Evening Reading: Friday Effect
This ties back to my growing conviction that games get treated too often as simply virtual toys. We get caught up in the mechanisms and technologies forgetting that their only purpose is to deliver the experience the game designer seeks to create. I think that's part of the growing appeal for indie games. While they often have clever uses of technology, it's always done as a support to a unique part of playing the game.
Getting back to Mass Effect 2, interestingly, much of the refinement done for the sequel went into mundane things like improving the shooting action and cleaning up the interface. From watching the game develop and talking to people working on it I got that this was a very intentional direction intended to make the "playing" of the game as unobtrusive as possible. The hope being that that way we become better drawn into the experience of the game.
Well, that was a bit all over the place. Happy Friday!
- Dr. Who and Top Gear games in the works from BBC
- First Assassin's Creed 2 DLC hits next Thu
- Mass Effect 2 free and for-pay DLC plan cleared up
- Crispy Gamer editorial staff laid off
- GameStop opening at midnight for MAG and Mass Effect 2 next Tue
The president of Oracle probably didn't think his jilted mistress would put up billboardsM
Wil O'Neal pointed out these 5 jokes about the apparent eagerness of certain democratic members of Congress to abandon health care reform in light of Scott Brown's electoral victory
Steve Ballmer signs a student's MacBook Pro
Conan's been hard at work spending NBC's money. Here's his shot at the most expensive sketch ever
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A Dr. Who game? Huh.