Falling behind on my completely arbitrary and non-enforced posting schedule. So here is a link to a classic Old Man Murray article. Who Killed Adventure Games.

I first learned about Harvey Smith years ago, when I was fanboying about Deus Ex and reading everything I could about how the game was put together. Smith went on to head the in-some-ways-better in-some-ways-worse sequel, Invisible War and then more recently and famously worked on BlackSite: Area 51, notable more for the “it was so fucked up” mini post mortem than anything else.

Years ago, before they were called blogs, Smith maintained a site at Planet Deus Ex (who remembers the “planet” brand”). It hasn’t been updated since 2004 (and before that, like 1998) but it contains a lot of gems about good design. Witchboy’s Cauldron.

In particular, Distinct Functions in Game Units and Features Without Interface are really worth reading. His Half-Life review is also really good and a blast from the past.

This speech by Clay Shirky is really, really good.

I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, “What are you seeing out there that’s interesting?”

I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus–”How should we characterize this change in Pluto’s status?” And a little bit at a time they move the article–fighting offstage all the while–from, “Pluto is the ninth planet,” to “Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system.”

So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, “Okay, we’re going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever.” That wasn’t her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, “No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you’ve been masking for 50 years.”

MTV’s Multiplayer ran a week’s worth of posts about the state of reviewing in the games industry. I feel like this is actually some good journalism, something I wish that there was more of in the gaming press.

Between the MTV stuff, and Level Up’s Reflections on videogame publisher and employer contempt towards the enthusiast press there’s a lot of very good material for people to think about the very broken status of the enthusiast press and review mechanisms of the industry.

Over at trustygamer.com, smakus writes an at once touching eulogy and scathing rant about the colour palettes used in modern games. Current screen shots and updated list of buzzwords aside, he could have saved himself the typing and simply linked to page 3 of Old Man Murray’s Rune review. Which is nearly 8 years old.

Here I am rollerblading on top of a city bus that’s travelling across a layer of concrete beneath which is - presumably - a river of sewage. The Japanese creators of Jet Grind Radio were polite enough not to make me visit it. And that’s after we bombed the darn heck out of them in World War 2! Developers: Note bright colors and sky and sun.

smackus’ post is weird, relying on a ‘back in the day’ golden age that I don’t think exists. First, the strange assumption that it’s a choice between realism and colourfulness, as if real reality wasn’t colourful as hell. The real conflict is between drab and bright. Then, smackus uses screenshots of Super Mario 64 to show us what a colourful game could look like. As if that was the last example of bright palettes in gameplay. As if Super Mario Galaxy didn’t just come out.

The truth is that an enormous number of brightly coloured games (you get the idea) are being released, even in modern times. The real question is why so many blockbusters continue to be set in Blade Runner, Mad Max or a sewer. This is not new. The same year that Super Mario 64 came out, iD released Quake. Old Man Murray again:

Here’s a depressing rundown of the levels you’ll death-march through: Nali village, cave, cave, cave, cave, dark castle, lava cave, lava dungeon, lava waterfall, lava sewer, cave, dungeon, sewer, Nali village, dungeon, cave, sewer, cave, Nali cave, tall cave with the ceiling removed, cave, dungeon, cave. I think I forgot a sewer in the middle there. If I wanted to visit a dank, lightless cave, I could go explore my own edgy basement right now. For free. I have no explanation for the tedious, sewer-centric art direction in virtually every game. Maybe publishers have convinced developers that the game buying public is composed entirely of homesick C.H.U.D.S.

I have a different theory: I think that publishers have convinced developers that the game buying public is composed almost entirely of teenage boys.

If the binder doodles, film and music consuption habits of my friends in junior high is any indication, adolescence is as much about proving that you’re not into “kids stuff” anymore, as it is about anything else. Remember when Nintendo made Wind Waker more cartoony? Remember how sales spiked when Prince of Persia went from this to this? Remember what the monsters of Doom 3 look like?

This is the legacy of teenage boys that continues to shape our industry. We sell to our audience, our audience thinks that they want “mature” titles and someone told them that mature meant dark, dank and bloody. Dystopian novels English curriculum, I am looking in your direction.

At The Escapist, Wendy Despain looks at game design with new eyes.

Did you know you can win the first level of Star Wars just by standing in one place, turning in constant circles and holding down the “X” button? Aunt Wendy got something right. He was thrilled. And when he heard the cheerful chimes, a signal to those of all ages that you’ve won something, there was jumping around and fists in the air and lots of shouting I didn’t understand.

But then the next level came up, and things started to go downhill. The instant it began he looked confused. It took him a few seconds to put it into words, but then he said it. “I already won this level.”

And suddenly, the decision to make Super Marios Bros. World 1-2 happen in a cave is revealed to be utterly brilliant.

N’Gai Croal at Level Up has a pair of interviews with Sony and Microsoft marketing about the 64/36 sales split of Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360 and PS3 at Gamestop. The close to 2-1 advantage in favour of the Xbox is a clear victory… for everyone!

You see, while there was a 64/36 split on GTA purchases, there is a 70.7/29.3 split on U.S. installed Xboxes and PS3s. While the 360 won on pure sales, the PS3 came out slightly ahead per capita. In other words, it’s a wash. Watch how each of them plays with the numbers and analysis to tell their story.

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has the easier job. The raw numbers look very good for the Xbox 360 and so the only real task is to dismiss the per capita advantage of the PS3 by arguing that they expected it to be worse. Taking advantage of the email interview, he completely ignores the final question, hits ’send’ and then knocks off for some lunch.

Poor Sony’s Peter Dille has to really make the numbers sing. Using the magic of rounding, the sales advantage becomes a mere 60/40 and the console advantage swells to 3-1 (3-1 would be 75/25). Given these new numbers, Playstation is doing FINE, in fact it’s practically 50/50! Later, when talking about the console race, Dille, perhaps realizing that there such a thing as being so far behind that you’re just a loser, quietly revises the earlier rounding and scrappy underdog PS3 pulls ahead to a respectable 70.1/30 install ratio.

The endearitating thing about Dille is that the tactic WORKS. As other blogs,news outlets and fansites pick up the story, they paste Dille’s money quote (”If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn’t be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage.”) uncritically, letting the dodgy math stand.

Way back before Daikatana came out, somewhere around Columbine, someone, I think Paul Keegan at the New York Times, wrote an amazing article about the FPS industry, especially Romero, and how they were handling the fallout. Old Man Murray linked to it, I think. I remember a key line about John Carmack being the anti-Romero.

I’ve searched and the best I can find is this letter to the editor which seems to refer to it and this comment (scroll down) which pastes some of the article (but frustratingly has a “*stuff deleted cause it was boring*” section). Anyone know if I can find the full article anywhere? Why won’t the NYT give it back?

Update: Here’s the full article. Thanks Sam!

Kotaku conducts what is possibly the best round-up of GTA:IV reviews in this inspired review of the reviews.

Pure gold and, (I hope) a new regular feature?

but reading essays like this and this make me want to have.