Filed under: Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

Japanese hardware sales, Nov. 10 - Nov. 16: Early Edition edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Square Enix announces three downloadable expansions for Final Fantasy XI

Square Enix announces three downloadable expansions for Final Fantasy XI originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Guitar Hero-playing robot takes on Cult of Personality

Guitar Hero-playing robot takes on Cult of Personality originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Harmonix, EA sued for flimsy Rock Band kick pedal originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pre-order GTA IV on Steam, get Vice City free originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Debut Wanted trailer curves its way into our hearts

Debut Wanted trailer curves its way into our hearts originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gallery: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned DLC

First screens of GTA IV: The Lost and Damned DLC originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Culture, Nintendo DS, Retro

Continue reading Game & Watch Collection could be US-bound

Game & Watch Collection could be US-bound originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Branching Dialogue: Display of E-motion

Branching Dialogue: Display of E-motion originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WRUP meets the zombie apocalypse originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Home beta welcoming another 100,000 testers originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Culture, PC, First Person Shooters

Gordon Freeman receives crowbar, will defend raging Hadron originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vote for Amazon's $199 PS3 bundle originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tabula Rasa shutting down on Feb. 28 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft: NXE Avatar clothing updates will be free ... for now originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gallery: Far Cry 2: Fortune's Pack

Far Cry 2 'Fortune's Pack' adds new vehicles, weapons, maps originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Joystiq Podcast 074 - Geekadelphia edition

Joystiq Podcast 074 - Geekadelphia edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online, Rhythm

Rock Band Weekly: The Killers, Yngwie Malmsteen, Soundgarden, Lamb of God originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Driving

Criterion teases next Burnout Paradise DLC pack originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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7-Eleven getting comfortable with game sales originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[It's interesting - I got into a 'heated discussion' with a certain blogger a few months ago about whether the iPhone would be successful for games - which it is, financially and even creatively, from an early adopter point of view. But with masses of games and elastic price-setting, can bigger companies do well? Certainly, the below folks, part of a showcase big sister site Gamasutra's Christian Nutt was invited to a couple of days ago, seem to think so.]

With the success of the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, which can also access the App Store), there has been a huge influx of games to the platform, which is currently the best-selling U.S. consumer mobile phone.

At a recent San Francisco briefing, Apple's senior director of marketing for iPhone, Bob Borchers, showcased a range of upcoming iPhone game titles, and laid out his company's vision of why the uptake has been so swift.

Though most people think of the iPhone as the single target platform, the iPod Touch also works with the vast majority of applications. Borcher noted: "If you're a hardware developer you've got two great platforms to develop for." On top of that, Apple has "worked very hard to develop [the SDK] in a very comprehensive way."

While Sega's Super Monkey Ball, one of the launch games for the App Store and a 500,000 unit seller, was an early indicator of what the platform is capable of -- Borcher described it as "a posterchild of what's possible" -- he believes that "things have gone so much further than that."

Of course, this is true in terms of choice as well, perhaps making it more difficult to sell that many in today's iPhone game market. There are over 8,000 applications available on the store in 20 different categories; according to Borcher, over 200 million applications were downloaded in the first 100 days of availability, from July 10, 2008.

Big Players, Big Games

To reinforce the strength of the platform, Borcher invited a handful of Apple-selected app developers to present their games and software, starting with Electronic Arts.

Patrick Gunn, director of marketing for EA Mobile, showcased Need for Speed Undercover, which will be available next month. Gunn says that EA has "taken full advantage of all of the unique elements... like touch, flick, accelerometer, and motion sensitivity" -- and graphically, the game appears to be roughly on par with a PSP title.

More revealingly, Gunn says, "The partnership that we are building with Apple in delivering these great apps and helping sell more hardware is equally as exciting" as selling games on iPhone to consumers.

He added: "From our perspective of being in the mobile industry for a long time, the UI that Apple has delivered is so easy and so compelling that it makes shopping for apps so compelling, that it has us excited."

Gameloft also showed a 3D driving game, Ferrari GT Evolution, which will also be available in December. PR manager Carmen Pearson gave out some interesting stats -- the publisher, part of Ubisoft, has over 18 titles on the app store currently, and notes that "Apple is actually Gameloft's top customer right now."

Neil Young, who recently founded iPhone-oriented startup ngmoco, commented, "We specifically created our company to focus on the iPhone and iPod Touch. We have 14 games in development right now."

Five ngmoco titles will be released between now and the Holiday season, though the company chose specifically to showcase Rolando, its platform/puzzle hybrid that calls to mind Sony's LocoRoco.

Time was also given to demonstrations from marketing firm AKQA, which is handling retail apps for Target and Gap, social networking tool Loopt, and Handmark, which is launching a version of the Zagat restaurant guide for iPhone. Handmark's Cassidy Lackey also commented that while its GTS World Racing game is available for a variety of smartphones, "our iPhone version generates 98% of our revenue."

In-Depth: Talking Rolando

After the presentation concluded, Gamasutra had a chance to speak to the presenters about their game titles and get some time to try out the applications.

Simon Oliver, founder of Hand Circus, the London-based developer of Rolando, explained that though he had never developed a game before, he has worked in new media and Flash development and had been toying with the idea of making games for some time.

He had also considered the XNA Community Games service as an outlet for his aspirations before settling on the "uncharted territory" of the iPhone.

When Super Monkey Ball and Spore Origins were first revealed, Oliver concluded that "it was very much an indication that [the platform] was viable" for games, and at that point he began to move forward with prototyping Rolando.

According to him, the title drew its initial inspiration from early-'80s British kids show Terrahawks, which features a group of rolling robots, as well as PC and console classic Lemmings. Oliver believes that games which are "heavily evolved" to make use of the iPhone's unique control properties "will fit that platform best."

His initial challenge was getting the Lemmings-esque gameplay to work, combined with the rolling characters he'd envisioned when inspired by Terrahawks.

Though Rolando started with a puzzle-oriented point and click design, like Lemmings, "it evolved into something more platformery. We had to throw away a lot of stuff," while prototyping, Oliver admits, "but it's led to a lot of fun things. It's been very iterative."

Development on the game began in June this year, and became a collaboration with Finnish illustrator Mikko Walamies, whose pop-art design (he's a T-shirt designer by trade) has lent the game its colorful LocoRoco-like look.

While Oliver originally intended to release the game independently, he hooked up with ngmoco after he released his first trailer. He notes that ngmoco's staff "has been a great creative sounding board" thanks to their experience in the industry, and has also facilitated music licensing -- the game features tunes by DJ and musician Mr. Scruff.

The Established Names of Gaming

EA Mobile's Patrick Gunn notes that the company's overall console expertise "certainly helps" in developing games for the iPhone, noting that the company intends to "bring as much advanced gaming to this platform as it can handle."

While noting that dealing with carriers on other mobile platforms is difficult, the ability to directly market to consumers on the iPhone is extremely attractive to EA. Despite the large selection, Gunn says, "We've had no trouble staying in the top 100 apps."

Sanette Chao, director of PR for Gameloft, feels that the iPhone opens up more opportunity for the carrier, noting, as her colleague Carmen Pearson did during their presentation ,that the company has been very aggressive in releasing games for the platform.

Though the company has not done much research into the audience spread yet, "we see it very competitive to DS and PSP", according to Chao. She also notes that while typical DS games clock in at 20 or 30MB (but can go as high as 256MB), iPhone apps top out at 100MB, allowing much more room than Nintendo's platform for the average game.

What makes the system a competitor -- its graphics abilities or its unique controls? "A little bit of both," Chao suggests, noting that she believes currently released games from Gameloft only tap into "10% of the capabilities" of the platform, and explaining that the company's second generation of titles will begin to launch in January.

Casual titles have been "really successful on iPod" for Gameloft, but Chao sees the iPhone as attracting more than just a casual audience -- the company seeks a "good balance" of titles while "targeting also the hardcore gamers."

[This piece originally appeared on big sister game business site Gamasutra - don't forget to visit, check out the jobs, and subscribe to the RSS. Oh, and we crossposted it onto FingerGaming too, because that's our site all about iPhone games!]

[We're finishing up our selected highlights of Gamasutra's Montreal Games Summit coverage with this Mathew Kumar-penned summary of an interesting and important Jon Blow keynote on games and their intent.]

As the closing keynote of the 2008 Montreal Games Summit, independent game developer and thinker Jonathan Blow, previously a Game Developer magazine columnist and an IGF winner for his time-bending title Braid, offered a striking deconstruction of a major video game conceit: that they can offer profound experiences through traditional storytelling forms.

Blow argued that, in fact, the interactivity of gameplay -- and its requirements of "fun" and "challenge" among others -- is in fact directly contradictory to such a goal.

In Blow's introduction, he said that his goal as a developer has always been to try and "figure out how to make games that touch people and make them feel something real."

While the question of how to do that was "too big a question" for him to deal with in a mere hour, he explained that his talk at MIGS was aimed at exploring the things that video game developers and games themselves do to make that quest harder.

"As an industry, we have adopted practices that make things fake, unimportant and careless," he declared, arguing that these were all the antithesis to creating profundity.

Yet games actually have an advantage over other media in attempting to impart importance, in that there are two ways of doing so: one, through expressing it to the player, and the other through the player discovering it via their own activity -- and Blow concluded that games largely fell into one camp or the other.

Metal Gear Solid, for example, expresses its meaning to the player, while in something like Pac-Man, the meaning lies in the activity. According to Blow, games that attempt to impart meaning through story are inherently conflicted -- since gameplay structures that render stories fake or unimportant are so "deeply ingrained."

Though he felt that this was largely a single problem, he split his argument up into three sections in order to explore the different facets of the problem.

Conflict One: Story Meaning vs. Dynamic Meaning

To Blow, "art" games such as The Marriage and Gravitation are interesting because they communicate their themes through the player's behavior within the game design and the cues from the visuals.

The Marriage, created by EA's The Sims Studio head Rod Humble, for example, initially looks completely abstract -- but as the player decodes what the game mechanics are, they are also learning the meaning of those mechanics.

The "more accessible" Gravitation instead offers a limited number of quickly-grasped mechanics that can create a number of interesting situations that are open to interpretation.

"If you haven't played this game, please leave the lecture and play it right now," Blow urged.

Gravitation is a key example of the conflict between meaning and play, Blow said. The more additions and features a designer adds to make the game more "fun" and more "exciting", the more the meaning of the game becomes obscured and easier to misinterpret.

If, in one interpretation of Gravitation as it currently stands the concept of collecting stars to become ice blocks is a representation of ideas turning into concrete projects, for example, what would it mean if you added dots to collect? Would that represent when you clean up your house rather than working?

"The fact is, in the games industry we're not used to thinking about the interpretations, and actually, we make jokes about it," Blow said. "'Pac-Man is about taking drugs and going on a rampage' -- But that's a completely valid interpretation."

"In games, interpretation extends past the visual art -- the dynamic system communicates something to the player, whether that is intentional or not."

Admittedly, though Gravitation uses its dynamic meaning, it does not tell a story, whereas most designers aim so directly to create something fun that they forget the importance of the dynamic meaning -- a problem Blow argued other media "do not have."

"If a director is creating a film where a beloved character dies, he doesn't put happy circus music over the funeral scene just because it's more fun. If you were David Lynch, you might put it in to unsettle the viewer, but that's something else entirely."

"In the games industry, we put happy circus music over every one of our funerals," Blow continued. To flesh this declaration, he drew on several recent examples. He called BioShock's little sisters an example of a "supposed dilemma," one undone by an interest in game balance.

"This supposed moral quandary might have worked well in the marketing campaign, but will that stand up as a profound moment in video games in forty years? If it is, I hope I have nothing to do with games when we reach that point."

Other examples included Grand Theft Auto 4 making a story-critical character functionally useless (requiring large effort from the player with no reward) and Half-Life 2's attempts to make you form a relationship with Alyx while at the same time your intention is to keep progressing through the game.

"Alyx can't be talking to you while you're in the middle of a firefight or solving puzzles, so it's in the quiet moments between, when you're trying to get to the next section, that she plays the role of the 'character who has to unlock the door that will get you to the next arena'." said Blow.

"Of course, they want you to form a relationship with her, so she can't just unlock it, she has to be like, 'Aw man, this door is jammed. Anyway, did you hear that Dr. Kleiner just got a new girlfriend?' and all you can think is 'Shut up and get the door open so I can get to where I want to go.'"

In Blow's mind, these kind of conflicts are always going to exist -- alternatives are hard to conceptualize, such as AAA titles that offer themes, moods and "interesting mental stuff" without story; pointless, by removing all dynamic meaning (in which case "why bother making a game?"); or unfeasible, such as managing dynamic meaning to precisely match story, which would be as hard as "pressing bubbles out of wallpaper."

Conflict Two: Challenge vs. Progression

Even if it were possible to reconcile dynamic meaning with story, Blow suggested that it still couldn't be enough to make true profundity possible.

"For a story to be interesting, it has to occur from scene to scene in a linear and direct fashion," Blow said -- but, he added, the industry "does not know how to make games that don't challenge the player."

Challenge is the easiest way to communicate, however subconsciously, that the player's interaction is meaningful. Yet at the same time, challenge works as a "friction" against the progression of the story -- so no matter what, a story in a challenging game is structurally unsound.

Blow admitted certain studios have figured this out, and now offer a "dramatic presentation of non-difficulty," where the player feels as though they're in danger but aren't, and dynamic difficulty adjustment, where the bar will be continually lowered until they can walk over it.

Yet, no matter how hard they might try, "friction" must always still exist, because for there to be a portrayed value to the difficulty, there must be at least some, or else players will lose their suspension of disbelief in the game's value system.

From this, Blow felt that "faux challenge" was "unlikely to impact someone deeply or change their life," because it was by its very nature fake, which is (at least to Blow) directly contradictory to depth.

Alternatively, though it does little to help story as a form within games, Blow emphasized that challenge was, in fact, "very precious," as unlike other forms, games could offer this challenge in a direct fashion.

"It is our domain and we ought to understand that," he said, "because if we want to hold our place alongside other arts, we need to play to our strengths."

Conflict Three: Interactivity vs. Pre-Baked Delivery

As every comedian knows, timing is everything. A bad comedian can get booed off the stage, while a good one can receive a standing ovation for an identical set of jokes -- simply due to their method of delivery.

"Games sabotage the timing of their delivery," Blow said of game stories. "In a game, you cannot control where the player does, what he just did or what he'll do next; you can't pre-bake that."

"Chekov argued that if you introduce an idea, like a gun, into a story, you have to use it by the end," said Blow. "The idea is the economy of audience attention. If you put a gun on stage because you thought, 'Oh, I want this place to seem 'Old Westy,' then some people are going to sit there thinking, 'what's the deal with that gun?'"

The core concept of "Chekov's Gun" also has its positive aspects -- the potential for foreshadowing and justification -- but in a game, it is difficult, if not impossible, to manage that within the dynamic meaning.

"Some people say that if we ever have good enough AI to manage the stories we'll be fine. I don't believe that, because managing a problem like Chekov's Gun would require human-level AI to create what would be little more than a stage manager, and a stage manager is nothing without the human-written, pre-baked story."

"Dynamic stories are pretend stories, poorly structured, poorly delivered and they will always be an awkward second fiddle to linear medium," concluded Blow.

"If that is our core value proposition, then our core value proposition kind of sucks," he added.

"I may have come across all 'anti-story', and I personally would like to see if we can make games offer something without them, but I still don't know how to scale up Gravitation to something to MGS4 size," Blow said.

He concluded: "Perhaps the problem is that we so deeply rely on reference points like film, which require stories progressing over time, when we could be referring to things like sculpture or painting, which require no timescale and people find just as moving."

(UPDATE: Jonathan Blow noted in the comments to this article that he has made the audio and slides of his MIGS talk available on the Braid website's blog.)

[This piece originally appeared on big sister game business site Gamasutra - don't forget to visit, check out the jobs, and subscribe to the RSS.]

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days, as well as any notable features on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The delights in this edition include an IGF Grand Prize winner arriving on Mac, a new game from cactus, two remakes, a browser game, and a full-length adventure game which has been in development for nearly three years.

Here's the highlights:

Game Pick: 'Xoldiers' (distractionware, freeware)
"A new collaborative project by cactus and Terry Cavanagh (Self Destruct), where players assume control over a squadron of soldiers on a mission to destroy as many enemy installations as they can. Comes with an online high score submission feature and a level editor."

Game Pick: 'Rock Boshers' (Dugan, freeware)
"A ZX Spectrum-style remake of Volition's Red Faction, Rock Boshers is a late Bootleg Demakes entry created using Mark Overmars' Game Maker engine. The story is about a gentleman who was lured to work at a distant red planet in our solar system with promises of untold riches, only to end up being enslaved by the evil empire which offered the jobs in the first place. With the help of other miners caught in the same fate, he sets out to overthrow his captors and free the others from a life of servitude and injustice."

Game Pick: 'Life of D. Duck II' (Audunsoft, freeware)
"A full-length AGS adventure game which has taken nearly three years to develop, featuring a wacky cast of characters to interact with, numerous screens to explore, multiple GUIs, and more than twenty chiptunes for your listening pleasure. The unusual art style and meticulously-animated sprites are the contribution of Bjørnar B., an artist who happens to have an unhealthy obsession with drawing popular Disney characters."

Game Pick: 'Stack'Em' (Knox, browser)
"A remake of Columns originally developed by Arnauld Chevallier for the Intellivision, but then ported to a more accessible JavaScript code base four years after its initial release. The game comes with three difficulty settings with different starting levels, playable online or can be downloaded for offline play, and will work on most (if not all) versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and even Google's new internet browser Chrome."

Game Pick: 'Robo-Evolution' (SKT, browser)
"A short action game created by the developer of the Moai series, where players undertake the task of building a robot by rolling up items and spare parts scattered on the ground. The attributes of your robot are determined by the objects it acquires, with some items adding bulk and changing the appearance of the robot as well."

Game Pick: 'Aquaria' (Bit Blot, commercial indie)
"This award-winning exploration action game is now available on the Mac. Customers who purchase the Mac release will find a new world map system with progress recording, wide screen support, an auto updater, user-created markers, location names, changes to the cooking system, a built-in help feature, additional graphics and easier puzzles."

['Chewing Pixels' is a regular GameSetWatch column written by British games journalist and producer, Simon Parkin. This time - why video game retail might be important for the soul of gaming.]

?Um, hi. Do you think you could tell me anything about this game? I, er, found it on the bottom shelf back there.?

?Gunstar Heroes? Hmm. I?ve not heard of that one. Let me take a look.?

This is Mad Andy. We?re not friends and that?s certainly not a nickname of my invention. Rather, it?s the name Andy?s given himself and, by extension, his shop, an independent, second-hand video game store based in South London.

Mad Andy pulls a dog-eared phone directory from the shelf behind where he?s sitting, and plants it with a dull thud on the counter with that officious sense of purpose some men display when called upon to give advice.

Tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth, he flickbooks through its tatty pages, every now and again calling out the name of a game that catches his attention as it flits past his eyes alphabetically.

?Altered Beast, Another World, Bomberman, Contra, D,??

The book?s a catalogue of every game ever, or so it seems to the thirteen-year-old me. More accurately, it?s a price guide compiled by goodness?knows-who, listing the buy and sell rates for games current and past. Armed with this tome, every independent videogame store knows how much to buy in a second-hand game for and how much to mark it up in order to secure fair but essential profit without undercutting market rates.

As well as prices, the book also boasts reviews, again, written by God-knows-which sorry freelancer. These pithy one-line assessments are accompanied by a score out of five, two pieces of information that gives the salesman everything he needs to issue customers with an authoritative recommendation.

?Elite, Frogger?Ga?Gi?Go. Ah! Here we go: Gunstar Heroes. Hmm. Well what do you know! It?s a good one. Look, right there: ?Fast, frantic, frenetic scrolling shoot ?em up. Five out of five.??

Our sorry freelancer is a fan of alliteration.

?Whoa.? I look down at the back of the box in my hands. ?Treasure? Never heard of them.?

Mad Andy and his shop are long gone but I still think about him and his staff from time to time. All gamers of my generation knew a video game store like that, a dealership they visited in youth with wide eyes and a fistful of pocket money. These were the places where dreams were met, the escapism dealers.

Everyone who has ever bought a video game at a shop knows how long the walk home can be. But that time between when a purchase has been made and before it?s played is never unpleasant.

Rather, it is in these delicious moments that you hold in your hands the perfect video game: one which has been invested in but which is yet to let you down. Unknown games are always the best ones because they are played in our imaginations, free of budgetary restraints, deadlines and the ten thousand other pressures that bear down upon the games of reality.

They are always stronger, funnier, cleverer and better-executed than their realities and so that walk home from the store, when the game is tangible in your hands but still imagined in your mind, is oftentimes the most potent moment in the videogame experience.

And yet it?s an experience whose days are numbered. If not by the next generation of hardware then certainly by the one after, all of our games will be supplied by digital distribution, the walk home from the shop with a new game box an anachronism, the weird necessity of supposedly poorer and simpler age.

This makes sense. While shopping for clothes on the high street will always be preferable to mail order ? after all, clothes are tactile, need to be tried on and assessed in the atom dimension ? video games have nothing to do with physicality. Discs are a means to an end, not an end in themselves unlike, say, an art book with thick pages that you?d want to leave open on a coffee table. Just as .mp3s make CDs obsolete so too will our broadband pipes and copious hard-drives dismiss hard media.

The long walk home will be replaced by a loading bar which fills as you browse the internet or make a cup of tea. And why not? Quaintness will always give way to convenience in technology?s inevitable advance and few things are so convenient as digital distribution.

The game manufacturers, ostensibly, win too. As their games exist only as digital copies, tied to gamertags and PSN accounts, so the second hand market console software will choke. No need to tie hardware to software codes, or to create long-view achievements to convince players to hang on to their games. There will be no other option.

But beyond the romance of reminiscing about the dingy independent game stores of our youth, there?s the very real disadvantage of not being able to trade old games in for new. How many game sales are made in part-exchange, trading spent old experiences for new ones, especially amongst younger gamers?

And what of those games that will be lost to time when they?re removed from the publisher?s servers? Bandwidth costs ensure that not every game released into the ether will be served indefinitely. When a game fails to make enough money month on moth to cover the cost of its hosting, what sensible business is going to hold onto it?

Will we need a videogame arts council, funded to make available those games that aren?t necessarily popular but are important and culturally improving, like those who work tirelessly to preserve the opera?

Video game retail is endangered, its removal from the industry supposedly a good thing, bringing publisher and consumer closer to one another and, perhaps, by removing the middlemen, helping to reduce the cost of games.

But the implications of the shift are far-reaching, will cost jobs, will bury games that have outlived their virtual shelf life and will make it much harder for 13-year-old newcomers to find buried Treasure, a sad thing indeed.

A Friday evening to bring you some GameSetLinks highlights, and I've decided to switch to eight links per post with a little more detail for each - as opposed to ten with minimal description. Hey, it's subtle, but if it makes GSW HQ happy...

Anyhow, quite apart from the actual release of the (pictured) Night Of The Cephalopods, scattered in here are Esquire's full Jason Rohrer piece, an odd Japanese print ad for God Of War, James Mielke's finally fantastic marriage proposal, and more besides.

The Yukon river:

STANFORD Magazine: November/December 2008 > Farm Report > News > Virtual Worlds
On Henry Lowood and friends' virtual worlds and classic game preservation efforts, with an interesting quote from a Library Of Congress rep on the importance of video games: "Besides showing us how society has entertained itself, they also provide a graphic picture of how technology itself has evolved over the decades.?

press the ACTION BUTTON!!: Tim Rogers reviews Gears Of War 2
Filled with enjoyably inflammatory piquant rhetoric, as per normal: 'What we?re saying is, if you?re going to make a game that blatantly rips off another game, for god?s sake, rip off Gears of War 2, not BioShock.'

1UP EIC Proposes With The Help of Final Fantasy Creators
James Mielke "...called upon two of the creators of the Final Fantasy series -- composer Nobuo Uematsu and artist/designer Yoshitaka Amano -- to help him out. Amano designed the ring for him and Uematsu composed a melody that played as he proposed." I really like the ring design.

Future of Video Game Design - Jason Rohrer's Programming Online Games - Esquire
The companion article to Rohrer's new game on Esquire. It's a really interesting outsider view of the state of independent games, and some of the mixed emotions people have relating to them. The fact it can be written shows we've arrived.

xkcd - A Webcomic - Theft of the Magi
Uhoh, Left 4 Dead vs. Xbox 360 tragedy in the making from the perpetually wry webcomic.

Dusk and Dawn » Salaryman of War
An ad for God Of War PSP from earlier this year in Famitsu: 'I?m not sure what about this ad I like better: the flame-rimmed salaryman going batshit with the Blades of Chaos or the ad copy proclaiming this game a remedy for today?s stressful Japanese workplace.'

Night of the Cephalopods - official site
Oo, Artsy Game Incubator plus Lovecraftian goodness equals an awesome-looking PC indie freeware game, downloadable now, good folks.

An American Game Journalist in Paris | GameCulture
John Gaudiosi: 'This was my fourth videogame trip to Paris this year.' Seriously? Not really sure what this has to do with the ECA or GameCulture.com, which is normally very smart, but all of Gaudiosi's posts for the site just seem to be playing up his oldschool publisher-funded worldwide jaunts.

Now, here's something interesting. In the raft of press releases we get sent here at GSW, we came across Heileen, created by the folks at Tycoon Games.

It's, intriguingly enough, a PC indie title that's a "historical-fiction visual novel game with multiple endings", and the release for it has Tycoon's Riva Celso insisting: ?Visual novels are the next wave of interactive fiction games. They're like a hybrid of books and games - they're deeper than the average video game since they're narrative-based, and they're interactive; what the player does affects the story and ultimately the outcome.?

The game, for which there's PC, Mac and Linux demos available, and 4500 screens of dialog, 8 chapters and 3 different endings, "...tells the tale of a young girl from the 17th Century, Heileen. Her merchant uncle leaving her no choice, she undertakes a voyage to the New World. She'll meet old friends, like her childhood friend Marie, and get the chance to befriend other people, like John, the young, dashing sailor, Marco, the ship's cook, and Lora, the shameless mistress accompanying her uncle on the voyage."

Of course, those who know the visual novel genre will realize that they are pretty popular - in a niche way - in Japan, but have never really made a big impact in the West, primarily because they're not interactive enough for a lot of people who consider themselves gamers, one suspects.

In any case, I caught up with Italian native Celso, who has made a surprisingly eclectic set of homebrew-ish titles, including Universal Boxing Manager and the RPG/card-ish Magic Stones, and asked him a few questions exclusively for GameSetWatch via email about his new game and his thoughts on the genre:

What made you decide to try the visual novel, given it's popular in Japan but not so much in the West?

First of all because I like them. I remember playing those kinds of games already 10 years ago, like True Love, Paradise Heights 1 & 2, and so on. Second because I'm an indie, that means I can try making any game I want, and not always follow the "market rules".

Is romance as major part of your visual novels as it is in Japan, or even explicit content?

Romance is present, and sensuality as well (the character of Lora for example) but there's more than that. It's basically a story and there are choices like in real life, which influences your relationships with the other crew member. There's not only love in the game, but also friendship, hate, envy and more.

Who do you think the target market is for this kind of product?

I believe everyone who enjoy reading books or comics, and sometimes thinks "If I was the protagonist, I would have made this other choice".

This is quite different from your previous products, which include sports simulators - why the shift?

I love making simulation games, but they require lots of effort, research, and unfortunately, big name licenses to sell well. Playing a soccer game where all player names are false isn't as exciting as playing an "officially licensed game". Beside that, I am always experimenting with various games genres. I did a card/RPG (Magic Stones) and a space wargame (Supernova 2) too. However, I'm really enjoying making visual novels so probably will make more in the near future.

Do you think the relative non-interactivity of the genre presents a problem in the West?

It could be, I don't want to lie. Some players really don't get what's so exciting in those kind of games and I can understand them.

In Heileen I tried to break a bit from the classic visual novel scheme introducing a "Quest System" inside the game and a final rating similar to those you find in Sid Meier's games, to add more replay value.

What are your favorite examples of the visual novel genre?

Well I've mentioned some earlier, if I have to talk about more recent titles, I liked Hanako's game Fatal Hearts, but honestly apart for that there isn't anything else that caught my attention.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section, includ