Twinconclusive/TwinHamster/Too Many Name Variants/CP-SS Identity Crisis/Ahhhh wrote:The sad thing is that I might actually play more games if I was just one click away from opening them.
James wrote:GMArcade uses a java app to download and install the normal exe file on your hard drive and then launch it, so it just creates the illusion that it was started from the webpage.
This would probably still do the trick then. Illusions are almost as good as the real thing.
It might not raise popularity outside that site or increase the numbers of this community, but it might get a few more community fence-dwellers to fall over onto the side of "playing more games."
Shadowiii wrote:Luckily I still like you guys (quite a bit actually), I just sometimes felt people didn't care about me. Even after the mission I asked people if they'd read or even skim the book project I'm working on, and I didn't hear anything from anybody. Ever. Until just last week, when I posted something saying it was done, and magically I have friends again. Maybe my lack of activity over the previous two years (but hey, I was ON A MISSION) had something to do with it, but frankly I've felt like the loner looking in on the "cool kid's" conversations for the past several years.
You do realize that you're one of the people I consistently consider every time I open up CUSTOM and work on Powerstick Man, right? I still remember that CP review you wrote years ago about wanting to see an update, and I still finish up an update session on a daily/weekly basis and think to myself,
I wonder if Shads is gonna play this again. I know it hasn't shown up on your list of must plays in several years now (sometimes I think you forgot that you played it), but you're one of maybe five people I'm updating this thing for (besides myself, of course) in the hopes of getting it its due new laughs.
So you're not forgotten. You might've gotten a bit emo/grumpier in the last couple years (as referenced by the saltier language that I don't remember you using in the old days), but we all still like hearing what you have to say. And though I think it would be nice if you got active in the game making/game playing department again, I'm glad you at least still hang out and offer the occasional witty/grumpy/poignant input on things.
And I didn't know you put out a book. Where was I when this all happened?
I can tell you from experience, books and short stories are harder to get critiques (or read-throughs) for in any community, especially this one. If you don't mind reading and critiquing other people's works, your best bet is to sign up with Zoetrope (
www.zoetrope.com) or the Internet Writing Workshop (
www.internetwritingworkshop.org) and have the people there look at it. At least there, people purposely look for things to read. Actually, I think the latter is an emailing system, but successful novelists have recommended it, so it's worth looking into. Feedback is still depressingly light, but it's better than what you'll get on a gaming site.
But don't worry about all that theoretical neglect. It's all illusion and illusions are never quite the real thing.
msw188 wrote:*I miss the Game Design Discussion threads that we used to have going. I like theory and academia, thus the tone of my Hamsterspeak articles. I especially miss my discussions with Iblis. But it could be said that the more and more you discuss, the less there is left to talk about.
This has been one of my ongoing fears about writing articles for
HamsterSpeak (and a general fear for the magazine's future). I keep wondering when we're gonna run out of things to say:
"So this month, we're gonna talk about how to train a monkey to draw your walkabout sprite."
It's a tough reality to consider, but I imagine a day will come when we've officially talked the subject of game design to death. Then we'll just have reviews to work on.
But if that day comes, at least
HamsterSpeak did its job in riding the wave all the way to the beach.
msw188 wrote:*Along those lines, I usually feel that my articles don't get read, but I really don't mind that much because I can understand if other people aren't interested in the same kinds of discussion and considerations that I am. For myself, I find some of the other articles rather dull and devoid of any real theoretical interest or insight. I still appreciate the articles more than the art and/or comics though.
I'll confess here in saying that I read every
HamsterSpeak article posted because I know how much time goes into considering it and how much time goes into writing it. But academia can be painful when it's surrounded by casual relativity, and I do sometimes find it a chore to get through those types of articles. But I do read them. And sometimes those articles hit me on the right note (like the recent one about the monetary systems--good job, by the way).
But like you said, it's more important to write these things for yourself first and hope that people can agree with you second.
msw188 wrote:*Another problem with the wiki may be that the OHR is becoming too complicated for FAQ-style documentation. The categorization is terrible, but I can't think of a better way of doing it. For one thing though, alphabetization doesn't work for a list of questions that all start with "How" or "What". Maybe once the help screens in the editor are complete, the wiki can get a makeover of sorts. I wish I could help think of how to make it set up.
I think updating the HOWTO articles is the best way to narrow the field. If you create a wiki using a Table of Contents that refers line by line to the functions of CUSTOM, starting with graphics (and its sub-menus) and working all the way down to "Exit Game," you can knock all your basic questions out right off the bat and still keep it user-friendly. Or you can just trust that the person with the questions will press F1 now that internal help is installed. But setting up the Wiki this way can still help those just considering the engine decide whether they want to use it.
For everything that's left (like "How do I make a bank?"), you could alphabetize key words and go from there. Then, instead of posting it as "How do I...?" just post it as:
Banks--Design
Banks--Implementation
Banks--How to Put Your Game World Into Economic Collapse.
etc.
msw188 wrote:*I wish that more COMPLETE RPGs were made; RPGs in and of themselves aren't fun for me in the same way as other kinds of games - they need a feeling of completion and accomplishment, so that the world feels complete and the gameplay feels like working towards a final goal.
I can both agree and disagree with this. I think demos are important because they gauge initial player response and test an author's commitment to the project. If he or she can release the demo and still go back to work on it after the criticisms are made, then he knows his project is worth completing. Without the demo, he stands a chance at making a 30+-hour nightmare that no one wants to see to completion.
I totally understand your viewpoint, but I think authors have an obligation to ensure that what they're doing is worth their sacrifice of time. And it would seem that 95% of OHR users decide that it's not. Of those who decide it's worth finishing, most of them churn out a complete experience that feels like something we'd want to work toward reaching a goal.
So yeah, up with demos.
