Thursday, January 27, 2005
Game Girl Advance doesn't update nearly enough.
It's only been in the past week or so that I've seen anything out of them via RSS. This might not mean they've been silent, mind you, since I know a number of sites whose RSS just broke and I haven't bothered to follow up on. Still, I personally have not seen much from their feed lately, and then today I saw this: an idea so simple, you wonder why it hasn't been done already.
I think this is an absolutely great idea, and that it would make for an innovative, engaging game, albeit one that may only achieve moderate success. Why? Because it would likely be either mismarketed or misreceived. I see war games being popular because they give the opportunity to enact all the romantic, attractive aspects of war without all that nasty bloodshed, loss of life and destruction that entails the real thing. This would drive away some of That said, I don't think the game would appeal to the fans of the "other" strategy genres, in which the onus is on development of technologies and societies, since that sort of thing would likely be less emphasized.
I challenge anyone to make a game like this, or to show me one that's already been developed (example from the linked article notwithstanding). However, my personal prediction of the commercial success of "PeaceCraft" (as it is dubbed by GGA), provided that it is done well, is to be similar to that of Kohan: a solid, well-executed game that has developed a following, but nonetheless remains off the radar for the more casual gamers.
¶ 1:17 p.m.
It's only been in the past week or so that I've seen anything out of them via RSS. This might not mean they've been silent, mind you, since I know a number of sites whose RSS just broke and I haven't bothered to follow up on. Still, I personally have not seen much from their feed lately, and then today I saw this: an idea so simple, you wonder why it hasn't been done already.
Think about it: what if you started up a multiplayer game of WarCraft III and none of the players built anything but workers and buildings? The natural state of the world is for the races of WarCraft to peacefully coexist (although you would eventually run out of resources), and this tranquility is shattered by player actions.
...
Once we have a game system where the player is trying to maintain peace through a series of interesting choices (the same as one would make war in a typical Real Time Strategy), we can make things more complicated. What if the player not only needs to maintain peace, but also needs to be in a dominant position over the other players?
I think this is an absolutely great idea, and that it would make for an innovative, engaging game, albeit one that may only achieve moderate success. Why? Because it would likely be either mismarketed or misreceived. I see war games being popular because they give the opportunity to enact all the romantic, attractive aspects of war without all that nasty bloodshed, loss of life and destruction that entails the real thing. This would drive away some of That said, I don't think the game would appeal to the fans of the "other" strategy genres, in which the onus is on development of technologies and societies, since that sort of thing would likely be less emphasized.
I challenge anyone to make a game like this, or to show me one that's already been developed (example from the linked article notwithstanding). However, my personal prediction of the commercial success of "PeaceCraft" (as it is dubbed by GGA), provided that it is done well, is to be similar to that of Kohan: a solid, well-executed game that has developed a following, but nonetheless remains off the radar for the more casual gamers.
¶ 1:17 p.m.
