Mad Dog 20/20 vapors would make that seem perfectly logical, but calling the game "OMFG/WTF Where the Hell Am I Supposed to Go With This Rifle?" would probably be a bit unwieldy for the box art designers. But I digress. Let's get back to the bigness:
These levels are big. "But they're not obnoxiously big," lead designer Andy Beaudoin tells [1up's Joe Rybicki]. "It's an infantry game, so we don't want players wandering for a long time; we want you in the action quickly. That said, building enough space that 256 players isn't a meat grinder requires that we have things on the scale of kilometers rather than meters."
The article has all kinds of additional information, but who cares? I'd play any game with decent graphics and a steady 60 frames per second if it gives me 128 people to kill and/or call me noob. Of course, I'd also like to ride a nuclear-powered unicorn to a titty-bar on Venus, but I can't decide which scenario is more likely.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like this is a PS3 exclusive. I'll post a video anyway:
Peter Tamte says Konami's decision to dump Six Days in Fallujahcaught him by surprise. IUN's first impulse was to call bullshit. But on second thought, we are dealing with a guy that thinks health-regenerating ninja-soldiers = survival horror = realistically presenting the horrors of war. We are thus convinced of Mr. Tamte's sincerity.
We do, however, echo the calls of bullshit on a related matter. Via GamePolitics, a smart-ass named Austin Walker (at onelastcontinue.com) discovered that Atomic submitted a trademark for the game four days after the battle ended. Why does that matter? GP nails it:
What we find fascinating about these bits of info are their contrast to claims that veterans of the battle came to Atomic, essentially demanding that they create a game based on their Fallujah experiences. Such claims were used to some extent to buttress Six Days against charges that it was insensitive to Iraq War veterans and their families. Moreover, claiming that real combatants were behind the game would surely be a marketing plus as well.
And to think I was actually starting to feel bad for these guys. Well, not really, but sounding sympathetic is as good as being sympathetic, right?
As discussed here and here on IUN, Six Days in Fallujah (Atomic Games; 2010) looked to be a PR nightmare in the making. It seems that the game's publisher came to the same conclusion. From asahi.com:
Konami Digital Entertainment Co. has decided to pull a videogame that realistically reproduces the bloody street battles between U.S. forces and terrorists and insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.
"After seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it," a public relations official of Konami said.
