It’s commonplace for longtime gamers like me to complain about the dearth of big, honking manuals like they made Back in The Day. The truth is, manuals as instruction booklets aren’t as important as they used to be since tutorials and easily accessible in-game documentation make them redundant. Three recent manuals have reignited some of […]

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This month’s guest blogger is Alan Au, a game industry freelancer, academic, and advocate. Having grown up in an era of interactive entertainment, he is now exploring the connection between games, technology, and society. More importantly, he’s having a good time doing it.
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Welcome to the age of participatory culture.

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Tocqueville called America a “classless society” and he was mostly right, at least in 19th century terms. People in 1830s America weren’t generally born to privilege and you could work your way into Congress or the Presidency from backwoods adventures and Indian fighting. Things have changed a little now, but this isn’t a political blog […]

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I am probably one of the only strategy gamers on Earth not the least bit excited about Supreme Commander. It’s not far off, and the media blitz is in full swing. Interviews, previews, new screenshots…there is every expectation by the media and the fanbase that the early 2007 release is going to be huge.
I don’t […]

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My Civ Chronicles background interview with Bruce Shelley has been distributed to a variety of places. You can find it here at Shacknews.
Shelley added some of his own reminiscences of working on Civilization as part of a Chronicles idea that didn’t quite pan out.
Shelley’s reflections underline just how difficult game production used to be, and […]

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I apologize for the slow pace of updates lately. My desk is full of work for three different outlets, plus I want to shop around a review for Dominions 3. I also need to get my indie column finished. So this is a bad time to get sick.
On the plus side, it’s steady work, which […]

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I’m not much of a crusader. I’m too reasonable and pragmatic to carry grudges against Electronic Arts or Microsoft or Sony. I am a mature individual.
But when one of the good guys is about to get the raw end of a deal, I like to speak up. Even if he is a crusader.
Not that Gamerdad […]

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I don’t remember these being big things when I was younger. But now you can get a limited edition Medieval 2 if you pre-order, two differently aligned Neverwinter Nights 2 games with magic rings and a Collector’s Edition of Europa Universalis III with a soundtrack CD and “composer’s diary.” (Why the composer and not the […]

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VGMWatch’s Kyle Orland has compiled a list of gaming’s top 50 journalists for Next Gen. And, naturally, there is stuff wrong with the list. Any list that reaches 50 will inevitably lead to hair-splitting and other disagreements. So here are a few of mine.
1) The Penny Arcade guys get a single entry, but Adam Sessler […]

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I’m a big fan of the Take Command games, and the developers at Mad Minute should be very happy with what their tiny operation has accomplished.
So the news that sales have been poor and there are significant barriers to staying in business as a going concern is very disappointing. In a post on the company […]

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