Brink

I love games. If there was one thing which has had a sustaining influence in my life it would be games. I was a little late to them, only really getting into them after I saved up and brought a Gameboy back in the 90′s, but since then I’ve spent countless years shooting, driving, flying and jumping my life away. I have found however that most games have pretty basic html sites with limited content or over designed flash beasts which take forever to load and still have limited content (I’m looking at you Assassins Creed 2).

There are exceptions to this rule however. A recent site which I was quite impressed with was Brink. It’s clean, well designed and matches the aesthetics of the game (which is essentially decayed and war torn beauty).

When I go to a game site I want to find out about the game. I want to see the concept art. The screenshots. The videos. The gameplay. I want to hear what the developers are thinking about when making the game. I want to leave the site having found out more about the game then when I visited. From a marketing point of view the site should inform and educate and above all else, interest the potential gamer into putting the game onto their shopping list.

Brink may not be the most flashy games site out there but it’s well designed, easily navigated and above all has loads of useful and informative content.

Migration complete

I haven’t updated my links for a while, apologies, but I’ve migrated over to WordPress from Blogger and redesigned this blog to match my new portfolio so I’ll be making more of an effort to keep my links updated. My old blog contained a lot of posts dating back to 2002 but on reflection most of the posts had broken links and somewhat inconsistent content so I’ve deleted most of them.

I’ve still kept a few posts in however for the sake of nostalgia. One post of interest is from December 2002 when I went to the Game on Exhibition in Edinburgh and saw a gaming device which let you interact with games using your body. At the time I wrote that:

“The future section (of the exhibition) was also quite limited with only one interesting display that let you move a ball around a television screen by “pushing” the thing in front of some sensors. The system also let you change the properties of the ball to fire and water that had some interesting effects on screen. The accompanying video showed some other effects such as freezing the screen and carving your name in the ice by pushing and pulling the ball. It was slightly strange seeing grown men wave their hands around in mid air but it was quite enjoyable and if it’s developed into a gaming device of some kind (which is the aim) then we could have some truly interactive games (after all if you can get grown men and women to jump around to dance steps on a mat the size of twister then anything’s possible).”

That was about four years before the Wii.

Game On

About two weeks ago my course went to the Game On Exhibition up in Edinburgh that took a very interesting and hands on look at gaming culture through the ages.

The exhibition was being held at Royal Museum over on Chambers Street and contained such classic machines as the Atari VCS and 2600 along with the Commodore 64 and a host of old Nintendo and Sega consoles. Being able to play Street Fighter Turbo and Virtual Fighter was hugely enjoyable and seeing such classic games as Flashback and Elite was a great nostalgic trip to an age that I partially missed (my gaming experience was limited to an old Atari console that had both Tennis and Table Tennis, essentially red and blue versions of the same game, until I saved up and brought a Game Boy in the early nighties). Having my mates point out such classics as Jet Set Willy and Donkey Kong left me with an empty feeling having truly missed out on the golden age of gaming. Still I did remember Pong and Space Invaders along with Monkey Island and Riven, the latter being as brain-numbingly confusing as ever.

I was a little disappointed with the lack of personal computer games though, indeed the exhibition seemed to focus quite heavily on consoles with the new Game Cube and Xbox having a few titles playing inbetween the old games (the Xbox in particular was getting quite a good showing with a four way Halo game in the corner of the show). Come to think of it quite a lot of the show was mixed up, with old and new games all over the place. Having the exhibition in chronological order might have been a better idea to see how everything evolved over the years. Once you got past the old Spectrums and Master Systems there were areas dedicated to the new Tomb Raider game and Japans love of Hentai and Mecha. Still having games such as the 1982′s Pole Position next to 2002′s Formula 1 was a good way to show you the difference in gameplay and graphics over the years (for the record Pole Position was far more enjoyable, even if it’s bizarre angled pop up left you feeling a bit queezy).

The future section was also quite limited with only one interesting display that let you move a ball around a television screen by “pushing” the thing in front of some sensors. The system also let you change the properties of the ball to fire and water that had some interesting effects on the screen. The accompanying video showed some other effects such as freezing the screen and carving your name in the ice by pushing and pulling the ball. It was slightly strange seeing grown men wave their hands around in mid air but it was quite enjoyable and if it’s developed into a gaming device of some kind (which is the aim) then we could have some truly interactive games (after all if you can get grown men and women to jump around to dance steps on a mat the size of twister then anything’s possible).

Still it was a good exhibition and well worth a trip if you’re looking to rekindle your youth or find out what you missed, along with getting a taste of foreign gaming cultures. Seeing my original Game Boy in a glass case with a paper tag depicting the year of 1989 was also quite heart warming.

The Game On Exhibition is currently at Edinburgh until the 2nd of February 2003.