Matt Chat 212: Dave on Blackwell & Steam

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Dave Gilbert returns this week to chat about his Blackwell series, a great adventure game franchise featuring a very unlikely duo–a medium named Rosangela Blackwell and a ghostly detective named Joey Mallone. If you’re a fan of classic LucasFilm and Sierra On-Line adventures, you’ll really enjoy it. We also talk about publishing third-party games, including the best-selling Gemini Rue game. Regardless of whether you’re into adventure games or not, you’ll really want to hear the final part of the segment, which covers Dave’s trials with Steam. See more of my thoughts below the fold.

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Matt Chat 211: Dave Gilbert on Adventure Games

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This week, Wadjet Eye founder Dave Gilbert is in the Matt Chat seat, spilling his guts about his career as a developer and publisher of point-and-click adventure games. Dave works extensively with Adventure Game Studio, a free, easy-to-use tool for making games in the style of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. Dave has taken the genre in intriguing new directions, beginning with his first game The Shivah, which puts players in the shoes of a rabbi. Be sure to see below the fold for my extended thoughts on the “freeware vs. commercial” part of our discussion.

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Games and Racism: Are we doing enough to fight it?

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Black main characters are becoming more common in games, but are they doing much to combat racism?

Black main characters are becoming more common in games, but are they doing much to combat racism?

Lately, I’ve been studying up on the topic of racism, specifically, what it is and what can be done to prevent or at least reduce it. SCSU offers a number of CARE workshops and programs for faculty and students addressing the topic, and the city of Saint Cloud offers the Create CommUNITY “Conversation on Race,” which I plan to attend on Tuesday. What has struck me about all these events is a particular definition of racism–specifically, that “racism” isn’t just a negative attitude or prejudice against a race. Instead, it’s presented as a formula: Racism = Prejudice + Power. Some of the more provocative statements I’ve heard coming from the speakers at these workshops is that black people can’t be racist, since they don’t have the institutional power to discriminate against an entire group. Another claim that makes some people bristle is that “everyone is racially prejudiced,” that it just comes naturally to us and can’t be avoided. Even if you are a white person who is passionate about being anti-racist, you are racist despite yourself, since the system will discriminate in your favor no matter what you try to do. See Diane Sawyer’s True Colors on YouTube for a vivid look at what this kind of racism is all about.

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Free Game Creation Tools for Students and Non-Programmers

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Thanks to tools like Construct 2, making games has never been easier.

Thanks to tools like Construct 2, making games has never been easier.

One of my favorite former students (who is now enjoying a professor’s job of his own) emailed to ask for my advice on a videogame design course he’s teaching. It seems that it’s becoming more common for professors of humanities to teach this kind of course, even though few of us have the programming chops to teach C++ or Java. Fortunately, there are plenty of options out there for teachers who want to teach the basics of game development without having to learn (or explain to wide-eyed students) pointers, classes, and syntax. Better yet, these tools are powerful enough to create great games, even commercial quality games. Even better–they’re all free for teachers and students.

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Interviewing Seth Robinson Tomorrow

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Lord of the Red Dragon

Lord of the Red Dragon

Tomorrow I’ll be interviewing the great Seth Robinson, creator of Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD). There’s a good chance you’ve played this game if you were active on the BBS scene back in the 1990s. It was a unique time in the history of videogames, just when “online gaming” was becoming feasible for ordinary computer gamers rather than just college students and professionals. Back then, many people had to pay huge long distance costs in addition to whatever fees the BBS levied. In the meantime, the sysop didn’t want you on for long, since (assuming it was a popular BBS), you’d be clogging up a line and preventing other users from logging in. Games like LORD, which were limited to a few minutes of activity per day, were perfect for the time.

If there’s a question you’d like me to ask Seth, post it below or on Facebook/Twitter/G+.

Matt Chat 210: Tales of Illyria

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For this week’s Matt Chat, I review Little Killers’ Tales of Illyria. This $5 Android game (PC version in the works!) is a fabulous take on Oregon Trail meets Betrayal at Krondor (both of which I’ve reviewed, too, so click the links!). I really enjoyed this game, which adds some nice touches that you won’t see in most turn-based CRPGs. I particularly liked the horses (my beloved Mustang!) and the huge variety of random encounters. You can play this for weeks and not see everything it has to offer. I interviewed one of the developers, Chad Mannicia, back in 2012.

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Matt Chat 209: Howard Sherman

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Hi, folks! I finally got a chance today to post the latest Matt Chat. Since I’m now on a private server (courtesy of Shane Stacks), I’ll just post the YouTube video and upload an MP3 of the audio for those on iTunes. I have no way of knowing how many people are watching the iTunes version anyway, so please let me know if this solution doesn’t work for you. My commentary on the interview is below.

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I really enjoyed this interview with Mr. Sherman. I’ve always enjoyed meeting, shall we say, “colorful” people who don’t mind ruffling feathers, and Howard certainly fits that bill. What really impresses me is how well he’s been able to market his interactive fiction, a genre that many of us probably assumed was defunct. I also like his willingness to travel to the locales of his games, absorbing the atmosphere and reflecting it back in his text. He strikes me more as an author than a game designer–more reader than gamer–which makes sense given his pursuit of text adventure games.

You can learn all about Howard and his games at malinche.net. While you’re there, be sure to check out his blog and the various developer diary blogs he keeps for each of his game projects.

If you enjoy text adventures, I highly recommend Nick Monfort’s excellent book Twisty Little Passages. It gives a lot of great history as well as criticism of the genre. It’s a must-read for fans of Infocom and anyone else wanting to know more about the later IF scene and culture.

Gameplay: The Movie Update

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John RomeroHi, all, fabulous news! Richard G. emailed a copy of the Gameplay “premix” to me the other day, and boy, is it something. He’s told me that they’re planning to output the film this December. In case you aren’t familiar with this project, it’s basically a movie adaptation of my book Vintage Games, but with pretty substantial rewriting to make it fit the movie format. It will definitely be far more inclusive than anything like it before–let’s face it, most of these game history documentaries are so shallow and poorly researched they don’t even mention key systems like the Commodore 64 or ColecoVision. Not so here.

There are also lots of interview clips in here from greats like John Romero and David Crane. The film is being edited by Richard Goldgewicht for Lux Digital Pictures.

 

Collaboration: The Bad and the Ugly

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Writing a book, developing a game, or hosting a website can be lots of fun, but also very stressful, particularly when you’re up against deadlines and things get hectic at work and home. If you’re collaborating with someone else, that stress level is precisely double. Even if you’re on the best of terms going into it, it’s easy to get angry over seemingly frivolous things, especially with workload, quality, and respect issues.

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Interview with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games

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blackwell-bundle-titlebarHi, folks! I just finished conducting my interview of Dave Gilbert, president of Wadjet Eye Games. We discussed his lineup as well as his thoughts on point-and-click adventures in general. He’s encouraging–the market seems to be in full resurgence, though he makes a good point that, for whatever reason, people seem obsessed with the idea of adventure games “dying” and being reborn–you don’t hear the same sort of bombast about other genres such as SHMUPs and roguelikes. I’m definitely looking forward to playing more of his games, especially the Blackwell series. He’s currently offering the first three games in a bundle for only $14.99.

Dave uses Adventure Game Studio to make his games, which seems like a great choice. The only real limitations are portability and some outmoded engine details. I love it when people are able to use tools like this to actually  make commercially successful games.