Behind the Mask

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 15, 2010

While I may lose a few geek points by this admission, I was never a huge comic book fan. There were a couple of titles I collected (particularly those written by Chris Claremont), and a few others I followed as I could afford them or read friends’ copies. I’ve gotten into passionate arguments over Marvel […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

“Jet Lamp” Report

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 14, 2010

Muke Rubin wrote up some thoughts on the “Jet Lamp” event I announced here last week – the showing of the text adventure documentary “Get Lamp” and the Q&A session with the creator here in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it, but a lot of other people could… JET LAMP SLC – A Few […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Steam Whine

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 13, 2010

You know what would make Steam a whole lot better? If it wasn’t actually there. I don’t normally leave Steam running on my machine in the background. And I’ve found, recently, that I’ve got a little bit of reluctance to run a game on Steam simply because of the overhead involved in it loading Steam, […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 21 Comments to Read

Freaky Discovery of the Weekend – and Using Urban Mythology as Game Plots

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 12, 2010

Okay, I thought I was having my leg pulled actually following up on what sounded like a freaky-deaky conspiracy theory, but after being told that the signature line on all my checks wasn’t actually a line at all here in the U.S., I decided to play the sucker and go ahead and inspect the line […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Room Escape Games and Micro-RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 10, 2010

Classic graphic adventure gaming has had a bit of a casual resurgence lately with the appearance of “Room Escape” games. If you haven’t played any yet (and I’ve only played a couple), they are basically tiny adventure games, usually written in Flash, that have gained quite a bit of popularity. They take place in a […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Casual Games, Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Indie RPG News Roundup, 9 Sep 2010

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 9, 2010

So here’s a little bit I’ve heard lately via the scuttlebutt network about current and future indie role-playing games. Please add other tidbits you are aware of in the comments or on the forums. We wanna know! Din’s Curse The official 1.07 patch for the excellent action-dungeon crawler Din’s Curse is now available. Check it […]

Filed Under: News - Comments: Read the First Comment

The Seven Stages of Retro-Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 8, 2010

So you’ve decided to take a stab at “retrogaming”… playing one of those old video games from six, eight, ten, maybe even twenty or more years in the past. I have a little bit of an advantage as I remember when most of the games were hot and new. But still, it’s not all smooth […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

How Government Regulation Exterminated Indie Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 7, 2010

Time for a rant! South Korea’s evidently decided to levy mandatory game ratings on all games, even free downloadable titles. Their mandatory government board, the GRB, has taken to enforcing its fees – a tax on all game-makers, big, small, commercial, or free. The end result? The hobbyist / beginner / non-commercial indie market has […]

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Special Utah “Get Lamp” Presentation

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 6, 2010

This is from Mike Rubin, developer of “Vespers 3D.” I’m just passing along the info: Utah Gamers: I thought I would let you know about a special film screening that will be taking place in SLC next weekend, since it is related to the computer games industry. Many of you know the first computer games […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games - Comments: Read the First Comment

The Fall of a Major Independent Game Studio

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Note: “Independent” in this context means not owned by a publisher. Not “indie.” Sensory Sweep Studio was, by studio head Dave Rushton’s calculation, the largest independent video game studio in North America at one point (after Bioware was bought out by EA). I’m not exactly sure of it’s size, but when I was working there […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Brad Wardell Offers a “Mea Culpa” Over Elemental’s Release

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 3, 2010

Brad Wardell is an indie. A big indie, in charge of a part-business-app and part-gaming company, Stardock. He’s one of the good guys. He wrote up the “Gamer’s Bill of Rights.” He makes the kinds of games the mainstream guys don’t make any more. His solution to piracy is (in part) to make games for […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Episode Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2010

When Robert Jordan was still alive and his Wheel of Time series was The Hot Thing in fantasy (I guess that was a while ago, huh?), I deliberately avoided it. My wife finally coerced me into listening to the first book on tape when I had a long commute a few years ago, but I […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

Historical Note: Lord British Half-Apologizes for Ultima VIII

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 1, 2010

A long time ago, I bought Ultima VIII: Pagan on CD, but never actually ended up playing more than a few minutes of it. Didn’t quite get into it. And some of the grumblings I heard from other players and critics made me a little less than optimistic to “power through” the beginning of the […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 9 Comments to Read



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