Since Duels of the Planeswalkers launched a week ago, I’ve donated a few bucks and more than a few hours to Wizards of the Coast and Microsoft. Good friends and I joined in to play this latest digital incarnation of Magic: the Gathering. It’s not often that I take the chance to play CCGs anymore, …
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Trial Balloon for Microsoft? Nope!
This has trial balloon written all over it. Advertisers and creative designers will soon have more artistic freedom to turn campaigns on Xbox Live into interactive and interconnected experiences reaching far beyond technology for television, Sean Alexander, director at Microsoft’s Advertising Business Group, said Monday. Personally, I don’t much care. Navigating the XBox Live experience …
Choice and Morality, Part Three
So how can we fix or, with more modest ambition, improve moral choices in games? My goal would be to encourage players to treat moral decisions as any other game decision, instead of opportunity to slide a progress bar. Choice gets more interesting when different choices have things to recommend them. There’s value in the player weighing long-term vs short-term …
Choice and Morality, Part Two
A bit of history. In imitating the pen and paper game, Dungeons & Dragons-like video games have long exposed an alignment field. This was a text field without game consequence. Making choices that could affect the game or character’s moral status is a more recent phenomena. Knights of the Old Republic (2003) pops into mind …