Category Archives: Columns

Today's Tomorrows

Cities and security: a Mexican story

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For the last few months I dove deeper into topics I’d already covered.  But this month I decided to do something else.  At my job, I get the Homeland Security Newswire (I manage technology for a medium-sized local government).  I keep seeing various articles that reference Mexico – the big country next door to the US that is in some danger of becoming a failed state; the one in the bloody middle of an honest-to-goodness drug war rather than an anemic War on Drugs. Continue reading Cities and security: a Mexican story →

Blasphemous Geometries

The Video Game Canon and The Age of Forgetfulness

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0. Asking the Question

If you were a game designer and you were taken into your boss’s office and given carte blanche to create your own roleplaying game, what would your influences be?  My guess is that the games you see as central to the computer roleplaying experience vary according to your age and when you started gaming.

Screenshot from early computer RPG WizardryFor example, if you are currently a teenager then the chances are that you would be most influenced by games like World of Warcraft, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age: Origins, because these are the games that you are most familiar with.  If you are a slightly older gamer, then you might list titles like Final Fantasy VII or Suikoden.  Maybe if – like me – you are one of those thirty-something gamers who spent his high school years playing video games instead of getting to second base, then you might list Baldur’s Gate, Dungeon Master or Shadowrun.  Maybe you are even old enough to remember playing the original Wizardry and Bard’s Tale titles, and think that the future of CRPGs lies in ASCII graphics and getting the players to draw their own dungeon maps.

Well, you’d all be wrong.

And you’d all be right. Continue reading The Video Game Canon and The Age of Forgetfulness →