How do game tastes change with age?
18 May 2010I just read on Gamasutra an interesting article Study: Does Industry Lose Money By Ignoring Aging Gamer Needs? which inquires about the needs of older and disabled gamers.
I think the analysis of AbleGamers’ president, Mr. Mark Barlet, is perfectly on the spot regarding what new games should take into account to become more accessible and provide more enjoyable experiences to a broader audience who may have very different types of disabilities, ranging from moderate color blindness to serious motion control issues, but are these issues exactly the same as those faced by aging players?
As a 37 year old gamer who started on the Intellivision and Atari 2600, I can surely testify that my playing tastes and skills have changed throughout the years but, luckily, this has nothing to do with disability…
What I see is that time constraints limit my playing sessions while, on the other hand, I get more and more attracted to games with immersive storylines and gameplay mixing strategic and twitch skills, which are generally regarded as “hardcore”.
What I wish for, regarding new, modern games, is a gameplay with broad difficulty settings including also forgiving ones. Of course, while this is also one of Mr. Barlet’s wishes, I wouldn’t need to take it to the extreme levels advocated by AbleGamers as in this case, it has little to do with my actual “skills”, which may still be there from the old days, but with my patience/available time to finish the game instead.
In fact, due to busy life, I may not be able to replay an extremely difficult level or boss battle too many times to get those tricky final shots right and frustration can kick in earlier than years ago.
Also, check/save points should be placed at shorter intervals so that a game can be dropped almost at any time if something else pops up requiring my attention.
In conclusion, like with food, game tastes may also change as we get older: today I’m much more attracted to titles like Heavy Rain than the n-th iteration of Super Mario Bros. (of course, this can be subjective and I guess there’s tons of older gamers that still love to go out and save a princess by jumping over mushrooms instead! :P) and I think “the hardcore’s diminishing skills set” referred to by analyst Michael Pachter in the above mentioned article is not the key point either. The need for more mature themes (not necessarily involving brutal splattering violence) and smaller gameplay chunks are what adult gamers might be really looking for, IMHO.
Anyway, all this relates to modern productions and, amazingly, for a short burst of true fun, many old, original retro games that I enjoyed while young can still beat most modern stuff hands down! 
interesting survey
10 May 2010I just found out a very interesting survey about games, inspiration and innovation from the Finnish website gamesandinnovation.com: survey
There are still a few days to take part and the organizers arranged also for a lucky draw where you can win a game design book of your choice amongst a list of selected titles which… also features my own “On the Way to Fun” book alongside those of much more famous people!!
Take the survey and… good luck! 
CGAG Show 2010
3 May 2010Another great upcoming event not to be missed (unless you are 10,000 miles away.. 
)!
Garden Planet: a short postmortem
22 April 2010Game Designer Simon Rozner has just published on his blog a short postmortem of “Garden Planet”, the M-EDGE based game we worked on while at NYP.
Very interesting read: check it out http://gameonaut.com/wordpress/?p=75
videogame definitions?
21 April 2010I was recently having an interesting OT discussion on AtariAge.com (in a very heated topic, BTW) with a well respected member of the forum that made me finally understand why there are still many heated debates on which is the “first video game ever”. Simply put, people can’t even agree on what a video game is and how it should be defined so, of course, there can’t be any agreement on which was the first video game at all! Quite interesting indeed.
My very general view is that a game that is played by electronic means looking at a screen where we can interactively control the behavior and on/off switching of pixels is a “video game” regardless of the specific technique used to do so. Henceforth, I’d go back to the first experiment made in 1947 by Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Man with the “CRT amusement device”.
Others instead have a much stricter definition:
“Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion. It uses a raster display method, and takes a literal video signal which is then decoded and displayed on the CRT. Vector, of course, has no transmitted signal, no stored or captured image, and nothing being reconstructed. It is simply a mechanical line image drawn manually, on the spot.”
Under which the first proper video game is clearly Ralph Baer’s basic game released on the Odyssey console and the 1947 one “was not a videogame by any stretch of the imagination” according to the forum friend I was chatting with.
Actually, while such a definition is clearly respectable and correct, I tend to find it really too strict as it also excludes all those vector based games like SpaceWar!, Asteroids and so on. Now, if we go around telling people that Asteroids wasn’t a “video game”, I guess we’ll get many puzzled looks…
Well, I think both views are correct based on their starting assumptions and I have to conclude that:
1. there will never be a general agreement regarding which was the first videogame
2. I guess I have a very flexible imagination that can stretch very far! 
Project Natal: the future or a gimmick?
26 March 2010Microsoft has just announced they will premiere their new motion sensing technology at the upcoming E3 in June and a lot of buzz has obviously started among both developers and fan/hate boys…
Will it be the revolution in gaming it promises or will it just turn out to be another gimmick that almost no one will really care about?
IMHO, a lot will depend on how Natal is going to be brought to market: to be successful, from the first day after its release it should be an integral part of the 360 and be bundled with all consoles. Otherwise there is the serious risk that, despite being able to potentially fulfill its ambitious aims, it may still not reach a widespread market penetration and then just be perceived as another “eye-toy” sort-of add-on that can be skipped.
This, btw, should also be the path that Sony has to take with its PS Move and, amazingly something that, somehow, Nintendo forgot to do with the Motion+… de facto making it an add-on that may not be fully supported by third parties in a near future. In fact, companies may prefer to move to other technologies (Move or Natal) where they would soon be able to count on an almost 100% installed base.
“on the way to fun” for sale!
17 March 2010I was told by AKPeters that “On the Way to Fun” got good feedback at the recent GDC and sold pretty well!
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend this year but, in the meantime, I found this little widget that allows us to check for the sale rankings of a given book on Amazon. This being my first published book, I guess I’ll check it out quite often 
Reviving the good ol’ times
1 March 2010I recently found out about this event and I really wish I’d attend! If you live around there, don’t miss it!!
Interview on “The Games Machine”
18 February 2010I recently found out that an interview I had with Gianluca Masina was published on the November 2009 issue of the Italian magazine “The Games Machine”.
In the interview, which also includes comments from Mr. Simon Rozner, we talk about the M-EDGE project, which I started when I was in NYP and for which I was the Principal Investigator from its official beginning in August 2007 till the day when I left NYP in July 2009.
Even though I am not really involved anymore, the project is still in progress and new games are going to be developed by NYP on my original engine, so keep checking their website out (http://www.gamescreation.org/medge)!
“On the way to fun” officially announced!
20 January 2010I just saw that “On the Way to Fun” has been officially announced on AK Peters website!
http://www.akpeters.com/product.asp?ProdCode=5824
The release is planned for April and retail price set to $29.00. I can’t wait to see it!
