A course change for this blog.

After some due consideration and soul searching I have decided that game reviews will not be a major part of this blog's business. I have decided this for the following reasons:

1.) They not a major part of this blog now, which means I have no inclination or patience for writing them. I have to go with what my inclinations tell me.

2.) I cannot afford to keep up with the technology treadmill required to keep up with the hardware upgrades each new game requires.

3.) Game reviews and criticism right now are a very ephemeral form of writing because game technology has never plateaued.

Games are not interoperable across technological platforms the way films are. Most people can still appreciate and enjoy the film criticism of 1942's Casablanca even with Blu-ray DVD technology because that new technology does not preclude being able to enjoy the film. And it looks like that will continue on even with the technology to come. The general interest in film criticism seems to drop off with the silent movies.

By comparison, I recently tried to play the original StarCraft and found the old graphics and RTS formulas it used were too creakingly old for me after I'd been playing the thoroughly graphic and immersive Company of Heroes and the even more thoroughly graphic and immersive Supreme Commander.

Games are not yet at the point where their content is interoperable across technological platforms, and therefore of more long term benefit as an art form. With games, technological upgrades like the move from silents to talkies seem to occur every 18 months. There are a lot of old games that might just as well had never existed as far as popular culture goes.

4.) And, therefore, the only value a review has is its timeliness. By the time I've thoroughly played a game, its already been out for a month or two, and in the meantime, several other new games have come out.

5.) There are already enough websites that provide reviews of current games. There are so many now that there are now sites like gamerankings and metacritic that summarize the reviews of all these websites. There is no reason for me to "me too" that effort.

But that does not mean I will not write about games anymore.

What I'm going to do is switch to writing about games I already know about in order to highlight what I believe are the principles of good and bad game design. I am still bothered by the number of new games coming out every month that are what I call "if-only games." Games that almost-but-not-quite work that require a third party trainer or mod or even a cheat code in order to be at all enjoyable.

My goal in writing such posts will be to eventually come out with a book of principals of good and bad game design that will be from the perspective of a game user and not a game hacker. A book about how to make games that will be truly enjoyable to game players. I think such a book would go a long ways towards preventing the constant reinvention of some very bad wheels.

A while back ago there was a book out by Vincent Flanders and Michael Willis called Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design I'd like to write something like that for computer games, only it will include games that don't suck as well as those that do.

Here's to that, and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.