About game design and game development.
I recently released the MicaByte “Game Library” as open-source. I work almost entirely in Native Android. That’s mostly a convenience thing – the time I have for game development is very limited, and although I am a C++ programmer by trade I like Java as well. Java is not a…
I enjoy games with a narrative. By that, I mean that there are games that I play where winning isn’t my only objective. Understand me rightly; I always play to win. But there are some kinds of games where the key to my enjoyment lies in playing to the utmost…
I really dislike historical computer games. Well, let me qualify that: I really dislike the dodgy history that so easily gets propagated by these games. I realize that this is not a completely PC view to have, but I can’t help getting slightly irritated whenever I read yet another post…
Continuing my thoughts on things barbarian in games, it’s been extremely interesting to see the way the concept of “culture”( usually = civilization) is increasingly present in the games we play. What I find less interesting, is the idea of the civilized cultures conquoring the uncivilized. And I don’t mean…
What is a barbarian? Etymologically, it supposedly comes from the Greek word barbaros; bar-bar being the Greek variant of the modern english blah-blah-blah. In essence, then, one might say that barbarian simply means “people who speak funny”. This is why, to the ancient Greeks, anyone who was not a Greek…
I recently read a discussion about barbarians and their representation in games which reminded me of the classical article “You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!”: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines by Christopher Douglas, published in Postmodern Culture in 2002. In the article, Douglas argues how games are not…