As soon as the calendar month tag flips to December, all hell breaks loose: the PR departments switch to hyper drive, Marketing overdoses on dirty tricks and retailers go out of their way to create a “new and exciting” web of promotions in which they hope the naive, unsuspecting consumer will get caught… again. No matter how old, cheap and obvious the whole ritual is, customers act surprised each and every time and go along with it, sacrificing embarrassing amounts of money on products they would normally ignore if it was June. I wish I could say gamers are special, that they developed some sort of immunity when it comes to advertising and that years of experience have thought them not to go with the flow, not to believe that shiny and cheap means better, and not to let themselves mind controlled by simple spells such as “Holiday Special!”. But … More

Can’t live with them and … actually we can live without them, but it’s like living without chocolate: sure, you don’t miss it for a while, but then you start having blackouts, the neighborhood pets start disappearing with no explanation, you notice you unknowingly bought a chainsaw and that you suddenly feel attracted by the full moon. So let’s just leave the cutscene where they are for now, at least until I finish with this tiny text-pill and then you can do whatever you wish with them.

Cutscenes appeared as a by-product of some game-developer’s need to tell us more of the stage on which his characters perform, about their emotions and needs, about the story and about some other things we never actually care about. … More

Regardless of the area in which one might conduct an analysis, the conclusion will always be the same: things evolve. They get stronger, wiser, they expand or contract depending on the needs, but whatever happens, every little change results in a step forward, a step closer to a better version of its previous self.

This applies to games also, so comparing the game industry from ten or fifteen years ago and its products with the current one can only lead to one conclusion in my opinion: things are whole lot better than they used to be. But that doesn’t seem to be the general opinion as I have not once and also recently heard that the old games, the classics, are clearly superior to the mélange of mainstreamed ideas we are currently playing. … More