Right up there with “Scariest game?” and “Worst Ending?”, “Favorite Game Music” is a perennial topic on game forums the world over. And it is one of the many topics on which I have no firm opinions. I am probably one of the few serious gamers who doesn’t care about music in a game.

Yeah, they have real composers now. Some of the stuff may be quite nice at setting an atmosphere – especially in role playing games. But most of the time it isn’t. And there is usually nothing memorable about music in strategy games.

Not that they don’t try. It’s just that it all sounds the same to me. There is either an overly bombastic classical score (like the Paradox games) or poorly written mood music that loops over and over again (check any RTS).

What passes for music in many games is, fact, a series of sound cues. “Here is where you feel excited!” “Here is where you triumph!”. It’s like those organ players at stadiums who tell you when to cheer. This isn’t different from any soundtrack, of course, but it would help if the musical cues were more creative or interesting than the random tunes I can find on the Internet or my CD shelf. I know people who listen to game music as music; I mostly turn it down or off and put in what I want to listen to.

When I play Children of the Nile, I’d much rather have Aida in the background. Random Broadway tunes beat most sci-fi strategy music, almost all of which is some pseudo-techno synth music with Star Trek sounds. I can’t think of any occasion in which the score to Total War is better than Spirit of the West or The Tragically Hip.

All this makes me somewhat less than human, I suspect. Music is the food of love and all that jazz. And I’m sorry that the efforts of the game composers is lost on me. But if I can’t turn your music off, your game will have one more hurdle to overcome with me.

There is a new wargaming blog that everyone interested in the topic should check out. Bruce Geryk will be writing a new wargaming column for Computer Gaming World and, to that end, has been given blog space on 1up.com.

My post title is, of course, a joke. Bruce is not competing with my blog, nor mine with his. Mine is more general strategy gaming (with some forays into gaming journalism and other issues) where his will be dedicated to wargames. I love wargames, but don’t play nearly as many as I used to. He’s twice the writer I am, too.

But if there is any opinion on wargames I take seriously, it’s Bruce Geryk. In fact, he is one of a handful of gaming writers whose work I will actively seek out. So it is very exciting to have him blogging on a semi-regular basis.

Much of the content will be expanded forms of his columns, I think, but I hope he feels free to move beyond that share his wider opinions on the state of the hobby.

As exciting as the news of an October release of Civ IV was, the recent Gamespot preview has thrown a kink into my enthusiasm. Jason Ocampo reports that the Pit Boss persistent server will not be up until December and the mod kit unavailable until January.

So, already, two of the much hyped reasons to anticipate this iteration of Civ are already weakened. Whatever multiplayer does come out of Firaxis at the end of October, it will not be fully in place for another six to eight weeks – this after assurances that multiplayer variations would be integral to the design of the game. Most of the previews have mentioned how open Civ IV will be to the mod community, but that too will have to wait.

Based on my limited time with single play Civ, I still think the game will excite the mind and delight the senses. And some multiplayer functionality will be available by the release date. But this news raises fears of another Play the World debacle where features, introduced at later dates, don’t work as advertised.

After at least two years of development – it was an entry in the IGF in 2004 – Magitech’s ancient strategy game Strength and Honour is available in North America. They had trouble securing a publisher in Canada and the US, despite selling the game to publishers in Australia, Poland, China, Russia, Spain and Italy. Did I mention that Magitech is a Canadian company? That explains the spelling of “honour” if not the trouble they had getting the game on shevles.

Strength and Honour is only available directly from the company, and for the standard retail game price of $49.99. That’s a lot of money for a game they couldn’t get anyone to publish, but not completely out of line.

I’m surprised that Matrix Games, a reliable and devoted ally of small and solo developers didn’t get their hands on this game. They certainly would have helped get the word out. Gamespot didn’t mention the change in status. Nor did Gamespy. Nor IGN.

To help my countrymen along, here’s my little bit to remind those of you that have already forgotten about this game. Once I get my hands on a copy, I’ll pass along my opinion.

My game shelf is bulging with strategy and war games. Well over a third of my collection is strategy of one form or another, from tactical combat games like X-Com to RTS staples like Age of Empires to half forgotten titles like Joan of Arc: Siege and Sword. And of these, very few are science fiction. I only have one of the Master of Orions. I never got around to Galactic Civilization in any of its forms. I have Starships Unlimited and the X-Com games, but not Space Empires – any of them. And as I cruise Ebay trying to fill out my game collections, my eyes are usually drawn to Harpoon II or Centurion.

I like science fiction in general. I used to read a lot of it. I’ve certainly read and watched more sci-fi than I have fantasy. No cable TV means that I’m the only nerd on the planet who hasn’t gotten wrapped up in the new Battlestar Galactica. I’d probably watch it, too. Much of my grad school weekend schedule revolved around Babylon 5 or the final seasons of ST: TNG. But, for all the sci-fi I used to consume, I find it (and much fantasy literature for that matter) less surprising and exciting than the history that I read and write.

As a strategy game setting, conquering planets was never as thrilling as mining them in Starfleet. Designing and building starships wasn’t as much fun as flying them in Tie Fighter or Wing Commander. Even the technically best of the Sid Meier 4x games, Alpha Centauri, was not played as heavily as either Civ II or Colonization – the latter a much inferior game in many important ways. But at least SMAC used human factions with human motivations; the expansion introduced aliens so I didn’t even bother with it. I even prefer medieval fantasy strategy games like Kohan or Warlords to any Starcraft or Total Annihilation.

This explains the bias on this blog towards historical strategy games instead of science fiction ones. But where does this bias come from? I think that my heavy youthful diet of sci-fi may be part of the problem. Most science fiction novels or programs revolve around personalities instead of powers. For all the talk of the Federation in Star Trek or the Minbari in B5, both series were primarily about individuals shaping the world around them. History books and programs, on the other hand, more often emphasize the larger forces that push people in one direction or another. History is often the story of the rise and fall of empires; sci-fi is often the story of the rise and fall of an individual.

But this is only a tiny part of the picture. More of it is that I have trouble visualizing my aliens and alien equipment as mine. I can’t identify with Space Cargo Trader V as well as I can with the archers I’ve just sent over that hill. I find it easier to take on the role of a high elf general with mostly historic troops than I do the Klackons, or whatever made up name Alien Race Sigma is given. A common complaint about the great Alpha Centauri is that the technology names never made much sense. I know what a “wheel” is. “Matter editation” just looks like a misspelling.

So, I’m in no hurry to play Admiral of Starfleet when there are more human problems to deal with. Catching a Venusian Flu doesn’t have the pull of the Plague – a real life catastrophe that I can comprehend on an historic level and as a likely game mechanic. An army of Cossacks slaughtering my peasants grabs me in a way that a zerg rush never will. The most beautiful Protoss ending ever conceived pales before the time that an American sub got in the middle of my Soviet fleet in Harpoon and sunk eight ships before I knew what was happening.

Does this obvious bias make it hard for me to play, or review, sci-fi strategy? It does mean that I have a cleaner palate. But it also means that I can’t appreciate how one sci-fi game is derived from another. I can give a learned discourse on the portrayal of the French in historical strategy games, but I doubt I can compare the Sim-UNs in MOO or GalCiv and sound like I know what the hell I’m talking about. Strategy games are strategy games, in many ways, so it wouldn’t take me long to get up to speed. But I’m man enough to admit my weaknesses and preferences.

The third volume of The Gamer’s Quarter is now available at their website. There have been eleven issues of The Escapist since the second volume of GQ came out.

As I browse GQ3, it hits me why I can’t fall in love with this web magazine no matter how much I want to. It’s not just because Amandeep Jutla’s attack on Starcraft doesn’t make a lot of sense to me (it’s not my favorite game either, but I don’t get the hate, nor do I think it is solely responsible for why he hates PC games). And it’s not because the comics just don’t work – few comics do.

It’s because it’s too damn big.

I’m an agnostic on the whole “New Games Journalism” thing. As a blogger as well as a minor appendage suckling on the teat of old games journalism, I appreciate the importance of gamers sharing their gaming experiences. Reviews are usually just more formal versions of the type of stuff that NGJ is. NGJ is a more personal recording of reactions to games. Like all writing, it can be good or it can be bad.

But, like all writing, you can also say enough already. And over a hundred pages of the stuff is too much. This edition has some game design stuff, including a daring suggestion that an RPG could have no saves. But many of the articles just go on and on – the Starcraft article being a good example.

I will keep reading it – likely in small doses at a time – and will keep pointing to its updates. I am excited about the opportunities that these type of web publications are providing to some interesting people with some interesting perspectives. It could use a little more editorial control – maybe firmer word limits? – but that would almost go against the whole philosophy of the mag.

Oh, and the new Escapist is out, too.