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 care. And I know perfectly well why I don’t care.

First, as I’ve said before, science fiction settings aren’t my cup of tea. Though there are lots of good games in the sci-fi setting (GalCiv 2 and the first two Master of Orion games), I’ve always been more of a History Channel/PBS guy. Even settings that I know and love, like Star Wars or Star Trek, don’t have the appeal to me that a ragged line of redcoats does.

Second, the game world’s enthusiasm seems to be heavily correlated with Chris Taylor’s first big RTS smash hit Total Annihilation. Which I have never played. I keep meaning to, but it’s never crept to the top of my list. When Bioware makes a role playing game, I know why I am supposed to be excited. When Ensemble announces a new real time, I have a framework for the hype. When Will Wright speaks, I am on the edge of my seat. Chris Taylor, to me, is just a guy who made a very famous RTS and also a very lame action RPG (Dungeon Siege).

Anticipation is the stock and trade of the entertainment media. You see more stories about a game or movie before it is released than you do afterward. As shady as it sounds, the entertainment press is organized to lay the groundwork for a product before it gets into the hands of the public. Because as far as they are concerned, the story stops with the review or the opening weekend box office.

Once it’s out there, the conversation moves between viewers or players and the media steps back. I talk more about games I am playing than I do ones I am looking forward to. Consumers always find stuff to discuss in the games they are playing now or the movie they saw two weeks ago.

The trouble with anticipatory journalism is that the hype can become the story itself. The media becomes more interested in people being excited than in telling them what they have to look forward to. Then, if the product turns out to be a dud (Snakes on a Plane), it makes it hard to trust people who assure you that people really are genuinely anticipating something.

The recent gaming example that gives me pause is the new Sam & Max game. It is the standard industry good news/bad news tale. Ever since the success of the amusing LucasArts original, there has been a lot of perceived interest in a Sam & Max game. The project stopped and started. Every rumor about the game surviving is breathlessly reported. Then TellTale Games is given the go-ahead and we now have the return of a dog and rabbit detective team.

In an adventure game. In 2006.

TellTale is smart enough to know better than to overestimate the audience. They have moved to an episodic pricing scheme so you can try the game and not pay for the whole thing. But magazine covers, interviews and serious previews were devoted to a adventure game based largely on nostalgia fueled hype. Far be it for me to tell people smarter than me how to do their jobs, or that adventure games are not as worthy of note as the latest blockbuster MMO, but it’s not clear to me why the Sam & Max saga has stayed a perennial story in gaming.

I don’t get that same odd feeling from the Supreme Commander coverage. There is still a sense that nostalgia is fuelling a lot of the excitement, but from what I’ve seen, SupCom looks big and professional and full of strategery. I do wonder if Taylor has learned any lessons from the development of the genre. I wonder if the extreme map zoom is useful or just eye-candy. I wonder if he can make me care about giant robots, because mostly I don’t.

Well, maybe a giant robot Ivan the Terrible.

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 probably still is. Even in the Golden Age that Wasn’t, Microprose was not convinced by Meier’s track record, or at least not enough to get enthusiastic about Civilization. Keep in mind that Meier’s name was originally added to Pirates! because the suits figured that some of his flight sim audience might recognize the name and pick up the action/adventure title. Great game ideas are killed every day for a number of reasons, and not all of them are fair.

The high cost of game development is the biggest barrier to odd ideas getting greenlighted, but marketing or a perceived track record can get past that sort of thing. This keeps out the riff-raff, mostly, but it also enforces a level of caution on developers that may not have been as prevalent in the industry’s lean days. Not that games aren’t creative any more, they are. More games are being made, so it would be a miracle if none were pushing the limits. There was no Golden Age when things were all shiny and brilliant.

So it’s a minor wonder that Civilization was made, that it was a hit and that it has kept getting noticeably better with each iteration.

EDIT: CivFanatics once again gave the interview the gold treatment. I love these guys.

(The Guest Blog will be back next week with a new author.)

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 is what I want in the first place.

On the minus side, it means that my discovery of a lot of these games (at least one of which is freaking awesome) is colored by my critical eye. Balance testing, trying out different modes that I might otherwise skip. It’s not all fun.

Mostly, though.

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 can’t speak up for himself. He’s a superhero, after all. Andrew Bub’s website has tried to serve as a lighthouse for confused parents for a few years now and he has attracted quite a bit of attention for evaluating games with a parental eye. His staff called Oblivion an adult theme game long before the ESRB caught on.

So what to make of Microsoft starting it’s own Gamerdad? Correction. Gamer Dad. See what they did there? Stuck a space between the words. Makes it look different.

Now it is entirely possible that Brian Johnson and Microsoft have never heard of the original Gamerdad. Or didn’t bother to do a trademark search and discover that the term legally belongs to Andrew Bub for all interactive entertainment purposes. The space doesn’t matter legally, as far as I know. The two phrases are similar enough and have the same purpose and could cause confusion. So, Bub wins.

None of this takes away from Johnson’s committment to an admirable goal. The world is big enough for a lot of parents to care about the role of games in a family. He and Bub have similar motivations and they are not enemies in the big picture.

But Bub is a small time operator who thought of the name first. He’s an add-on character in a superhero videogame. He is the original Gamerdad. There won’t be another.

Do the right thing, Microsoft. Change Johnson’s column to something else.

Spread the word.

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 developer? Is the music that good?)

Being a sucker, I’ve already pre-ordered Medieval 2 and will almost certainly buy the Collector’s Edition of EU3. I still have too many doubts about the NWN2 development process to drop money at this point.

So, there are suckers like me who buy this stuff early and/or at a higher price. And it’s sometimes worth it. I bought the Civilization IV Collector’s Edition so I could get the nice bible box and spiral bound manual, as well as the CD of music from the series. But would it cost that much to make this sort of stuff available to every gamer? Free the goodies!

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 and Morgan Webb – best known for being a team – are separated.
2) It’s mostly editors-in-chief, even of the woefully edited Gamedaily. This makes sense since editors are the gatekeepers, for good or for ill. But it does make the list more of a “who’s who” than an evaluation of importance. Unless importance means having an office.
3) Some obvious names were left off. Where’s Tom Chick? Andrew Bub aka Gamerdad? Even the annoying Wagner James Au is important enough to make a list like this. (Hey, the article isn’t “best”.) All three are significant opinion shapers.