> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 06:50:24PM GMT, Steven Black [blacks@indiana.edu] said the following:
> >
> > Yeah, that is true. I'm a little old-school, though. I'm a big fan of
> > ASCII-based games. I like some graphical games, but a lot of the times
> > they just annoy me.
> >
>
> Playing ascii art games in a terminal, while maybe interesting and fun
> (try skijump), is the ultimate stereotype of how things are in Linux.
> One of the reasons I started holding Linux gaming days back in 2005 was
> to try to break the stereotypes and show just how much was available and
> possible. I remember someone making a wise crack about terminal games
> just like that back in 2005 when I was announcing the first Linux gaming
> fest.
I started playing ASCII-based games back when they would actually look
better than their 4 color 320x200 graphics counter-parts.
What annoys me is that a lot of games are 3D just because they think
that automatically makes them better. The game play will either suck,
or be almost identical to half-a-dozen other games, just with different
graphics and different music.
First-person shooters are the culmination of this. They're all basically
the same. The only thing different between the vast majority is the
graphics, music, and perhaps the map. (Oh, wait, sometimes 'you' are
actually a vehicle, and not a person.) They teach their audience that
what they change is enough... but to me, it is not.
I do enjoy some turn-based and real-time strategy games. They, too, are
almost the same with different graphics and music. I acknowledge that.
At some point, I would love to do an ASCII-based turn-based strategy
game.
However, I believe that abstraction is a valued part of gaming. I value
putting things back in to the imagination and simplifying the playing
pieces. I also acknowledge that I am a minority.
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
