Challenge Accepted: What you’re wading into
If it were just this, it would admittedly be a little boring. it would also be consistent.
Can we talk about Frog Fractions? I want to talk about Frog Fractions.
If you haven’t played Frog Fractions, that’s easily rectified – it’s free right here. Aside from absurd humor, the developer’s stated goal for the game was to get back to a time before players knew everything about a game, to get back a sense of wonder and surprise when things keep changing on you as you play the game. It’s not really a spoiler to say that the basic version of the game that you start with isn’t what you end up playing when all is said and done (hint: the dragon can go down, too).
Don’t get me wrong, I think Frog Fractions is a great little piece of art. But as a pure game, it sort of comes down to a series of brain farts. It surprises you with its gameplay, yes, but that’s because it doesn’t deliver anything close to what it promised to on the tin, and the real challenge is figuring out what random direction to head in next. So how do you interpret the challenge in a game where the whole schtick is changing what you’re actually doing?
Telling Stories: Adult themes and porn
Let’s do something that I couldn’t really do back when I was writing Storyboard; let’s talk about sex.
I’ve touched on the subject before, but only broadly. It’s hard not to. But it’s also the elephant in the room, something that’s hard to talk about without it seeming as if that’s all you want to talk about. Thanks to the people who use ERP as a free license to be as screamingly creepy as they could never be in the real world, no one wants to talk about it, because who in the world wants to be associated with that?
But it’s part of the territory. Hell, it’s part of the community, something that it’s more than likely you’ve worked around even if you didn’t know it before. So let’s talk about it, because it’s important and relevant, moreso than the roleplaying community as a whole likes to acknowledge. Despite rumors, being involved in ERP does not automatically mean you are a supercreep, nor is it an activity solely reserved for people using it as a surrogate relationship. Heck, you’ve quite possibly brushed up against it yourself.
Spoiled on Star Trek
If I had to guess “what series would end off the run chronologically” I really would not have guessed Voyager.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Star Trek lately. All right, that’s not fair; I’m frequently thinking about Star Trek. But I’ve been thinking about it more than usual. About the backlash against the new films, backlash that in many cases seems to amount to lashing out against these films because they’re so different from the original takes, rather than being upset at some legitimate flaws in the structure.
Seriously, there are loads of reasons to dislike Star Trek Into Darkness, but none of them have to do with the fact that it’s not Star Trek enough.
But there’s more going on here, and as I watch through Voyager I’m struck by something I’ve always been aware of but never really thought about. For a really long time, Star Trek had a very steady pattern going, and the new films represent the same sort of paradigm shift that The Next Generation introduced. We, as fans, shouldn’t be all too unhappy with the new films, even if we don’t like them – because this has happened before, and to be honest, we’re kind of at fault here.
Hard Project: World of Darkness
Screw horses; my kingdom for a company who will actually develop this line properly.
For the handful of people who haven’t heard yet, CCP Games killed World of Darkness, because apparently a better use of the company’s funding was delivering a PC version of their failed console shooter? I don’t follow CCP’s business procedures too closely, I just know that they’re awful. Yes, part of the reason I’m saying that is because I knew people directly affected by this loss, but this is also the company responsible for the deep dark pit that is EVE Online, and it’s also a company that apparently doesn’t realize what it has.
Not that a lot of other companies seem to know, either. The World of Darkness setting is tailor-made for games, honestly; the fact that we haven’t had a Grand Theft Auto clone wherein everyone’s a supernatural creature is a crime. The only games we have gotten are a trio of Gautlet clones based on the one line that everyone tries to forget and two Vampire RPGs, both of which had major issues with bugs and a lack of polish. Without falling back on the obvious fact that the rights are owned by a company more concerned with promoting jerks with spreadsheets than any other game, why are games so difficult to develop for this property?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 