As I work through a continuous game of Dawn of Discovery, I’m finding it a little hard to get into the whole spirit of a master builder. The game is allegedly about making grand cities and trading with exotic outposts. You establish your own resource colonies (with just enough citizens to keep the budget in […]
World of Battles in Beta
July 16th, 2009 · 4 Comments · MMO, RTS, Wargames
World of Battles just shows how out of the loop I am. Someone was making a real time army building/troop collecting fantasy MMO wargame and no one told me? I probably got a PR announcement about it months ago, but today’s note from Calico Media was a bit of a surprise. Hard to tell from […]
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Three Moves Ahead Episode 21 — Soren Johnson and the state of the genre
July 14th, 2009 · 15 Comments · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
Soren Johnson drops by to talk to Troy, Tom and Julian about how the future of strategy games is online – whether you like it or not. He drops some hints about what he is working on at EA, talks a little bit about Civ and why RTSes have to die in order to be […]
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Starcraft II Delayed?
July 13th, 2009 · Comments Off on Starcraft II Delayed? · Blizzard, Industry, RTS, Sci Fi
As Bryn Williams says, this would not be a surprise. I’ve long had doubts that Starcraft II would make Christmas 2009, and in one of our earliest podcasts I made the reckless prediction that we’d see Diablo 3 before we saw Starcraft II. Blizzard, of course, follows its own schedule. You can’t really put publishing […]
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Game AI Discussion
July 13th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Blogs, Design
Soren Johnson has published the email exchange he had with his GDC co-panelists before the conference. It’s a very interesting discussion with some heavyweight minds, including Ubisoft’s Josh Mosqueira, the designer of Relic’s Company of Heroes. Now, whether to keep or axe a feature based on how well the AI can use it… that’s a […]
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Dawn of Discovery: Early Moments
July 11th, 2009 · 7 Comments · City Builder, Review, Ubisoft
I’m about four or five missions into the campaign for Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery. The first few are tutorial missions that get you quickly up to speed with resident needs, resource chains, trade routes, etc. In fact, they are one of the better city builder tutorials I’ve seen since they start you out with […]
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