That’s right. I’m sorry, but I’m working on something else. Megascore.biz is on collision route with another project of mine, this time much bigger and in Portuguese: http://nocontinues.net/

It’s not up yet, but as soon at it goes online (or even a little while before it goes), megascore.biz is going down. We were never a big site, I never had time to do many things I had in mind, we never got more writers. I gained experience, I gained knowledge, readers (thank you all, a lot)… I gained a site and I’m going to give it up for another one. I wrote somethings, I discussed about them, that’s all fine and good. Once again, thank you all for reading and coming here.

Sincerely,
Tiago Sá

Just checking to let you know this. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post as of late, I’ve been very busy with other things. Anyway, here it goes, from Gamasutra:

On December 14, 2007, something unusual happened in Paris - odd, even. It was crucial for the French video game industry, and maybe for the perception of video games as a whole. Christine Albanel, the new French secretary of culture and communication (…) paid an official visit to one of Ubisoft’s studios in Montreuil, a couple of miles at the east of Paris gates.

“Why pay Ubisoft such a visit?” we candidly asked Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft (pictured with Albanel below). “Well, the tax credits for video game productions have just been voted in yesterday by the European Commission. We wanted to talk a little bit about it, and Ms. Albanel wanted to show that she cares about video games, and that she intends to participate and help this industry to grow”.

There’s a lot more to read, so pay Gamasutra a visit. In my eyes, this is not simply a matter of if games are art or not, this is more about how they are seen by society when compared with other media. A small step, actually, but we’ll hope good comes to better.

Thanks Chris.

The deviant artist jollyjack has been publishing some pretty nifty comics as of late. I haven’t spoken to him, but I’m pretty sure there’re still some more to come. Completely game related with a tongue-in-cheek mood, there are already nine of those pieces.

Here’s the complete list: Assassin’s Creed, Portal, Dead Rising, DoA Xtreme 2, Skies of Arcadia, Silent Hill 2, Halo and Half Life and GTA San Andreas.

Penny Arcade posted some interesting thoughts on an interesting (to say the least) issue: Jeff Gerstmann, a former Gamespot reviewer, posted a not so cheering review of the game “Kane & Lynch: Dead Men“; Gerstmann was fired. Is there a connection? Here’s an excerpt of PA’s post:

In general terms, Gamespot can be relied upon to give high-profile games scores which are slightly lower than their counterparts elsewhere. It’s almost as though there is an algorithm in place there to correct the heady rush associated with cracking open an anticipated new title. Gerstmann’s 8.8 review of Twilight Princess cemented his reputation as a criminal renegade with no law but his own, even though he gave the game an 8.9 - a nine, essentially - out of ten.

I will tell you the Gerstmann Story as we heard it. Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his “tone” before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann’s savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site.

You can read the whole piece here. Was it pure coincidence?

That is the question. And I’m trying to answer it. It seems hard - to many people, at least.

Ok, here we go. I think we all know the complexity of the issue, those many debates all over the web about what is role-playing, or what makes a role-playing game (RPG for short). Most of us know how boring it can be to watch or read a debate on the subject, and some of us, including me, have already engaged in arguments about it. It may become tiresome, frustrating even, when so many different people have so many different opinions about what a RPG is. This is, in part, due to the multiple styles of RPGs available. In some cases, like Zelda’s, it’s not even accurate to talk about role-playing. In fact, I believe there are many RPGs out there with little to no role-play at all, which forces me to say they aren’t actual role-playing games. So, what is, anyway, a role-playing game?

As of late, I’ve been reading quite a few articles and opinions about this whole matter: storytelling in games. People go on about how games should handle the story they tell, how they are different from other media, they talk about the (relatively) untapped potential gaming holds when it comes to storytelling methods, and they generally say things that seem nice in theory, and we would expect to see actually applied, but when we look at most current games, we don’t see those things. In a way, what they say is true. Games are interactive in their very nature, so using passive storytelling methods in an otherwise throughoutly interactive media doesn’t really make sense. Game developers shouldn’t look at games as movie directors do at movies. They shouldn’t look for a way to tell a story in itself, because that’s not the way of games. And most opinion makers I’ve read think this way: game developers should learn to share the authorship of their story, let the player decide how it goes. That is the true potential of games when compared with other storytelling media. They don’t simply tell you a closed story, they (can) let you build your own in a given (more or less closed) setting. Then why is it that most games don’t reflect these ideas?

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We apologize for the trouble and thank you for your understanding, once again.

Genre: Role-play Developer: BioWare Corporation Publisher: Interplay Productions, Inc. Platform(s): Windows Rating(s): T (ESRB) Release Date: November 30, 1998 Official Site | Help and Support

Often acknowledged as one of the best Role-Playing Games ever (even if arguably worse than its sequel), Baldur’s Gate did break some boundaries, but lacks some things other RPG’s have, released both earlier and later. However, it meant the practical start of BioWare as we know it today, and most of their RPG’s have been working upon that which Baldur’s Gate set (or not). For that reason, most of the traits and features we usually find in BioWare’s titles are also present in this game, for the good and for the bad. Let’s look at it in detail…

Today, following the tragic death of Colin McRae this weekend, Codemasters, developer and publisher of the rally game series bearing McRae’s name, officially stated that the famous rally driver will never be forgotten:

Everyone at Codemasters, especially those who worked directly with Colin McRae, is deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events of this weekend.

The loss of Colin McRae is deeply distressing. That it involved his son and another so young makes it even more tragic. Our thoughts are with his family and those closest to him and we share in their pain.

For over ten years, Colin was part of the Codemasters family and it was a privilege to have a man recognised as a true legend on the team. He always took a keen interest in the game experience, wanting to make sure it was without equal in its portrayal of the sport.

His contribution was inspirational and brought his technical expertise and passion for rally driving to each and every McRae game. Through the popularity of those games, he brought a whole new audience to the sport itself.

Codemasters’ relationship with Colin began through Jim, David and Richard Darling and their condolences, along with ours, are passed to Colin’s family. We are heavy of heart at his passing but we are also brimming with pride at knowing him and to have played a small role in his life.

He will never be forgotten by all at Codemasters.

May he rest in peace, as well as the other victims.

Link: Colin McRae, 1968 - 2007

I would like to make it clear, to all gamers and game developers that read this, that the death of turn based games (an interesting read in retrospective) has little to do with the development of technology. It may be somewhat related, but there is no direct correlation between the usage of turn based game mechanics and technological limitations. I know mostly everyone don’t think this way, but that doesn’t mean they are right, and I know they aren’t, at least in the case that brought me here. I’m sorry if it feels wearisome to read so many things about the same subject, but that’s just how things are. No, it’s not about Manhunt 2, it’s about Fallout, more specifically, how Fallout 3 is being handled. I talked about this before, but I would like to make one specific subject clearer. Pete Hines, Bethesda vice president of public relations and marketing, stated the following, on a video interview for Game Informer:

Some saw the decision to move from isometric, turn-based gameplay to a more action-oriented, third-person game as an inevitable step. Technology has changed since Fallout debuted in 1997, so it stands to reason that a newer incarnation should take advantage of those advancements. (…)

Brilliant, not only does this screams “every game should be real time first/third person game” (because Fallout 3 uses first/third person perspective), but it also shows an utter lack of understanding and discernment (not to mention knowledge). Why? Because, as I said before, the reason Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and the now canceled Interplay’s Fallout 3 (2003) had turn based combat was not the lack of technology, it was the design decision made for those games. It seems very odd to me that someone thinks Interplay hadn’t the possibility to create a first person real time game, even more when Akalabeth (1980), one of the first cRPG’s in existence (if you can call it that), had real time first person combat. It’s pretty strange to me that people think real time is newer, even more when the first game ever, “Tenis for Two”, was actually real time. I’m not saying turn based is newer, though. I’m just making it clear that the argument used by Pete (and many others) is flawed. They want to make an action-oriented game as a sequel to a strategy-oriented one, that’s ok, but don’t come and say it’s the logical step to take, because I’m not buying that.

As a final note, beware of all those straw man arguments out there…