[KC LC]

Quote

And that's not a knock-- some of them have a lot of useful information-- it's just an acknowledgment of the limitations of the glossy, advertiser-based format.

Well... there's probably a correlation between advertising and depth-of-content. But there are exceptions, of course. There are some excellent news journals in the US and Canada, but I think the Canadian newspapers do a better job. However, the best ones are in Asia. Read the Asia Times editorials, for example (especially Spengler).

Regarding my earlier comments... forget the violence article. Instead, I'd love to read your assessment of the casual game trends, and any thoughts you have on improving them.

[tomrussell]

Hey everybody! It's been three months since last we spoke, which means it's time for...

Russell's Quarterly No. 5!

Here it is at Elite Indie.

So, what splendiferous wonderments await you in our fifth issue?

-- Chance vs. Skill, containing a brief discussion of those two types of games, their differences, and what they can learn from one another, including some hard-and-fast guidelines for implementing randomly-generated content in your game

-- Sprite Substance, an examination of the importance of creating a "visual language" to impart game information quickly, intuitively, and consistently

-- Miyamoto's Framework, an essay by Paul "Rinkuhero" Eres that looks at the dominant video game framework and asks that all important question, what else is there?

-- The Narshe Incident, a look at attack power as a source of meaning in a classic RPG

-- Gaming with One Hand, a biographical essay by memoirist Peter Jurich, in which he chronicles the difficulties of being a differently-abled gamer

-- Design-centric reviews of Pinball Panda and Alternate Path

-- and, of course, our cover feature, which takes a deep and probing look at the masterpiece that started it all, the textbook example of how to make a platformer, and asks: What game design lessons can we learn from Super Mario Bros.?

It's 67 pages absolutely jam-packed with interesting, thought-provoking, and above all, useful content!

Read the magazine that won the 2008 Game Maker Blog Community Award for Best Game Maker Reviews, and be on the look-out in three short months for our sixth issue. What's our cover feature for number six?

KC LC, on Oct 19 2008, 07:38 PM, said:

I'd love to read your assessment of the casual game trends, and any thoughts you have on improving them.

Hmm... :-)

Here's that Elite Indie link again in case you missed it: Boo-ya!

This post has been edited by tomrussell: 15 January 2009 - 06:03 PM

[rinkuhero]

Might want to tell "elite indie" that it's 'its', not 'it's'. Obviously not elite at grammar over there

Anyway, I'll take a look at the new issue, thanks for doing these.

(Just a note for third parties: that essay of mine in there wasn't created explicitly for this magazine, but was originally written for my LiveJournal, and Russell asked if he could reprint it.)

I still think you need a better host though, using free hosts really keeps this magazine down. My favorite, nearlyfreespeech.net is twenty-five cents! If you can afford the internet, you can afford twenty-five cents

[tomrussell]

rinkuhero, on Jan 13 2009, 09:36 PM, said:

Might want to tell "elite indie" that it's 'its', not 'it's'. Obviously not elite at grammar over there

Anyway, I'll take a look at the new issue, thanks for doing these.

(Just a note for third parties: that essay of mine in there wasn't created explicitly for this magazine, but was originally written for my LiveJournal, and Russell asked if he could reprint it.)

I still think you need a better host though, using free hosts really keeps this magazine down. My favorite, nearlyfreespeech.net is twenty-five cents! If you can afford the internet, you can afford twenty-five cents

Looking into it at this moment...

And thanks again for letting me reprint that essay. As you'll see, I actually reference it more than once through out the other articles and reviews; it really is highly thought-provoking.

==Tom

[gamewizkid]

I love this magazine. It's my alltime favorite video game magazine. (Especially since my game was in it once.)
And I'm liking the 5th one so far...

This post has been edited by gamewizkid: 14 January 2009 - 03:04 AM

[rinkuhero]

Rereading it I don't agree with it as much anymore. I feel the five principles I named weren't very specific, etc., and I felt I could have said the same thing in a much shorter span of time. Here's my attempt:

In most games (especially most games since Miyamoto) you have you control something with directional buttons, moving it around the screen, gain abilities gradually, move around a spatial map (often segmented into sections), try again when you fail, and go somewhere to do something (in a specific place that you have to move to) as the main goal. So basically the core gameplay mechanic is maneuverability: you are guiding/moving something through a map to get somewhere through a variety of obstacles. It's basically like a maze; games in the Miyamoto framework are more similar to solving "mazes" than to board games or sports games or card games, except that computerization has allowed mazes and the obstacles in them to become increasingly elaborate: but they are still at core mazes, where the goal is to get to a particular place. Pretty much 90% of games have that goal: move your character somewhere, and you have to get by obstacles to get there. And that there's no real reason that this just so happened to dominate games, games could have worked very differently, but just through convention they all basically work like that.

This post has been edited by rinkuhero: 14 January 2009 - 03:13 AM

[Destron]

rinkuhero, on Jan 13 2009, 07:36 PM, said:

Might want to tell "elite indie" that it's 'its', not 'it's'. Obviously not elite at grammar over there

lol, actually I have already fixed that twice . While I admit grammar and spelling are not my forte that one was actually due to a stupid plugin pack I had for PS, it came with a grammar/spell check and the grammar check was notorious for messing things up, every time I opened that PSD in PS it would change it back to it's.

Ah well, that one is gone now thanks to a reformat I just did so problem solved eh.

Great issue btw!

[9_6]

Holy hell you really like super mario brothers a lot, don't you?

[tomrussell]

rinkuhero, on Jan 13 2009, 10:15 PM, said:

Rereading it I don't agree with it as much anymore. I feel the five principles I named weren't very specific, etc., and I felt I could have said the same thing in a much shorter span of time. Here's my attempt:

Well, in either itineration, I think the basic thrust of the argument-- that this one system (however we define it) dominates game design and while this one system works really well, there could be other systems or frameworks that could work just as well-- is still quite thought-provoking, and I want to thank you for letting me present it in this issue.

9_6, on Jan 14 2009, 05:01 PM, said:

Holy hell you really like super mario brothers a lot, don't you?

Who doesn't? :-)

[highlighter]

broken link.

[tomrussell]

highlighter, on Jan 15 2009, 12:03 PM, said:

broken link.

In apparent validation of Rinku's advice to get my own site, host-a has decided to be a little wonky today. It still seems to be working over at Elite Indie, though, and I've changed the link above accordingly.

Issue Five

[TurquoiseStar]

Great work as usual, Tom. I like how you always manage to come with subjects that are fascinating to read, provide some inspiration, and most importantly, essential for any aspiring game maker to know.

[Desert Dog]

Heh, this looked interisting, so I downloaded the RPG issue. I love it! Good work tomrussell! It's a real good read.

[manuel777]

I readed all of them, exellent work Tom, Its nice to see a GM magazine around here that actually reviews the games from the inside, speaking about nothing more thatn the truth...

[rinkuhero]

manuel777, on Jan 15 2009, 05:41 PM, said:

I readed all of them, exellent work Tom, Its nice to see a GM magazine around here that actually reviews the games from the inside, speaking about nothing more thatn the truth...

Why call it a GM magazine? Was there even anything specifically about GM in the last issue? I didn't see any in the table of contents (although I didn't read all the articles yet).

[thegr8n8]

link 5 turned into issue4.

[manuel777]

rinkuhero, on Jan 15 2009, 07:48 PM, said:

Why call it a GM magazine? Was there even anything specifically about GM in the last issue? I didn't see any in the table of contents (although I didn't read all the articles yet).

Its mainly about GM soo....

ps: i havent readed the whole thing neither hehe

[rinkuhero]

But... it wasn't! I didn't see one thing in the latest issue that even referred to GM (yet).

[NakedPaulToast]

Quote

Its mainly about GM soo....

ps: i havent readed the whole thing neither hehe

If you think it's about mainly about GM you haven't readed [SIC] any of it.

[manuel777]

NakedPaulToast, on Jan 15 2009, 08:07 PM, said:

Quote

Its mainly about GM soo....

ps: i havent readed the whole thing neither hehe

If you think it's about mainly about GM you haven't readed [SIC] any of it.

i did, and the reviews are mostly about GM games, i know that a lot of contents arent from GM...