PC Game Evolution in Two and a Half Minutes

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 31, 2012

Just for fun – a little musical video of PC games, complete with music created entirely of remixed sound effects from said games: I liked how many of the games at the end were… INDIE GAMES! Enjoy.

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Should You Have To Earn the Fun?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2012

It’s pretty classic game design, because it works: As you play, you unlock abilities, which adds to the fun. In a tower defense game, maybe you get new towers to experiment with. Or in an RTS – of which Tower Defense is a subgenre – you unlock new units and buildings as you progress. In […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Utah Indie Night – July 2012 Report

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 27, 2012

The Utah Indies met this month at Neumont University in South Jordan, Utah.  I really like this venue – they’ve got big-screen monitors hanging on the wall to show off your games, and a nice lecture room next door for the primary presentation. And it’s not far from either my house or my office, which […]

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Windows 8: Sucks For Gamers?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2012

At Kotaku, Gabe Newell and Brad Wardell have some serious reservations about Windows 8 for PC gaming: Gabe Newell Wants to Support Linux Because Windows 8 is a Catastrophe Three Killer Problems that Threaten Windows 8 Newell, in particular, references the rush by Apple and Microsoft to close their platforms to competitors. In the notes […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Age of Decadence – Impressions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2012

Strangely enough, the fantasy series I really got into as a kid was not Lord of the Rings, or the Shannara series – the latter being fairly recent and popular, in an era where “fantasy” wasn’t quite a genre of its own and tended to get lumped into the “Science Fiction” section of the bookstore. […]

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Not Your Father’s Ultima IV

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 24, 2012

I hate to be critical of games that have not yet been released, especially when they are so clearly a labor of love for the developers. And in this case, it sounds like the principle folks here really, really pushed to make this happen. But man, this preview / interview about Bioware’s upcoming “Ultima IV […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Games With Messages

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2012

I take a pretty firm stance that video games should be entertaining.  Even if a game is supposed to be educational – or rather, especially if it is supposed to be educational – it is only successful at its job if the player finds himself enjoying the exercise. Otherwise, you may as well just be […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

What CDProjekt Learned About RPG Development from The Witcher

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2012

Gamasutra had an interview this week with CD Projekt about the lessons they learned in RPG development from their experiences creating the two Witcher games, and how they intend to apply these lessons to their upcoming Cyberpunk RPG: What The Witcher taught CDProjekt About RPGs Most of the emphasis is on story development and the […]

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Games With Personality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2012

If you go to the main website for Rampant Games, you’ll see the slogan on the header: “Games with Personality.” I came up with that several years ago when I was trying to distinguish the value for indie games compared to their big-budget cousins. With so many mainstream games available for cheap in the ol’ […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Indie Innovation Spotlight: Gratuitous Space Battles

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2012

Innovation isn’t usually a burst of complete originality, but rather an incremental probe of territory only brushed by previous titles, or the combination of existing ideas in a new way. The former  is pretty much how the “Tower Defense” genre was born. It originated not as a specific genre, but as sort of an evolutionary […]

Filed Under: Indie Innovation Spotlight - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Those Are Mighty Big Numbers

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2012

How many games were published for the original Nintendo Entertainment System? MobyGames lists 1116. And the Super NES? 1043. The Nintendo 64 had only 324, the Game Cube 557, and the Wii an astonishing 1201. So all together for the Nintendo  consoles, that’s just under 4,250 games. The Nintendo  handhelds enjoyed hundreds of published titles […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Still “Hardcore Gamer” Enough

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2012

Sometimes I worry that I’ve lost whatever it was that made me such a hardcore gamer in the past – whatever it was that made me sometimes not notice how late I was playing games until the rising sun streamed in through the window, or that made me want to write stories set in the […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing – An Example Project

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2012

My big rant yesterday about improving the “role-playing” experience in computer & console RPGs seemed to strike a nerve, based on comments received on the blog, in twitter, and in emails. The gist of it was probably summed up by Justin Keverne on Twitter: “The designer in me looks at that and nods, the programmer […]

Filed Under: Design, Programming - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2012

Many years ago, I read a book entitled “Shared Fantasy,” a sociologist’s exploration of the RPG subculture – back when the hobby was new and not so much computerized. As a member of said subculture, I was a little defensive when I started reading it, but soon found that author Gary Alan Fine was pretty […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Oh, Yeah – The OUYA!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2012

It’s a new kind of video game console. Now the fastest-funding Kickstarter yet. And on track to possibly become the highest-earning Kickstarter project. Though since most of the Kickstarter donations are actually more pre-orders for the console, this may not be quite as impressive as it sounds. But still… two million dollars in 24 hours […]

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Steam Greenlight: Crowd-Sourcing the Slush Pile

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2012

Valve just announced a game-changer for indies that will go live in a few weeks. Entitled Steam Greenlight, it appears to be an answer to the overwhelming number of indie games being submitted regularly for Steam release: Steam Greenlight So basically, we’re talking Valve crowd-sourcing their growing slush-pile. The theory is that the most popular […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 12 Comments to Read



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