They’re all good reads — here’s one sample from Write the Game:

Families will have more in common, sharing triumphs and losses in video games. Kids will play with their parents, and everyone will have fun.

Conversely, many parents will stick their children in front of a PS3 to shut them up, whilst kids will find an easily accessible fantasy world in which to drown their fledgling identities.

Like everything else, a balance will have to be struck. Commercialism and arty experimentation will both clash with and compliment each other. Private joys will have to be placed against the thrill of being part of a well-oiled team. Mass victory will be accompanied by sessions of the blame-game.

There is one thing we can be sure of – it won’t be boring.

The entries range from standard musings to dystopian visions of the future; the monthly entries for Blogs of the Roundtable are always worth keeping an eye on, especially as they tend to trickle in over the course of the month.

The Ghost Of Gaming Future [Write the Game via Blogs of the Roundtable/Man Bytes Blog]

The in-depth look at a variety of puzzle forms moves from the premise that puzzles are so integral to adventure games, bad ones can easily ruin a game:

Adventure games are different–in that the core features of gameplay cannot be effectively evaluated without actually playing it or giving so many details away as to detract from the experience of playing the game. In many respects, the quality of an adventure game depends upon the quality of its puzzles, whether they are ingenious and rewarding or just frustratingly illogical. Having been told an explanation to how a puzzle works means you will never be able to play it as intended, since a big part of the experience is the enjoyment of figuring it out for yourself. You can evaluate the art, voice acting, and even the story or humor present in an adventure game to a certain extent without diving too deep into it, but an adventure game with terrible puzzles can make all those other elements irrelevant, since you likely will never have the patience to finish the game in the first place.

In this article, I will be taking a closer look at the various types of adventure game puzzles, how they relate to the gameplay, and even how some of these basic forms relate to other game genres.

From two basic classifications (’self-contained’ and ‘key’), a wide variety of puzzle types appear; the analysis is interesting and the article is worth plowing through if you’re interested in the nitty gritty of game design.

Adventure game puzzles: unlocking the secrets of puzzle design [Adventure Classic Gaming via GameSetWatch]

People have been having hissy fits because because some of the downloadable titles of the year (e.g., Braid) weren’t on the list, but take note:

The games picked are the editors’ choice, and span PC free-to-play titles released during 2008’s calendar year to date, with a mixture of Flash and Windows executable games. (Many other fine pay-to-download games for console and PC that might be considered ‘indie’ were ranked in the Top 5 Downloadable Games earlier this week.)

There are some nice titles on there if you haven’t been keeping up with the free indie game scene; the other lists are worth a looksee too. I always like seeing the yearend roundups, even if I don’t agree with all of their picks.

Gamasutra’s Best Of 2008: Top 5 Indie Games [Gamasutra]

It’s a pretty melancholy day today, and The Majesty of Colors just hit me in the right spot.

The Majesty of Colors [Kongregate via auntie pixelante]

While GameStop (the main player in the used game market) management declined to comment, but several industry types (like David Braben of Frontier) put in their two cents. On how the used game market is bad!!!!!! for the industry at large, Braben had this to say:

“… [We] don’t see anything from the used-game sales, which is one reason why the price of new games throughout the industry remains artificially high,” he says. “I mean, the industry has to make all its money from the first sale since we don’t get a penny from the subsequent dozen or so sales of that same game.”

The used-game market may also be negatively affecting the quality of games, he notes. “Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game — which was essentially our incentive to make great games.”

“But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game’s quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop’s pocket, nobody else’s.”

It does sound pretty whiny (as one analyst notes, “… publishers want their cake and eat it too. They want the used games business.”), and as many people note, the used car that gets trotted out isn’t particularly apt. Being a fan of good used bookstores, I wonder what book publishers think about that particular resale market (since this is hardly exclusive to the game industry).

As Recession Deepens, Used Games Get More Painful [Gamasutra]

Ray Huling argues that the next crop of Final Fantasy games will be, like theYamato, obsolete by the time they hit the ground. Impressive in their size, yet obsolete at the time of their completion. Huling says that the games have become such giant enterprises, it’s sapping the fun out of the whole production (does that mean ‘obsolete’ or simply ‘not fun anymore’?):

… the optional elements that demand so much effort to achieve on the DS represent only a bite-size version of the gaming Gargantua Final Fantasy has become. Mini-games, bestiaries, accessories, rare monsters, rare weapons – Christ! The humongousness of it all defies belief, defies completion. Sure, people have achieved all that can be achieved in a game like Final Fantasy XII – one of its FAQs, not even the largest, is spread across more than 770 pages. But people built the actual Battleship Yamato, too, which now lies in two pieces on the floor of the ocean off Okinawa.

Just as has happened with the main plot, the sidequests of Final Fantasy have become ends in themselves, separated from any notion of the fun they were supposed to provide. Final Fantasy has the most compelling profile of any videogame. It bristles with guns – but what can actually be done with all of that firepower?

I suspect there are many that would disagree, and while I didn’t like FFXII for a variety of reasons, I just turned it off and hoped the next iteration would strike my fancy (and if not, oh well — there are plenty of other fish in the gaming sea). I’ll agree that plenty of aspects of the games are ridiculous, but that’s hardly confined to the Final Fantasy series. Is the game formula ‘obsolete,’ or just tired (or is Huling just tired of it?)? And what does obsolescence (of a non-technological variety) really mean in the context of RPGs or games more broadly?

The Battleship Final Fantasy [The Escapist]

Instead of arguing about reviews and criticism, he argues, maybe people should just set aside a little space and do criticism. A lot of really talented journalists already do this in their own blogs, and it’s always nice to read. And what about the kerfluffle over reviews?

Nor is talking about how to review games even relevant. They’re fine. IGN writes good reviews, questions about their scoring aside. Nor does anyone need to care or start suddenly doing things the same way for reviews. Hell, my views on games are completely batshit: I don’t think game design has to innovate to be relevant, I factor in outside reviews, and I need to beg Ralph Koster to forgive me if I ever meet him for being such a brat about not liking mastering rules. But my take on reviews doesn’t matter because I don’t consider them criticism. They’re consumer reports on the elements of a game that advise the person of what they’re buying.

I sort of agree; on the other hand, I don’t see any reason other kinds of reviews couldn’t move toward the ‘criticism’ side of things (that’s probably the academic in me talking). Whether people would want them to is another matter. I think we can all agree that debating about things is all well and good, but it comes down to action or inaction, as the case may be.

Louder Than Words [Banana Pepper Martinis]

In slightly more serious news, the Rock, Paper, Shotgun guys also sat down to talk with Flashbang’s Steve Swink about a variety of issues, including how games such as MCS, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and Jetpack Brontosaurus come into being:

RPS: Which comes first – the name for the game, or the idea behind it? It’s really tempting to believe that someone said, “Jetpack Brontosaurus”, and someone else said, “Okay!”

SS: That’s very nearly how it went down! Jetpack Brontosaurus came from a single whiteboard sketch by our art director, Ben Ruiz. He was doodling one day on one of our ubiquitous wall-mounted whiteboards. What started as a humble Brontosaurus quickly grew to include turbines and safety helmet. It hung there for weeks as we finished up Raptor Safari, jet-setting its way into our collective hearts and subconscious. When the question was asked “so, chaps, what next?” all eyes turned immediately to Messeurs Jetpack and Brontosaurus upon the wall. It was a toss-up between Jetpack Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus Swiftboat. No contest.

It’s all worth a look on an overcast Saturday, that’s for sure.

Minotaur China Shop Is Live, We Talk To Flashbang & Minotaur Diary, Page 17 [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

The contention here isn’t that people have never cried while playing games, but either that it’s an irrelevant question or that it wasn’t the actual game part that made you cry — it was the narrative elements, which are not exclusive to games. I’m not at all convinced I agree with his argument entirely, but it’s an interesting proposition:

This is the nub of the issue here: a story can make you cry by empathising with the protagonist (or another character), but a game (when viewed as a formal system) cannot do this. It follows that the only way that a videogame can make you cry is by using narrative tools that have nothing to do with games as formal systems whatsoever. So even though, for instance, many people report that they cried when they played Final Fantasy VII at the fateful scene (and indeed, several other cRPGs also show up in player studies as having provoked tears) the moment that actually brought the player to tears was a non-interactive cut scene. It wasn’t the game (in the systems view) that made them cry – it was the story – and there never was a question as to whether stories could make you cry.

As usual with these types of articles, the comments are just as interesting as the article. As Bateman notes in the comments section, he intentionally pushed the ‘games as play’ and ‘games as systems’ arguments to their most extreme ends, hoping it ‘would make for more lively debate.’

A Game Has Never Made You Cry [ihobo]

Leigh Alexander has spoken with the ESA and PC Gaming Alliance about the piracy issue and how people are attempting to combat it. The two part article looks at tackling physical pirating, as well as the online variety, and how companies are attempting to prevent piracy from happening. Of course, there’s been a lot of talk and considerable irritation when gamers are faced with poorly implemented DRM. Industry types who are intimately involved with decisions that gamers grouse about note that they don’t like DRM any more than you do:

“I don’t like locks on my door, and I don’t like to use keys in my car… I’d like to live in a world where there are no passports. Unfortunately, we don’t,” [EA CEO John Riccitiello] said ….

“I think that was spot on,” says [senior director of strategic planning and research at Capcom Christian Svensson]. “People rail against DRM and feel that it treats them like criminals – unfortunately, we live in a world where some people are criminals, and sometimes we have to take steps to mitigate as best we can. We live with some slight inconveniences, and obviously, we try to keep inconveniences to a minimum.”

“I think people who put it out there that publishers are just trying to be evil — I assure you. We don’t make money by making your lives difficult. If we didn’t feel it was absolutely, positively imperative that we have this for our business, we wouldn’t do it.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I doubt the piracy issues will ever really be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction, since if you make it, someone in the world will figure out how to pirate it. On the other hand, it does seem like there should be options that at least placate both sides — protecting IP and keeping consumers happy.

Inside Game Piracy, Part 1: Crushing Discs, Pushing Education & Inside Game Piracy, Part 2: The Countermeasures [GameSetWatch]