As every game journalist knows, nothing gets eyeballs like a list. Ten most important this. Fifteen least appreciated that. Fifty sexiest. Hundred scariest. So it’s sort of right and proper to pay homage to one of the first big “list” books, the one that earned its otherwise negligible author eternal fame. Sir Edward Creasy was […]
Gamer’s Bookshelf: Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
April 23rd, 2007 · 6 Comments · Gamer's Bookshelf
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AgeOD’s American Civil War: Tutorial Tirade
April 21st, 2007 · 5 Comments · AGEOD, Civil War
Memo to developers: When you create an ingame tutorial, do everything you can to help the player. Telling me to move my troops to a region “three to the west” isn’t very helpful when the number of possible routes to the west is greater than one. It doesn’t hurt to highlight the key region, or […]
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Explaining the Pause
April 21st, 2007 · 8 Comments · Board Games, MMO
The lack of updates in the last couple of days has been mostly because my gaming time has been consumed with two things. First, I puttered around with the Lord of the Rings Online open beta. It’s cute, but probably not cute enough to hold me any longer than World of Warcraft did. Which means […]
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Soren Johnson leaves Firaxis
April 18th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Firaxis, Industry, Maxis
First reported on Apolyton by webmaster Dan Quick, it has been confirmed by Firaxis programmer Scott Lewis that the big brain behind Civilization IV is moving on to work with EA/Maxis. I guess he likes companies that end in -axis. How big a blow this is to Firaxis fans like me depends on how seriously […]
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The Worst Thing About PBEM Civ
April 16th, 2007 · 5 Comments · Multiplayer
The early turns in PBEM Civilization are murder. You’ve given your workers orders, have your cities producing and decided what to research. Next turn. And it will be “next turn” for the next little while, too.
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World War I and Game Design
April 16th, 2007 · 12 Comments · Design, History, WW1
My homeland is going through another spasm of celebration of its grand nation building moment. For Canada, this isn’t the 1867 Confederation or even the completion of the transcontinental railway that linked East and West. Instead, the First World War is oft cited as the point when a Dominion with no independent foreign policy took […]
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