Europa Universalis III is a good game. It isn’t the transcendant glory that its immediate predecessor was. It isn’t as deep as Hearts of Iron II and it’s not nearly as much fun as Crusader Kings. But it does have more going for it than the numerous complaints on the official forum would have you […]
Entries Tagged as 'History'
Stepping Towards the Canon
March 12th, 2007 · 7 Comments · History, Industry
Many moons ago, I posted about creating a canonical list of video games, using the National Film Registry as a model. Now we have a first step of a sort. I wanted to hit this talk at GDC but didn’t for some reason. All of the interesting panels are scheduled at the same time. Anyway, […]
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The First Americans
September 6th, 2006 · Comments Off on The First Americans · Ensemble, History
Allen Rausch has an interesting interview regarding the new Age of Empires expansion, Warchiefs, over on Gamespy. The theme of the interview is the challenge in dealing with Native American nations. Bruce Shelley goes through all the races and confesses where the Ensemble team had to break from history in the name of fun (no […]
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Default Powers in Discovery
May 23rd, 2005 · 7 Comments · Design, History
It’s funny how strategy games tend to follow each other as if there are default settings for what these virtual worlds are supposed to look like. I’ve already mentioned how the trebuchet moved from an obscure medieval weapon to being something that strategy gamers expect. Age of Empires II made this siege device a household […]
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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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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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