Zer0wing
Cipher
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2017
- Messages
- 2,607
No, not even for every user signle Codex account, only for those who clocked at least one year here.Is Retardo Land open to the public?
No, not even for every user signle Codex account, only for those who clocked at least one year here.Is Retardo Land open to the public?
I would say Corey Cole's recollection kinda contradicts that. The amount of her creative input is something we will never know, but she obviously was the driving force behind the project.I think Cleveland Mark Blakemore was the one that said Brenda did little to nothing on the game IIRC as well and he hasn't been wrong yet.Eh, group effort doesn't say much, every game is. Until some of the developers who actually worked on the game say anything against Brenda, I assume she actually was one of the driving forces behind it.
Cleve might be delusional (occasionally), but Sirotek is just a plain lying motherfucker, so I don't trust anything the guy says
Corey Cole's recollection doesn't mean anything, he's just recalling almost working with her, but never having worked with her and assumes she took over lead designer because that's what's she's taken credit for doing. The Sirotek's account of it being a group effort would imply her role wasn't as great as stated and perhaps other devs didn't get the credit they deserved. No one is going to potentially ruin their career by criticizing a woman for lying about her role in a game. The guy would be accused of being a misogynist and quietly black listed. You can't even criticize a gaming critic that's a woman (Anita). What games has she designed since Wiz 8 anyway?I would say Corey Cole's recollection kinda contradicts that. The amount of her creative input is something we will never know, but she obviously was the driving force behind the project.I think Cleveland Mark Blakemore was the one that said Brenda did little to nothing on the game IIRC as well and he hasn't been wrong yet.Eh, group effort doesn't say much, every game is. Until some of the developers who actually worked on the game say anything against Brenda, I assume she actually was one of the driving forces behind it.
Cleve might be delusional (occasionally), but Sirotek is just a plain lying motherfucker, so I don't trust anything the guy says
Previous to joining Blue Fang, Linda was co-founder of the former Sirtech Canada. While at Sirtech, she was the Project Lead on the award-winning RPG Wizardry 8 and Co-designer of the award-winning Jagged Alliance strategy role-playing series.
So at the end of the day I still think it’s fair to say Brenda could be considered the game design lead, but there was probably a reason behind the scenes Sirotech is giving design credit to a fee other individuals
The first occasion we had where we sat down with the intent to play it saw many of us become a little panicked. The balance was off (OK, we expected that), but it lacked feedback, making some things hard to follow, hard to control (OK, this too we expected since we planned a "polishing" phase). The dialogue needed to give us more information, and so on, but it was still a little hard to sit down to play and go, "Ugh, we've got some work to do." When it became clear that our ideas did work, that if we enjoyed playing it (and we did), then we, at least in part, achieved many of our goals--that was a nice part of the project.
Linda Currie: I'm Linda Currie and have been Co-Designer and the Level Designer on each Jagged Alliance product (Jagged Alliance, Jagged Alliance Deadly Games, Jagged Alliance 2, Jagged Alliance 2 Unfinished Business), Designer and Project Leader of Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure, and finally Project Leader and a Co-Designer of Wizardry 8, recipient of Computer Gaming World's 2001 RPG of the Year award.
I actually listened to what Brenda says in the Barton interview. She never actually calls herself lead designer there (though she also doesn't correct Matt when he says that), nor was I able to find any other interview where she does that. In the Matt chat video she states that they designed the game mechanics collaboratively, naming all 4 people listed in the manual, but that she did most of level design (while also mentioning that she "gave" some areas to Linda and others) and story.Still, Project Lead might mean mistly project management duties. Basically organizational type stuff. Per the credits it seems Brenda did a lot of the hesvy lifting design-wise.
She never actually calls herself lead designer there (though she also doesn't correct Matt when he says that), nor was I able to find any other interview where she does that.
Not if you consider M&M and BT Wizardry clones.How come so many Ultima clones were made by western indie developers, and so few Wizardry and Might&Magic clones?
Breadth refers primarily to the physical size of the game. It can be measured in dungeon squares or tiles, or in modern games the length of time it takes to travel from one end to the other. It also refers to the length of time it takes to play and win the game; while this is often a function of size, it can also be manipulated to make a small game seem larger or a large game seem smaller; for instance, in the use of fast travel (making a large game seem smaller) or the re-use of maps (making a small game seem larger).
Depth refers to the things that you find and to the things that happen within that game world. The specific elements depend on the game's genre, but for RPGs it includes things like the backstory, lore, NPCs, quests, and character development.
We'll get to immersion in a minute, but for now let's pretend that my thesis has only these two elements, and I'm arguing that a good game is like a square: you want a breadth equal to its depth and vice versa. The easiest way to engage the thesis is to imagine the extremes. A game with extreme breadth and almost no depth would be something like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Fallout 4 if all you could do was explore the map. You'd get bored pretty fast.
It is thus not absurd to argue that Ultima IV is a better game than Dragon Age: Inquisition just even though the latter is bigger and has far more story and lore. The issue isn't which has more but which does a better job balancing the two. Ultima IV has just enough backstory and in-game dialogue, lore, and other content to support the size of Britannia and the length of the game.
None of these variables is completely objective, and immersion is probably the least objective of the three. Its importance has a lot to do with your age and experience level with older games. I still think the graphics in Morrowind are beautiful, but last week, I stumbled on a Reddit thread in which someone posted an image of a horse falling over in Red Dead Redemption 2 and leaving a horse-sized imprint in the mud, and half the commenters were complaining that the imprint wasn't realistic enough. Even among those of us with a high tolerance for primitive graphics, immersion is a mutable characteristic. A game that seems like a solid cube today will slowly flatten as we become used to better graphics and sound.
Watching the sunset in Morrowind (2003) still seems lovely to me, but to some people these graphics are hopelessly outdated.
People put thousands of hours into shitty building games, repeating the same thing over and over.If he needed to play that many cRPGs to come to the conclusion "breadth is nothing without depth", then I'd say he wasted his time.
I will go as far as saying I disagree with that statement. If Fallout 4 was as deep as the deepest cRPGs, you would have a massive, MASSIVE game in your hands. Just know there are people out there who play Bethesda games well into the 1000 hours mark. Imagine if these games had depth to them. We would be talking 4000 hours. Honestly, that doesn't sound like the kind of game I would want to play.
Maybe I should start reading his blog again. Got disillusioned after he shilled for Hillary and lost my taste for it.
Yet another Ultima clone.
How come so many Ultima clones were made by western indie developers, and so few Wizardry and Might&Magic clones?
My impression is that the three series were roughly about equally popular. Is my impression wrong, or is the answer that the storyfags to which Ultima appeals most are more creative than the more "autistic" blobber fans?
(Aside: As a former resident of Salem who really got into the history of the city, I don't care for it when movies, television shows, books, and games suggest that the city was ever the site of any "real" magic and witchcraft. I have a particular distaste for the choice of the Salem Police Department to put a classic witch-on-a-broomstick on its departmental patch. Between 1692 and 1693, twenty residents of Salem were executed on false accusations of witchcraft, and I feel like it insults their memory to suggest that the accusations were anything but unfounded hysteria. I do appreciate, however, how the various museums of the city use the "witch" title to lure in tourists--but then give them a sober account of a tragic history.)
(Aside: As a former resident of Salem who really got into the history of the city, I don't care for it when movies, television shows, books, and games suggest that the city was ever the site of any "real" magic and witchcraft. I have a particular distaste for the choice of the Salem Police Department to put a classic witch-on-a-broomstick on its departmental patch. Between 1692 and 1693, twenty residents of Salem were executed on false accusations of witchcraft, and I feel like it insults their memory to suggest that the accusations were anything but unfounded hysteria. I do appreciate, however, how the various museums of the city use the "witch" title to lure in tourists--but then give them a sober account of a tragic history.)
He really is Mr No-Fun-Allowed, isn't he?
He's your typical current year liberal, that means getting his rocks off by playing the victim and being offended on behalf of others while reveling in his imagined moral superiority over everybody else. This particular case is pretty funny because it's over a handful of peasants who have literally been dead for over 300 years. Meanwhile the game devs, the entire town of Salem, their police department, the victims descendants and everyone else on the planet are just having fun with it.
An exemplar of liberalism, in that he'll decry liberal policies when directly affected himself by them but is otherwise content to foster decline and allow others to suffer the ill-effects while he himself avoids them due to his socio-economic position.CRPGAddict in Comments for First Post on Treasures of the Savage Frontier said:I've generally supported legalization--or, at least, decriminalization--for years, mostly because I didn't think anyone deserved a criminal record for possessing it. As a middle-aged white guy, I could pretty much smoke it whenever I wanted anyway, and as long as I wasn't stupid (like smoking it while driving past a cop), I was probably never going to get arrested for it in the first place.
Lately, though, I've been coming to regret my support. I'm sick of encountering gormless, shaggy-haired buffoons who think nothing of putting on their marijuana-reeking sweatshirts and going out to breakfast or, god help me, taking a trip on a plane. I'm sick of smelling it EVERYWHERE--walking down the street, getting into my rental car, getting into my hotel room. We finally dealt with all that vis-a-vis tobacco in the 1980s and 1990s, but now marijuana is making it so much worse.
My 10 Most Controversial Opinions
I wouldn't have minded if the game had required us to write down the ingredients. I would have welcomed it. I miss the days of gaming with a notepad and graph paper by my side. Quest markers have ruined modern RPGs. Even "hardcore" modes generally don't turn them off.
I don't like Japanese graphics.
I think computer RPGs are superior to console RPGs.
I don't care about voiced dialogue--in fact, I wish it would go away.
I have to admit that [Skyrim is] still one of the best CRPGs I've ever played.
I not only think Fallout 4 is better than Fallout: New Vegas, I think it's much better.
I don't like games about rape
7. I don't like games about rape
You wouldn't think that one would be so controversial, but on at least one site it makes me a laughingstock.