The Kohan games are personal favorites, so don’t miss the chance to buy them at a very reasonable price at the newly opened Timegate Store.
Coming Attractions Feature at Gamespy: The Pain of the Writer
May 26th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Feature, Gamespy, Industry, Me
Another long form feature of mine was just published at Gamespy. This time I look at the art and science of opening cinematics. If you have any comments on the article itself, put them there. If you want to comment on this post, however, comment here.
Because I have more to say.
I like feature writing. I started doing more of it for Crispy Gamer and found a voice there that I think works in this format. But the more of these I do, the more I understand why many writers don’t, why so many game sites go for the quick hits, rumor reporting or lists.
This is damned hard.
The five things they never tell you when you try to write a feature story with original research:
1) Data collection is necessary but not sufficient. I put out the call for friends, colleagues and Twitter followers to ping me with their favorite opening cinematics. The list is long and varied and, on its own, not especially helpful. Once I had it, I had to work out what the hell to do with all this information. This is where writing is at its most mystical – all you have is information. Now you need a plan.
2) People are slow. Gaming PR is full of very busy, very hard working and sometimes very responsive people. Off the top of my head, I can name probably a dozen I can count on for a quote. But helping a writer with a story that is not necessarily going to move more units is not always a high priority. Some people will be slow in replying. Some will be late with information. Some will agree to do it and then decide they can’t. Some will not reply unless you bring an editor into the discussion to prove that, yeah, this is a real thing.
3) Writing what you know only gets you so far. Because what I know is war, death, famine and pestilence – the four tools of strategy gaming. My feature stories are probably more strategy heavy than your standard article because that’s where my knowledge and contacts are strongest. But you have to boldly go forward. Thanks to Gamespy’s Editor, Ryan Scott, for letting me feel my way through a lot of this.
4) Stories do not hatch. Well, some do. That literature feature I wrote a couple of months ago was one of the easiest things I’ve ever written. This one was not. I struggled, I deleted, I reorganized. I finally found my opening hook when I remembered that conversation and got permission from my friend to quote it. But that was the intro. I was still moving things around to almost the final minute. If Ryan had not emailed me and said “So where is it?” I could have been punching it for weeks. I gave myself a deadline, and I met it.
5) You are almost never happy with the slow births. This article had a very slow and painful birth. I still think that if I had another month it could be better. But I can’t guarantee it would be much better.
→ 6 CommentsTags:
Gods at Play 2: Wide Angle Lens
May 26th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Gods at Play
This week, my Game, Set, Watch column looks at the design choices that people should consider when they look at choosing the appropriate zooming levels for an RTS.
If you wish to comment, please do it over there.
Comments Off on Gods at Play 2: Wide Angle LensTags:
A New World War I Game
May 25th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Slitherine, WW1
Lordz Games and Slitherine have just announced a new entry in their Commander series. Commander: The Great War will cover World War I in both a grand campaign and smaller scenarios. A list of features with comments follows:
A huge hex based campaign map that stretches from the USA in the west, Africa and Arabia to the south, Scandinavia to the north and the Urals to the east.
Good that they aren’t stopping at the Dardanelles like some many other WWI games do. I assume that the US will be an untouchable blob like it was in Commander: World at War. That game did the Atlantic War very well; hope they can do a similar thing with the first U-boat war.
A Grand Campaign covering the whole war from the invasion of Belgium on August 5, 1914 to the Armistice on the 11th of November 1918. Various smaller scenarios are also available, focusing on a single campaign or front, such as the Verdun 1916, Kaiserschlacht 1918 and Eastern Front Campaigns.
Will the smaller scenarios have different maps and different victory conditions? Or are these just new starting points for campaigns?
16 different unit types including Infantry, Cavalry, Armoured Cars and Tanks, Artillery, Railroad Guns and Armoured Trains, Cruisers, Submarines and Battleships, Fighters, Bombers and Zeppelins. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, based on their historical performance in the various theatres throughout the war.
· Attach historical Commanders to your units. Each have their own specific strengths, so decide wisely which Commander is most suited at which front. Three types of Commanders are available: Generals for ground units, Admirals at sea and flying Aces to strengthen your air units.
It will be interesting to see how all this fits. The really hard thing about World War I is that each of the fronts was very different because of how the technology and leadership varied from place to place. The Western front bogged down because of trench warfare, machine guns, mustard gas and generals like Haig. The Russian front was a little more dynamic because of the large front, but leadership was still poor. The Arabian front was a sort of guerrilla war. The Italian front was something nobody cared about. Somehow Lordz will have to capture very different types of warfare in the same short time frame.
Invest in research and technology to improve your units. Aircraft evolve from fragile tools of aerial observation to deadly ground and air attack planes. Artillery barrages become ever more accurate and powerful. Focus on Armour technology and unleash a dreadful new weapon on the battlefield: the Tank.
Detailed and realistic combat that models supply, morale, terrain, leadership, equipment, training and fog of war.
No real surprises here.
Multiplayer via hotseat or Slitherine’s revolutionary PBEM server.
PBEM servers are ripe for revolution.
Easy to learn, hard to master game play.
Developers, you don’t get to say this. Players make this decision. And it’s cliche. So stop it.
Moddability and new display options. All good.
World War I is one of those setting that has probably been done more times than people (including me) remember, but often defies a good translation to the screen. There are a number of reasons for this; as mentioned the leadership and technological issues are big ones, the Western Front is traditionally seen as a static front so you either mirror that or recognize that many players already know what the problem was, you need to have domestic political issues like the rise of Communism in Russia…it isn’t a war of large armies smashing armored columns or a rush to the atomic bomb.
This fall we get to see someone else take a kick at the Kaiser.
→ 3 CommentsTags:
Total War Countdown…to what?
May 25th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Creative Assembly
My friend Kevin pointed out the countdown on the Total War home page. It’s now at 1908.
Obviously counting back to a new game to announce, but will it go back further? A Civil War game maybe? Could it be a Victorian/Bismarckian era game? What new setting will get Tom Chick angry in coming years?
→ 20 CommentsTags:
Three Moves Ahead Episode 66: The SimTex Legacy
May 24th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Podcast, Retro, Three Moves Ahead
Good Old Games has made the classic SimTex games Master of Orion, Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic available for low, low prices. So Troy, Tom, Bruce and Rob spend an hour talking about what made SimTex special. What do we mean by personality in strategy games? Does the UI hold up? Which of these games has aged the most poorly? When is tactical combat an impediment in a turn based 4x game?
We answer these questions and more in this new analysis of classic game design.
Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.
Troy’s Revisionist History on SimTex
Tom’s Retroview on Master of Orion II
Buy Master of Orion 1 & 2 and Master of Magic at Good Old Games.
Master of Magic Intro
→ 18 CommentsTags: