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A few post updates Blog category

Page Viewers icon from Creative Writer

Page Viewers icon from Creative Writer

Time for a few updates! July has been an exciting month, and while I was working on all the posts, I’ve also been going back and revising a few older articles that I wasn’t totally happy with. It’s weird to have nine years of your writing (!!!) existing all in the same place, and it’s fun to see how my writing’s grown over the years.

I made two major additions to previous posts that I want to highlight here:

  • One of the big lingering questions from the infamous Secret Writer’s Society back in March was whether the game was really a target of sabotage. I reached out to RTMark co-founder Igor Vamos, and he confirmed that the story about sabotage was a hoax intended to give the bug more publicity. Seems like it worked! It’s great to have that story finally settled.
  • A former Electronic Arts employee close to the development of Majestic, EA’s experimental alternate reality game, reached out with more information about why the game closed. It was a practical decision too. EA was ramping up production of their Lord of the Rings games and reassigned the producer of Majestic to a new title, which basically guaranteed that was the end. Thanks to the former employee for sharing this information!

I’m not quite sure where we’ll be going next, which is exciting! It’ll probably be weird. Thanks for continuing to read!

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Crystal Pixels Other category

Title screen from Crystal Pixels

The void is quiet. Silent, in fact. A giant star nicknamed Sunny rests in the center of the void, orbited by hundreds of tiny, glistening planets. Within the empty, lonely world of Crystal Pixels, those distant points of light – the crystal pixels of the title – are like little beacons. They lure you out to the deep with the hope that you’ll find somewhere to visit in all the darkness.

The game was the work of a single person, who created it for themselves as a personal retreat. For anyone else, it can be maddening to play. It demands your willingness to go far, far out into nothing, struggle to reach a destination, and decide your own reason to head there. » Read more about Crystal Pixels

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What happens with old software copyright when nobody cares? Essay category

A CD-ROM labeled "Microsoft Windows 95 with USB Support CD." The CD also says "Do Not Make Illegal Copies Of This Disc"

A CD-ROM copy of Windows 95. Note the part that says “Do Not Make Illegal Copies Of This Disc”

Once in a while, I update this blog’s Resources section, where I’ve collected links and information about how to find, get, and play old games. Hopefully it’s a great collection! There’s one particular site that I’ve held off including for a while, WinWorld, that enters legally uncertain territory. I want to talk about it a bit, because it raises important questions about how we deal with abandoned software. » Read more about What happens with old software copyright when nobody cares?

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Noir: A Shadowy Thriller Adventure category

Noir: A Shadow Thriller

Alternate title screen from the demo for Noir: A Shadowy Thriller

Private eye Jack Slayton kept a file on Charles Winthrop, a philanthropist with something to hide. Winthrop’s prize horse Pegasus died, and Slayton suspected an insurance scam. In his notes, he mused, “I’ve had a few horses die on me too, usually in the stretch.” He has the voice of a stock hardboiled detective, cracking a stereotypical case of corrupt wealth, working on a nondescript street in Los Angeles.

As far as Noir: A Shadowy Thriller is concerned, that’s perfect.

Like the name implies, the game is a tribute to the noir genre, the idealized version that pop culture remembers – stories about a gumshoe drifting through decadent clubs and dim alleyways, swept up in the city’s rotten underbelly. For a CD-ROM game especially, it’s a feat of tone and setting. » Read more about Noir: A Shadowy Thriller

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Lexi-Cross Board category

Title screen from Lexi-Cross

Lexi-Cross puts cyborgs and aliens on a 1970s game show. Without the futuristic touches, it might as well be an adaptation of The $10,000 Pyramid.

The game begins in an audition interview with a television producer. When the game show starts, it opens on a shot from the studio audience, an “ON AIR” light blinking as the cameras move into place. The vaguely Bert Convy-looking host, with a perm and a half-metal face, stands in front of an angular, beige set while the program’s brassy theme music plays. The game manual looks like a fake TV Guide, complete with ads for pay-per-view boxing and Chinese takeout. Lexi-Cross fully commits to the features of both the format and the era, transplanted into a future when there’s still broadcast television and primetime game shows.

It also copies the rules of 1970s game shows, and it inherits their pacing, for good and bad. » Read more about Lexi-Cross

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Control Monger Shooter category

Title screen from Control Monger

Control Monger was free, and then it was gone.

The game was a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter, one of many from the early-to-mid 2000s. Developed at accelerated speed by a group of volunteers, it was released for free in 2005. A few years later, the official website went silent, and the game and its community gradually disappeared.

It has a few clever ideas, incorporating territory control and base defense into the usual first-person shooter template. But to find out what this game was actually like, I had to play it with other people.

Last week, I invited a group of friends and readers to play two hours of Control Monger to get a feel for how it works with a big crowd. (The game can support up to 255 players, which would be a disaster, so we stuck with the default size of 16.) Since it’s unlikely that another large group will get together to play this game, I want to go into detail discussing our thoughts on the game’s strengths, weaknesses, and balance. And to learn more about its development, I contacted Clyde Bielss, one of Control Monger‘s producers. » Read more about Control Monger

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Heaven & Earth Macintosh categoryPuzzle category

Title screen from Heaven & Earth

Why do we solve puzzles? Maybe we want that “a-ha” moment, when the solution becomes clear and we can suddenly see the whole picture of the complexities we’ve been dealing with. It imparts a sense of mastery.

Heaven & Earth gets something different out of puzzles than the satisfaction of beating a challenge. It finds peace. » Read more about Heaven & Earth

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Temporary leave Blog category

Hi everyone. In light of recent events, I’m taking a mental health break. I understand and appreciate the interest this topic received this week, but I went about it the wrong way and I regret possibly causing additional damage. I’m sorry, and I’m stepping away for a bit.

I want to repeat what I said in an earlier post: Although I’m glad more historical games will be available, this isn’t a sustainable way to preserve games. Leaks play a role in getting things out, but they’re not a healthy foundation for a gaming culture that values preservation. There’s often a tense relationship between private collectors who value rare games and folks who want to release things online. We’re all in this together, and to preserve our shared cultural history, we need to build trust.

Private collectors have saved historical objects that otherwise might’ve been lost, and rather than demonizing people who are reluctant to make their collections available, we have to collaborate with them on the importance of preservation. Folks like Joseph Redon are doing incredible work bridging the cultural differences between Japanese collectors and game preservationists. By the same token, we also need to show patience and understanding when things aren’t immediately available. Sometimes there are good reasons; many prototype or development materials have only been preserved because they were provided to a person or museum that restricted their access. Trust is difficult to built, and it takes time.

UPDATE 6/8: I recognize the interest that the recent game leak has generated. I’ve chosen to no longer be involved in this situation. On further reflection, I think it’s the ethically right thing for the long term of game preservation not to release anything else from this collection now. I hope we can use the events of this week to start a necessary conversation about the relationship between collection and preservation. Preservation is a long-term goal that we have to cooperate on.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to take time off from all this for my well-being. Looking forward to coming back later.

Sierra LandDesigner 3D Software category

Title screen from Sierra LandDesigner 3D

Could a CD-ROM be as good as hiring an expert? Or in other words, why hire a landscaper to design your yard when you could get Sierra LandDesigner 3D? (Yes, that Sierra!)

Sierra LandDesigner 3D brings together the information you need to design a garden – and it lets you build the garden yourself using 3D graphics. This is a vision where software could help you plan a complicated, logistically challenging project, something you’d normally need a professional’s skills to create. Imagine you’re a middle-class homeowner in the late 90s who’s gotten comfortable with the computer they’ve now owned for a few years. Could you really go to the electronics store and buy a program that could do the work of a professional planner?

Well, nearly. Although LandDesigner 3D doesn’t take enough advantage of all its gardening knowledge to replace an expert, it does successfully turn 3D design software into a welcoming product. » Read more about Sierra LandDesigner 3D

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