Movie trailers are not made by the filmmaker but by a third-party outfit hired by the studio’s marketing department; these companies specialize in making trailers. Game trailers are not made by the game developers but by the studio’s marketing department.

Bottom line: unless you’re actually interested in marketing, or in gamers’ responses to it, don’t waste your energy.

Alpha Protocol is intended to be a CRPG, and character customization is a staple of the genre.

“We shall also assume that no mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.”

These are called adventure games. The mechanism stopping developers from making lots of adventure games is that they are no longer nowhere near as popular as before.

“Therefore, the current rat race for the best, most customizable avatar shall thus be perceived an abhorrent one, damaging to the maturing and growth of the narratives in video games.”

What’s damaging “the maturity and growth of narratives in video games” is a lack of ability (game designers are not writers or film directors) and a lack of maturity (modern game designers are informed only by fantasy and scifi films, comic books and other video games, so there’s no broad experience with culture, arts and life in general behind their writing).

That being said, story-telling is a LOW PRIORITY in video games. Although video games are technically capable of great story-telling, they are still nowhere near as good at it as films and books are. If you’re so gung-ho about “narrative,” just watch films or read books. Video games are about playing and one of the things people like to play — for whatever reason — is dressup. Saints Row 2’s deep character customization sure as hell beats GTA IV’s overwrought “narrative.”

The rest of the article is incomprehensibly confusing, rambling and directionless. I have no idea what you are trying to say, except that you’re complaining about stuff that has almost nothing at all to do with video games.

1• Los cts aveces parecen tt o vicebersa.
por si no entendes a lo q me refiero: imaginate q estas jugando online, sos terrorista y ves en el mapa un punto azul enfrente tuyo por ende le queres disparar pero cuando lo ves tiene el skin de un terro, resulta q te matá y era un ct. SI, YA SE ES UN BUUUG!! fuck!

2• Los cts o tts son invisibles… asi como lo lees aparecen invisibles kisas esta enfrente tuyo pero no lo ves, entonces tenes q “tirar retry” y se arregla, claro por un rato hasta q entre otro player online y tampoco lo veas, si… OTRO BUG!! fuck!

3• (Lo q mas me molesta) El WARP!! desde q actuaalizaron el css tengo muuuuucho warp, eh provado bajar los graficos, los eh subido del todo, *antes q nada, tengo buena pc y antes de la actualizacion andaba +11 ;).(aclaracion para los q se la tiran de vivos)
bueno en fin, es una reverenda mierda “tecnicamente” el css nuevo, hubiese preferido q lo mantengan en secreto y cuando estace terminado q recien en ese momento lo publiken, no ahora, ahora esta lleno de fallas, es una mierda con todas las letras, no se puede jugar online xq es enfermante ver como se warpea todo, algunos players me contaron q les sube y baja el ping como locos. en fin espero q hagan algo rapido la gente de valve por q se les van a ir todos y de pasar a ser uno de los juegos mas jugados el css, va a ser el menos jugado y el mas odiado. una lastima, arruinaron un buen juego sus propios dueños.

«CRYS!S» • Demon22
css GameR semi manko :P

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/precursors.php#tp10

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/white_gold_war_in_paradise.php#tp10

Obviously we had a debate regarding the inherently dubious quality of publishing a discussion of game not yet played through – in normal circumstances, we obviously don’t do this – but here, I thought my inability to proceed contributed some unique flavour to the article. Hopefully this in part justifies my decision alongside the obvious need to have the article published before the end of the competition.

I have no idea how long I will be able to stick to my guns and stay away from using walkthroughs, but so far we have only had to pay heed to to deadlines that make sense internally.

As far as the Space Quest reference (which I tried to supplement with a mention of the Star Trek adventures), I didn’t have the time and, uh, space to explain my own feelings towards the Space Quest series more closely. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m very stubborn indeed, and I didn’t mean to use the Space Quest reference as negatively as it may have come off to someone that doesn’t enjoy the series: I’ve completed each of the games in the past, and while they are punishing indeed, there are obvious merits to them too, one being the magnificent rush that you get from cracking a puzzle that you thought impossible.

My favourites two parts in the series would have to be numbers four and five. How about you guys?

Also, just to set a few things straight:

I hated Space Quest and its need to frustrate the player, so that has never been my intention with any of my games. Oddly enough, most people have told me that Limey Lizard was my easiest game, so I’m not sure how seriously to take your comparison of it to Space Quest. The Transputter puzzle was solved by both my testers without any feedback from me so I figured it was good to go, though I have added some more hints in the dialog and changed up a few things to make it easier on lower difficulties. I do applaud you for not wanting to resort to a walkthrough, though; to me that ruins the entire point behind playing an adventure game in the first place. Thanks for the article, and feel free to drop me an email if you need some hints or something with Hard Space.

-Shane

While I’m not intimately familiar with his catalogue of games, I can at the very least vouch for Besieged!