Category Archives: Digital Games

Ludus Novus 007: Who Am I?

Digital Games, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 007: Who Am I?
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Amnesia. Can anyone remember why it’s so common in interactive entertainment?

The music for this episode is “Forgettin My Identity” by Jane His Wife, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

References:

The next episode will be about the progress and state of the art of the video game industry, as compared to another form of entertainment.

GameTap Evaluation

Digital Games

So. As I mentioned in my last podcast, I signed up for GameTap. I got it working, and I’m generally pleased.

One thing to be aware of is that it is definitely a broadband service. My cable connection at home is a bit slow and spotty, and the client does all sorts of weird things, including crashing and failing to start up. It also takes forever to download stuff. And I suspect the client of being unstable in other ways, although my laptop has issues with a lot of applications.

But the service works. You can, like, download stuff and play it. The selection’s decent, and the added content, well, is indeed content. It is aimed at (I’d estimate) 12- to 16-year-old boys, which is a little disappointing, especially considering that I’d place the primary retro gaming demographic at 18-25. But that’s fine; I don’t have to watch GameTap TV if I don’t want to (and am fast enough on the mouse to make it go away).

I’d probably recommend the service most to parents of young children. The parental controls and wide selection of educational games, in addition to the lack of access to questionable material, make it a great service for parents who want to expose their 3- to 10-year-olds to games. Once the kids get much older, though, I think they’d be more insistent on newly-released games.

Right now I’m downloading The Last Express. They’ve got a bunch of other must-tries: early Sierra adventure games, Bioware RPGs (including the phenomenal Planescape: Torment), the Myst games, and Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond that, Sam and Max: Episode 1 comes out tomorrow, and Uru Live comes this holiday season. So I’m stoked.

Ludus Novus 006: False Narrativism: Walking Away

Digital Games, False Narrativism, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 006: False Narrativism: Walking Away
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The game Walking Away: In what ways does it succeed at what it attempts?

The music for this episode is “Criminal” by Peter Toh, used with permission.

References:

The next episode will be about amnesia, the video game trope we all love to hate. If you have comments or anecdotes about amnesia, please leave a comment here or at
gregory@ludusnovus.net.

Note: If you would like to sign up for GameTap and indicate to them that you are doing so because of Uru Live, you can use this link and click on “join now”. For a limited time, you can get a year’s worth of GameTap (including Uru Live, when it comes out) for $60, which is about 50% off of the monthly price.

Ludus Novus 005: Level Cap

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 005: Level Cap
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Length of works: is a given game most like a short story or a novel, and how can length affect content?

References:

The next episode will be a new segment called False Narrativism.

Ludus Novus 004: Hurt Me Plenty

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts, Roleplaying
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 004: Hurt Me Plenty
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Difficulty and completeness: Why do games have to be hard, and how is finishing a game separate from completing it?

The music for this episode is “Big Bad World One” by Jonathan Coulton, and is available under a cc by-nc-sa 2.5 license.

This episode, unlike most, is available under a cc by-nc-sa 2.5 license.

References:

The next episode will be about the length of games and how that relates to game classification. Is there a distinction between an interactive “short story” and an interactive “novel”? If you have comments or ideas, contact me at gregory@ludusnovus.net.

Ludus Novus 003: Not the Same Thing After All

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts, Roleplaying
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 003: Not the Same Thing After All
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Variable player experience: What do we mean by interaction, and how can two players have different experiences with the same work?

The music for this episode is Enrique Granados’s “Spanish Dance n. 2” performed by Mario Mattioli, and is available under a cc by-nc 2.5 license.

This is the first episode in which I’ve talked much about table-top roleplaying games.

References:

(Note: I’m going to start putting the titles of IF pieces from the IF Comp in quotes, as that competition is intended for short works, so participants presumably intended their pieces to be analogous to short stories.)

Gen Con Report

Digital Games, News, Roleplaying

This past week I took a trip down to Indianapolis with a friend to attend Gen Con Indy 2006. I was scheduled to run four events, but I only ended up running three of them (people who’d registered for one of them didn’t show). Now, I haven’t talked about roleplaying much (if at all) on the show, but I think that tabletop and other roleplaying games fit in with digital games quite well. In my opinion, they’re the same form of expression, one that has a hundred names, all lacking, that I call “interactive art” (note that this term is also lacking, as it’s also used to refer to a form of expression that may be unrelated).

Anyway, I found time to see a lot of cool stuff at the convention.
Continue reading Gen Con Report →

Ludus Novus 002: Telling It Like It Is

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 002: Telling It Like It Is
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The unreliable narrator: how do you use this technique when the narrator is usually the player character?

The music for this episode is “Noite de Carnaval” by Code, and is available under a cc by-nc 2.5 license.

References:

I will be out of town for a week, so the next full episode should appear on August 19, 2006. There may be something put up between now and then, though.

Ludus Novus Episode 001: Press Enter to Continue

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus Episode 001: Press Enter to Continue
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Cutscenes: when are they appropriate, and when do they take away from the game?

Correction: In the original version of this episode, I attribute Nothing But Mazes to Stephen Granade, but it is actually by Greg Boettcher. Stephen Granade wrote Child’s Play, which is also part of IntroComp 2006 (and does some interesting things with the voice of the narrator). I should have a corrected version up shortly.

The music for this episode is “Babylon Bring Me Down,” by spinningmerkaba, and is available under a cc by-nc 2.5 license.
References: