Smalltalk with James Robertson

The entire entertainment industry is shifting, with movies no longer being the biggest draw. Games are starting to be the biggest draw, and I think it's largely because they are becoming so immersive. Rather than two hours of staring at a story, you can now get many, many hours of becoming involved in a story.

Take two games I've been playing recently - Dragon Age: Origins Awakening and Fallout 3 . I played DAO a lot from Christmas (when I got it) until last week, after my third time through it. I've been playing Fallout 3 pretty continuously since. Unlike simple first person shooters, the story in these games is impacted by the things you do. While I liked Modern Warfare 2, I was pretty much done with it in a week. These games? Well, I just pre-ordered Dragon Age: Origins Awakening :)

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Civ V sounds like a pretty big break from previous CIv iterations - no stacks of units, conquest rules are different, the map will be hexes instead of squares, and it sounds like combat will involve a whole lot more tactical level attention. Get the full scoop over at GameSpot.

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So much for "I need a PC for Games":

Eager gamers have no doubt already seen the teasers, but Valve has now finally confirmed that its Steam game distribution service and Source engine will at long last be headed to the Mac. According to Valve, the company's current line-up of games (including the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead series) will be available to Mac users in April, while Portal 2 will represent the company's first simultaneous release for PC and Mac later this year.

This is awesome news. While I've come to prefer the XBox and Wii for games, I can't take those on the road :)

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PC World is now reporting that Steam is coming to OS X:

it seems the rumors are true and Steam will in fact see an OS X release.

Which means that the mac will stop being a second tier gaming platform. One less reason to require a Windows machine, it sounds like :)

Dare Obasanjo makes some great points about why we get on "achievement treadmills", and asks some great questions about them:

What it really boils down to is that I traded one set of achievement treadmills (i.e. blogging and contributing to an Open Source project) for another more explicit set (i.e. playing Modern Warfare 2). Now we can go back to Alex Payne s tweet and find out where I disagree. From the perspective of Infinity Ward (creators of MW2) is it a bad thing for their business that they ve created a game that has sucked me into almost 300 hours of play time? On the other hand, is it a good thing for me as a fully functioning member of society to have cut down my contributions to an Open Source project and the blogosphere to play a video game? Finally, is it better for me as a person to have traded achievement treadmills where I have little control over the achievements (i.e. number of blog subscribers, number of people who download a desktop RSS reader, etc) for one where I have complete control of the achievements as long as I dedicate the time?

While MW2 didn't suck me in that much (I played it, finished it, and am pretty much done), Dragon Age is a whole other kettle of fish - and I've certainly racked up a stupendous amount of time playing it. Some of it really is the satisfaction of unlocking various achievements (the game has multiple paths you can take through it, including character interactions). I'm sure that I've spent less time on, say, my Facebook interface (and BottomFeeder) as a result. Is that bad? So long as it's not interfering with my actual work and personal life, I'm not sure :)

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Last night I got through the final battle in "Dragon Age: Origins" - it wasn't really that hard, it just required a lot of patience. It was my second run at the game - my first run through stalled at the end, partly because I didn't pay enough attention to the NPC characters during the game itself.

In DragonAge, you really need to pay attention to that stuff. Depending on how you interact with the people who join your little quest team, they'll either help a little or a lot; it impacts the plot going forward. It was enough fun that Intend to take another run at the game with a different origin story - there 6 possible openings to the game, all slightly different.

This is the way games are heading, and I like it :)

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The Swiss are known for tolerance, but apparently, that tolerance ends with "mature" games:

It illegalises the purchase of any game not carrying a PEGI age rating and requires stricter rules on the requirements of ID, although both of these measures had previously been voluntarily introduced by retailers late last year. However, more worrying is a second resolution that was passed — albeit with a split vote of nine-to-three — that could lead to an outright ban of violent and adult titles in the country.

No more "Modern Warfare" or "Dragon Age" for you, I guess. While they're at it, will they also ban mature books and movies?

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Spotted in Slashdot:

2K Games announced today that they will be releasing Civilization V in the fall. For the first time in the series, the square tiles will be changed to hexes, which 2K Games says provides 'deeper strategy' and 'more realistic gameplay.' Civilization V will also include a new graphics engine, new combat system including ranged bombardment, multiplayer and good support for the modding community. 'Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series,' Sid Meier said. In addition to Civilization V, the Facebook-based Civilization Network will also be released during 2010.

Well, I never really mastered Civ IV, so what the heck - I can get another game to act as a countervailing time sink to "Dragon Age Origins" (and the expansion they are putting out soon). I wonder when I'll find time to come up for air :)

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We got together with some friends this evening, and played a fun little game - "Vegas Showdown"

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Ever since Christmas, my daughter and I have been spending a lot of time with EA's Dragon Age: Origins. It's a pretty immersive RPG we have on the XBox. The kid is positively obsessed with the game, and - I must say - I've spent a fair amount of time with it as well. I liked Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2 well enough, but this is a much bigger game. I'm not even all that far into it - I'm dealing with the last battle in the tower of the magi right now. Speaking of which, I think the XBox is calling me...

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