Dwell On It » Game developers and publishers

A clear reduction

Tateru Nino — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:17:34 +0000

It’s the DLC, darnit

Tateru Nino — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:00:41 +0000

I’ve been thinking about The Sims 3 and Bioshock 2, and Dragon Age and other titles which I just haven’t picked up (and it doesn’t look like I am likely to). I know why that is. It’s the DLC/addons.

And the singularity goes to…

Tateru Nino — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 05:49:59 +0000

Well, privacy or copyright. If there’s to be a singularity in the next couple of decades or so, it’s most likely to be one of those.


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Play it now – Dwarf Fortress

Tateru Nino — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:14:33 +0000

Seven dwarfs, a wagon with tools and supplies, and a landscape rich in raw materials. Set up a colony, protect your dwarfs, expand and grow rich.

That’s Dwarf Fortress, perhaps the deepest and most intricate sandbox simulation game I’ve seen, and I have been meaning to write it up for a long time.


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Project: MyWorld buyer confirmed

Tateru Nino — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:48:34 +0000

The buyer for Project: MyWorld appears to be its seller.

So, millions were spent to develop it. Think he cut himself a good deal and discount on the sale? I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have paid full-price, which seems to land Read more ...

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Wow

Tateru Nino — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 03:35:24 +0000

Okay, so my reaction to the announcement of Bioshock Infinite was almost extraordinarily lukewarm.

Corporate missteps and empty suits

Tateru Nino — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:52:00 +0000

Luke Halliwell, formerly a technical lead at the pretty-much defunct Realtime Worlds, has a multipart post-mortem up on how the company went wrong, blew through $100 million bucks in funding and went out of business just ten weeks after launching its flagship MMOG.

Play it now – Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Tateru Nino — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:27:35 +0000

Or maybe don’t play this one, actually. I likes me a good horror game, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a very good horror game. It’s so very good, in fact, that some of you will probably hate it.

It’s from the folks who did Penumbra, so I pre-ordered this without much in the way of hesitation.

Play it now — Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Tateru Nino — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 07:49:08 +0000

Once upon a time there was a girl and a fairy.

The girl, Recette Lemongrass, lived on her own because her father had gone adventuring and not returned.

The fairy, Tear, worked for the Terme Finance company, and Recette’s father’s debts were about to come due.

Reasoning that getting the money back was better than taking Recette’s house and auctioning it at a loss, Tear helped Recette set up a small item shop on the main street of the town. Just the sort of thing to cater to locals, and the hordes of hopeful adventurers and treasure-seekers needing supplies.

Working off your debt retailing doesn’t sound very exciting, but Recette and Tear’s adventure is only just beginning.

Welcome Kim Salzer

Tateru Nino — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:19:10 +0000

Linden Lab has a new vice-president of Marketing (though no word as to whether she’ll be working in the Lab’s marketing headquarters in Amsterdam as yet). Much is being made of the fact that she’s late of Activision-Blizzard.


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The end of Acclaim?

Tateru Nino — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:12:01 +0000

Acclaim Enertainment was a notable video-game publisher from 1987 to 2004. After a history of lawsuits, talk of shady dealings and piracy, and criticism for tasteless and offensive advertising campaigns, Acclaim Entertainment finally was faced with falling sales, and mounting debts.


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The used-games market

Tateru Nino — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:12:24 +0000

Games publishers have been making increasing amounts of noise about the used market for games. So, let’s look at another industry example.


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Stop that game!

Tateru Nino — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:09:38 +0000

Mafia II is a third-person action-adventure video-game following the fictional story of a man of Sicilian descent who joins an Italian crime family in the period around 1950, a time when Italian crime families were near the height of their power and influence. It’s a familiar theme, having been portrayed in books, games, movies and television for decades.

UNICO National, the largest Italian American service organisation in the USA who have never seen or played the game, nor apparently been in contact with anyone who has (because at the time of their complaint, it had not been released) are calling it “a pile of racist nonsense” and demanding that the game not be released until all Italians and Italian-Americans are removed from it.

It strikes me that this would result in a rather substandard story.


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Play it now — Alganon: After the Dawning

Tateru Nino — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:55:28 +0000

Way back when, I wound up with a place in the Alganon MMOG closed beta. I really liked it. I haven’t really played it since launch, though, and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge at Quest Online, the developer. A change of management, bringing in Derek Smart (of whom I understandably have mixed feelings), lawsuits and more.

Anyway, Alganon went free-to-play last Friday, so I figured it was time for another look.

Layoffs at Realtime Worlds. Project: MyWorld dead?

Tateru Nino — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:28:12 +0000

Over the last few hours, rumours have been circulating that the entire development team of Project: MyWorld were laid off due to an inability to secure publisher funding for the project.

New comic: Alien Swarm?

Tateru Nino — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:10:40 +0000

Jump to the new comic, or new readers can click the banner to begin at the rather rough beginning:

Game DRM is back-asswards

Tateru Nino — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:12:05 +0000

DRM, in its form as copy-protection for computer games is completely backwards, and accelerating rapidly in that direction.

Play it now — Thief

Tateru Nino — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:54:41 +0000

Before there was Sam Fisher, there was Garrett.

An orphan in a sprawling ancient city that teeters on the uneasy knife-edge of steampunk technology and magic, Garrett grew up on the streets picking pockets and cutting purses. One day, he tried to cut the purse of a Keeper.

The Keepers are a secretive organization that strive to maintain a balance of the various forces and factions, their own powers revolving around mysterious, powerful glyphs, and a jumbled series of prophecies foretelling what is to come. The Keepers have a substantial complex within the city, but it is guarded by their glyphs, and nobody ever notices that it is there.

Likewise, a skilled Keeper may pass unseen through a crowd, not invisible, but unnoticed. So, that Garrett saw the Keeper at all, let alone got close enough to try to snatch his purse, it was remarkable indeed.

The Keeper lured Garrett with the promise of a better life, and Garrett became an acolyte in the Keeper order.

There, he was trained, was subjected to the Keeper’s strict rules, learned little of their secrets, and heard much of their lies.

Garrett abandoned the Keepers and returned back to the streets, exercising his new skills as a professional thief. An amateur steals for themselves, a professional steals for another, and the decadent old city was full of intrigue, and jealousy, and all manner of things that people with money wanted for themselves, but that could not be bought.

Garrett delivered. When he was hired to acquire something through his network of fences and contacts, that thing softly vanished from its place. Walls and guards and locks and hiding places did not stop him.

He was, as some said, the greatest thief the city had never seen.


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The AAA-Team

Tateru Nino — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:24:33 +0000

Activision’s Bobby Kotick is quoted as saying “[T]hat’s really our goal to have triple-A teams”

Really? That sure as heck doesn’t show much, lately. Actually, come to think of it, this is something that Activision’s traditionally been pretty poor at. Oh, it’s had some stars alright, but it hasn’t been able to hang on to them. Infinity Ward is a case-in-point.


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Play it now — Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online (Aeria Games)

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:31:46 +0000

Yesterday, Kerry Johnson was fishing around for alternative MMOGs and asked me what my favourites were. Well, top of my list right now is Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online, operated by Aeria Games.

SMT:IO (which everyone more or less just calls Megaten) is a free-to-play/freemium Eastern MMOG based roughly around the console games of the same name (Shin Megami Tensei). It’s post-apocalyptic, a few humans struggling on in what was once Tokyo, in a world now infested with spirits and demons.

Right at the moment it’s on my every-day playlist, though – as you’ll see – it isn’t for everyone.