2010 dies tonight. Let’s celebrate by reviewing the Electron Dance year, because there’s nothing like churning out the same old content in a sexy new cellophane wrapping.
The Year In Links
- What’s the point of a game remake?
- The joy in ignoring the challenges and achievements baked into FUEL and embracing its freedom.
- The Schutzmannschaft were the local collaborators employed by Nazi occupiers to fight the resistance. This was a post about turning on your own.
- When you play games too much, you have the strangest interpretations of reality.
- A six-part Eurogamer Expo exposé. A write-up on a gaming expo that isn’t about the hottest new games, about how important I am because I get to party with developers or how awesome it is to be here because I am so great and you’re at home sticking ice cubes down your jeans out of sheer boredom. I cover: feelings of alienation; inept gaming skills under expo pressure; how I let Kieron Gillen walk all over me; a presentation I attended about a console game I would never play. The Expo Man series also set the record for most posts in a week ever: I posted something every day for eight days straight. Never. Fucking. Again.
- A write-up of the IGDA Writing Panel on Environmental Narrative at South Bank University. Interesting if you’re into the nuts and bolts of game writing.
- For someone who doesn’t have time to play games, I covered quite a few. I’d have to single out the Beat Hazard article as containing the funniest YouTube video of all time. Well, all time on this site. But I really like what Gregg B and I got up to with Revenge of the Titans and Immortal Defense.
- And the grooviest game trailer I’ve pasted in, despite the Deus Ex: Human Revulsion love-in, is the one for 4fourths.
- And I can’t go without bringing up Anti Games, the first signs of real life on Electron Dance. It meanders, but it’s heart is in the right place, under the ribs. Left side.
For those who want to see Electron Dance in its early what-the-hell-am-i-doing days, the first post ever was back in April, a review of VVVVVV, which was nebulous longhand for it’s cool, you fool. I fumbled around for the right style for some time, most evident in The End of Hardcore. I eventually dropped the third person thing because it wasn’t my voice. A bit like my time playing The Aspiration… but that story is for next year.
Rokk Papa Cthulhu Shotg’n
No annual review can be complete without the big hitters that Rokk Papa Cthulhu Shotg’n deigned to link to.
Marvel Brothel tops the traffic league. 7000 hits to date and rising every day. The other Nicolau Chaud companion articles were linked from RPS too – the piece on disturbogame with great story Beautiful Escape and the interview with Nicolau himself.
Although the very first RPS link was for The Second Game where I got my violin out and griped about not having time to play games. This was the second most popular article of the year.
More recently, The Abstraction was featured on the RPS Sunday Papers and Critical Distance. Originally, I just wanted to show off a video that used the game metaphor to make the history of nuclear explosions more chilling. Somehow I spent five hours straight writing a post about the gamification of reality. To be honest, as an argument, it’s not as strong as I’d like it to be – it leaps far too quickly from lots of war examples into “Facebook sucks”.
And let us not forget Punchbag Artists, a piece that I wrote for Resolution Magazine about what developers put up with from the internet; this one got a fair bit of tweeting. This was the point at which Electron Dance crossed over from hobby blog to “second job”, although the site barely saw any spillover traffic from Resolution. (There are two companion pieces to Punchbag – the full e-mail interview with Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow and a one-way e-mail conversation with Tim Schafer).
New Year’s Human Resolutions
Until now, the Cylon plan has been to post something long on Tuesday and something short on Friday. This has proved difficult to maintain because I made the Cylon plan up as I went along like Moore & Eick of time constraints rather than lack of ideas. I’ve also had no time to work on complicated projects like Punchbag Artists or write any more unpublishable fiction. So next year I’m only going to promise one post per week, with the occasional bonus post if the mood takes me.
As for what will actually hit the disco floor in 2011, well I’ll finally write up that emotionally exhausting Neptune’s Pride game. And I’m pretty confident of putting together an actual Armageddon Empires tutorial.
I’m Still Bored
If you’re looking for some actual decent game writing, try Brendan Caldwell’s positive piece on gaming and children at Resolution Magazine.
And if you just want some new groovy game tune, try Paul Kopetko’s theme for Chaos Invaders, it’s just one measly Australian dollar from Bandcamp.
And Just One More Thing
Much thanks to everyone who has stuck around this year, particularly those that poked their head above the parapet and posted a comment.
A splendid and magical New Year to all of you.
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This reminds me of a long, tangential, personal story that happened once.
Here’s the transition.
Happy New Year, Joel.
Happy new year to you too! Congrats on the success achieved by keeping it true.
Always interested in Neptune’s Pride stories. That game is so very interesting. I would never play it for fear of losing my life to it seeing as I am borderline OCD but I love reading about it.
Happy Nooz Year guys. Long live long, tangential personal stories. I could expand on a few tongential personal stories, but I’m a kiss and don’t tell man.
@BC: Yes, keep away from Neptune’s Pride. You won’t find any fans here. Sid will tell you the same. Danger Will Robinson. Danger!