This is not how to make GPS enabled games folks. Fishing? Presumably there is some x such that you will never catch a fish greater than x pounds, after which there is zero point in playing the game further. This may be a feature of the business plan, but it's certainly not good game design. "I caught a bigger bluefin tuna than you," is a sentence that will never be uttered with the same satisfaction as "I found an upgrade for my character on my hike last weekend and I am going to kick your ass. Have at you!"

Clearly, at some point in the future I am going to have to start writing the sort of games that will get my son off his ass, where he's been playing games of the sort that I'm making now.

/games | permalink (2004/10/08 00:53)

Played through Spiderman 2 this weekend. I was a little apprehensive about the game, since some of my coworkers were heaping scorn on it last week, but the game is really good. Granted, some of the graphical elements suck, and some of the animation looks like King Kong era stop motion, but if you can swing around New York for half an hour and tell me that this is not exactly what you wanted to be doing when you were 10, then you're a freak. I know that's harsh, but it's true.

My only complaint with the actual substance of the game is that the combat is either too easy, or silly hard. In particular, some of the boss fights with Doc Ock were ludicrous. Putting large damage elements into the environment is fine, but the developer must, MUST, MUST make sure that these are predictable to the player, and consistent in their effect. It's just frustrating to be thrown by a plasma blast, and because you randomly hit a pillar in the environment, get bounced back into the plasma for 2 or 3 more hits before you regain control of the character. Not good. Makes me want to throw the controller at the screen. It was like finding a fly in the last bite of a really good creme brulee. Fortunately, after you finish the main (read: movie) storyline, they let you just screw around in the city, so it's easy to erase the taste of the poor design from your mouth.

Confidential to Joel in Cambridge: Look at this. I'm home this weekend, and I fail to call. Great.

/games | permalink (2004/08/02 13:40)

So it looks like some people are experimenting with the concept of using GPS devices to create novel games that involve getting outside to play. GPS Tron is a lightcycle game that's played just as you'd imagine, running around with GPS units to lay down the walls that you try to get the other player to run into. It's obviously very rough, but the core idea looks pretty fun. Ideally you'd combine this with some sort of augmented reality support (see ARQuake for an example).

/games | permalink (2004/06/11 14:48)

Full Spectrum Warrior is out. It's a fun game, ships on the Xbox with a ton of content, co-op play, and somewhere in the range of 1 gigabyte of content on the DVD. So naturally, the game that all the programmers at Oddworld are currently addicted to is Tetris Attack, a game that ships on a 1 megabyte (or so) cartridge, and runs on a gaming platform that can be comfortably simulated by your average cellphone.

/games | permalink (2004/06/11 14:41)

Cool, a GPS attachment for the GBA! Time to get going on those location enabled games. Also, make it smaller, please.

/games | permalink (2004/05/10 11:19)