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I happen to like many games. I also happen to dislike many games. There are too many out there which are not well designed despite their impressive sales figures. I enjoy games in many forms, including board, computer, and athletic. Board GamesSome of my favorite board games at the moment are: Go, Kremlin, INWO Deluxe, Kings and Things, Titan, Civilization, 1830, and Chess. I'll add Battletech to the list as well, as we've been playing this one lately, after a very long sabbatical. I've developed a few board games over the years, and hope to get the rules up soon. Some of these rules I still need to track down. My earliest was a sports-related game that pitted basketball teams against one-another, loosely based on a game from the Strat-o-Matic series. After college I threw around a few ideas and arrived at a board game called Isotope. It didn't play all that well, so I tried again, focusing on games that could be played with decks of regular playing cards and a few poker chips. With this in mind, in 1998, I came up with Space Ace Merchants, a trading game, and Domains, a game of placing the right card i the right location on the table (sort of real estate in the Dark Ages). I followed this up in 1999 with Indiana Bones, a game of archaeology in turn-of-the-century United Kingdom, where each of four players represents a department in a university (Oxfnord, Cthubridge, Elderburgh, and (I forget the other)). In 2001, after moving out to Austin, the game development bug was still strong, and I developmed probably my favorite game to date, Merchants of Venice, now renamed Merchants of the Italian Renaissance. This was followed in 2004 by 30 Minutes War, a playful rendition of the Thirty Years War intended for four players who compete on teams of two as well as with each other on their Protestant and Catholic teams. This year, I've had three games on my mind, Main Street, a tongue-in-cheek game of big-box retailing and pushing out the little guy. Inspired by the railroading games out there, I came up with one of my own, heavy on investing in corporations and cooperation (with the obvious competition inherent in pro-capitalism games, or perhaps games in general). With my friend Nate, I've been working on a little game called Besieged! which is, yes, probably exactly what you'd expect. There are a few that I'm missing, but they'll turn up as I find the old rules. I need to save this work for when I finish my qualifying paper, so expect to only see rules to old games here in the near future. Computer GamesComputer games I've take to include: Civilization III (now IV!), Cosmic Encounter Online, War! Age of Imperialism, Neverwinter Nights, Colossus (a computerized Titan), Heroes of Might and Magic V, and Oblivion. I have developed a computerized version of Merchants of the Italian Renaissance and entered the Interactive Fiction Competition in 2001 and 2002. My entries Timeout (2001) and The Case of Samuel Gregor (2002) placed near the middle of the pack. One thing I learned from these experiences is that any worthwhile implemention of an idea takes a lot of time out of the rest of my life, so I have to pick my computer game projects wisely. I seek GUI programmers and game mechanics wizards to work as a game development collective, where we assist one another bring our ideas to fruition. If you want to help out, lemme know. AthleticsAthletic games include basketball, various swimming diversions, juggling, and bocce. I want a bicycle so badly! |
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Larger than Life |
