I see I haven’t made any real updates this week. Which is strange, because I’ve been reading and playing more stuff then usual. I guess I should start making myself some opinions and get writing! Anyway, I made sure to make the Link Tips-posts less a sad thing then they’ve been before, and took a new strategy to build them (that is, throwing all links in and edit a draft during the week). And, lo and behold, it seems to have worked!
As always, Rock Paper Shotgun’s Sunday Papers and Gamesindustry.biz’s article Depth Changes – and a Eurogamer-blog article about Gaikai turned up while I was searching.
On Gamasutra, an opinion called Can Games Become “Virtual Murders”?. I’ve always had a worrying feeling about the “shoot people in the face”-focuc of gaming (as some earlier posts goes through), so this is really refreshing to read – but it seems like the post gets the same sort of opposition I tend to get while speaking about it aloud. I hope it’s the first step in realizing things, denial, but it could just as well be a defense of the established, home-blindness or plain “I want my guns!”. Anyway, great article.
Eurogamer has an interview with Rob Pardo, talking a lot about Blizzard’s design philosophy. There’s a quite a bit of good stuff to remember in there.
A gamasutra compilation of Expert Blogs posts, including weapon balance, questioning if frustration is all bad, what makes a good game story and more. These Link-tips are starting to become a compilation-compilation!
From Edge-online, an article series about making “Non Fun”-games. Here’s the last of four linked, the earlier three is up to you.
From MMORPG.com, a column about accessibility. Not much that should be new to anybody, but still worth reminding yourself of once in awhile.