I find it hilarious that according to a lot of these books, some of the best and most respected writers in history actually suck pretty bad.  :D

Maybe it's Morton Feldman, then? I didn't know he could rip it on the guitar.


Also, I'm currently listening to Morton Feldman, Rothko Chapel to be precise.

Marty Friedman? More like Marty FELDMAN!  :D


Also, Robert Hood- Minimal Nation

The idea sounds hilarious, but is using only bool variables that much different from using stats? You're merely taking one number-based system and replace it with another.

Anway, this reminds me of my very first game written in BASIC when I was 13, using only if (and its associates), goto and print.  :D

I'm planning on making four "areas", each with its own color theme (and boss). It's always just going to be three shades of one color plus black though.

Also, the graphics "pulse", so they look less plain in motion than on these screens.

I've never heard of Air Fortress! You guys keep introducing me to awesome games.  :D
But anyway, this game is going to be nothing like that or your "shmuptroidvania", as the view is top-down and the only real shmup elements are your ship's slippery movment and the fact that you shoot lazerz(tm).  

BTW: The movement is similar to the game Nanosmiles. It was originally intended to be Asteroids-like, with turning and accelerating, but it quickly turned out to be too cumbersome.

From that page, he seems to be writing mostly celebrity gossip which everyone knows is the bottom end of journalism, so go figure.

Killer7 has memorable and rather well-written dialogue.

One of the things that constitutes "good" writing for me is a conscious and "artful" use of language. The writing in video games is pretty utilitarian for the most part. There's no use of speech figures or conscious choice of words going on. It exists as a simple way to advance the story rather than being interesting in itself.

I'm not saying characters should have stilted, Shakespearean dialogues, but having them use more speech figures and developing certain speech mannerisms for them (granted, Killer7 goes to a bit of an extreme in that respect) would make a lot of videogame characters that much more memorable.

video games have still to move beyond being interactive movies to some degree. What they'll become, I have no idea about. Probably just like those early moviemakers had no idea what movies would become a hundred years later.

Games didn't start out as "interactive movies", that only started happening some 10 years ago (or possibly less). The problem I have with this is that a lot of the people both in the mainstream industry and in the press apparently don't see it as an "early stage" in the development of games as a medium, but as THE future for games and as a sign of gaming's "maturity" (because dumb acion movies are like totally mature and shit). 

Come to think of it, the VU were pretty influential. I mean, they were the original "guitar noise" band, after all. Granted, the Monks did that stuff two years earlier, but hardly anyone knew them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLS8NeGL4U

Holy hell. It's the Immortal. That's amazing. I linked it to both of my brothers (both a couple of years older), and there was a collective OMG! from us all.

Thank you kindly!

Glad I could be of help. The Immortal is a great game, a shame this genre of adventure is extinct nowadays. 

This is actually kinda embarassing, but I guess I misinterpreted your post. I thought you were implying that only games, including the digital ones, that have the things you mentioned (graphics, sound, spatial design, narrative etc.) are videogames. Of course physical games are different from videogames. Sorry for the misunderstanding.  

However, I still think that a videogame can be good or even great based on gameplay alone. Roguelikes are a good example. I do agree though that gameplay/interactivity isn't everything in most cases, but it's still the defining factor of makes a game a game as opposed to a movie or a work of literature.

   

That is all.

Wait a sec... I missed your post. You like Phaedra?! I frigging love that thing! I am so excited now. Yes, it is definitely otherworldly. Such genius... I think it's best at 1 AM or so, when you're half-awake.

I think the reason the album (or at least the title track) has this special sound is that it was hot in the studio and the oscillators of their synths started detuning. Or so I've read. :D

CONELRAD is an artist from the UK who makes awesome soundscapes that remind me of BoC, but a bit more musical and less experimental.

BOC is unmusical? They have rather pretty melodies. In fact, I'd call them more conventionally "musical" than most of their IDM peers.
Anyway, I listened to a couple of tracks by this guy and it's soothing stuff.

Speaking of soothing, in an act of shameless self promotion, I'm gonna post this track I made:
http://soundcloud.com/user8297681/winds-quiet-session   :D

For me, video games aren't the same as games (eg. soccer, chess, etc.), meaning that instead of being about their gameplay, video games are about a multitude of factors working in harmony.  Art, music, spatial design, gameplay, narrative, all of these (and a whole lot more) working together is what creates a good video game (while gameplay alone is enough to create a good game).

Now you're talking semantics again. You're creating some sort of artificial divide between "games" and "video games". I don't think making up weird new definitions is going to get us anywhere in this debate.

^^this.

Also, I don't think games are inherently great for storytelling but there is untapped potential there.

Writing is not what sells games. I'd be happier if it was, but, well, (unless you're MGS) cutscenes are not what people are playing for.

Then why's there such a lot of people on the internets throwing fits when a game doesn't have a story or cutscenes? "omg dis game sux it dosent even haf a storey lol" is something you read quite often.

That depends. If you have "cursed" items (as most good roguelikes do), the whole identification business becomes a nice "minigame" in itself.

The rune thing sounds good!

Do you think that's real though? Apparently the source is The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper known for manufacturing stories.

Another thing I didn't like about the third one especially (but the others too), is that there's lots of cool action scenes, yet you never get to play any of them. When Snake has just  stylishly dispatched of a couple of enemy goons with nothing but a pea-shootery pistol in a cutscene, returning to the same old, tired "stealth" gameplay afterwards is disheartening.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand... I've been listening to a guy called CFCF for the last couple of days. It's one of those "I saw his cover art somewhere and really liked it" sort of situations... it sounds to me like Boards of Canada re-cast as an 80s band or something, I rather like it. Especially the one called "Raining Patterns".

I've never heard of this guy before. Interesting. I can see the Boards Of Canada comparison, he also has a bit in common with the kind of new-agey, soundtracky synth music I discussed with Ivan a page back, he cites Vangelis as an influence on his Myspace after all.

Of course Metal Gear's story is dumb, but then again it's so ridiculously over the top it's fun again. I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be taken 100% seriously, but alas there's apparently lots people who do.