Having just finished my review of Act of War: Direct Action, it strikes me that this is as good a time as any to throw out some thoughts on the place of politics in strategy games. Except for games about politics itself (Political Machine, Hidden Agenda, etc.), most gamers see little red-meat politics in their […]
Entries from April 16th, 2005
The Politics of Strategy Games
April 16th, 2005 · Comments Off on The Politics of Strategy Games · Uncategorized
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Revisionism in Game Design?
April 15th, 2005 · 1 Comment · Design, History
Wonderland has posted an interesting complaint about the upcoming Age of Empires 3 game. The native population in the game will be mostly allies of the players, and not the targets of genocide, displacement or sport hunting as was often the case in history. The writer notes: I have a quote in my head that […]
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Over 200 thousand people buy crappy game
April 14th, 2005 · Comments Off on Over 200 thousand people buy crappy game · Uncategorized
GSC Game World has announced that it has sold 200,000 copies of Alexander outside the former Soviet Union. This is for a game that has a 54.9 score at Gamerankings. The notable outliers are a 77 from PCGamer (US) and a 7 from IGN (which is like a 5 when the exchange rate is taken […]
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Cossacks II Gold
April 13th, 2005 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars has gone gold. The first Cossacks series sold over two million copies, according to CDV. This is an amazing number for any strategy game, let alone a game series that is about formations, musket fire and little else. But almost all those sales were in Europe. Cossacks barely made a dent […]
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Sparta: Ancient Wars interview
April 12th, 2005 · Comments Off on Sparta: Ancient Wars interview · Uncategorized
A new interview with Ingo Horn of IMC is over at Computer Games Magazine’s website. Though the interview is still in fractured English, it’s the most we’ve heard about this game so far. And what have we learned about Sparta: Ancient Wars? Not much. Horn still won’t divulge who the developer is, though Torsten Hess […]
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Origins
April 11th, 2005 · 1 Comment · History
Isn’t it funny how things get started in the strategy game world? Before Age of Empires II came along, could your average gamer tell you what a trebuchet was? Or what it looked like? Or how it worked? Now it seems that every strategy game set in the Middle Ages (or that has a Middle […]
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