Ok, so he did design the game, but this is just insane. This is a video of Terry Cavanagh completing Super Hexagon on Hyper Hexagonest mode (the highest difficulty) . The game is difficult enough on its easiest mode but this may as well require a bionic eye and a robotic hand. And people say games aren’t as tough as they used to be, ‘back in the day’. Bollocks. To be honest, Super Hexagon isn’t normally my kind of thing, but there’s something about the immense challenge whilst simultaneously burning my own retinas that makes it so rewarding. When using the high score table, if I find that I’m 75,436 out of 150,487 players, my immediate reaction is YES, I’m in the top 50%… ‘Getting good’ at Super Hexagon...
Social interaction is the third article in a series on my personal thoughts on why we play games. You can find the kick-off article and links to other completed articles in the series here. Social interaction in games is sometimes thought of as being almost non-existent. It’s easy to subscribe to the stereotypical view of gamers as being lost souls, dwelling in their parents’ basement, staring at a screen for hours on end and whose only company consists of virtual characters in a virtual world. Games however are, and can involve, a lot of social interaction. Social interaction is an important, and often intrinsic (depending on the game in question) element of many games. MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, the recently released Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2 bring with...
Challenge and achievement is the second article in a series on my personal thoughts on why we play games. You can find the kick-off article and links to other completed articles in the series here. I pull myself from the vent and drop in to the cubicle below. Sprinting out of the door I lunge down the stairs and skid around a corner. Fortunately I know the layout of this place and the guards’ movements well, and if all goes to plan I can make it through before time runs out. I burst through the door in front of me and the startled guard on the other side starts to raise his rifle. Before he has a chance though, I slam three bullets at point blank range from my silenced pistol...
This article on competition is the first in a series on my personal thoughts on why we play games. You can find the kick-off article and links to other completed articles in the series here. Competition is one of the most ubiquitous aspects of gaming psychology that permeates not only video games but games in general. It also is a part of those more fundamental human activities that we call ‘games’. Ever since we had to club a mammoth to death with nothing but pebbles we’ve been ‘competing’ for own survival since time immemorial.
This is the kick-off article in the first of a series based on my personal thoughts on why we play games. It is inspired partly by the likes of the ‘Bartle test’, a psychoanalytical tool that is used to determine a gamer ‘type’ from a pre-defined list. The test essentially gives us a snapshot in to our motivations for playing games. While Bartle’s work is still relevant I’d like to see if I can offer my own thoughts on this subject, especially due to the changing nature of games and the broader diversity of genres that are available to us today. Below is the list of categories and themes I’ll be covering. I’ll also provide links from each category listed here to the appropriate article once it is completed. Competition...
Despite being constantly told that the games industry makes more money than a Saudi prince and a small Central American country, games still remain a relatively niche interest viewed by many with scepticism and sometimes even contempt. This seems largely due to the perception and image of games offered to the public which can sometimes be false and misleading. However, the lack of knowledge and awareness that pervades the non-gaming public view is not necessarily the sole fault of media sensationalism or public ignorance and prejudice. Stereotypes and clichés are after all – at least in part – based on fact, whether current or historical. Developers, publishers, marketing execs and retailers also contribute to this particular image of gaming. Every time I walk in to a games shop (rare these...
All of the the comments I moderate on my website have been nothing but spam. Not even subtle spam either, spam from people who are so unsubtle about getting hits to their own sites that I’d be more impressed watching a man rob a bank with a stripy vest carrying a huge bag labelled SWAG. Here are some choice quotes: ‘whoah this blog is magnificent i love reading your articles related with gestational diabetes. Keep up the good job!’ Nope, don’t remember writing anything about that.
I don’t really fiddle that much with graphic design but due to my recent indulgence in Starcraft 2, I had the urge today to create a Starcraft 2 Terran wallpaper for my desktop background. My Saturday afternoon has therefore been spent on this and not on the Skyrim quest mod I’m supposed to be creating… So here it is, the lovely Terran logo in glorious high resolution with links below for 16:10, 16:9 and 4:3 for all you oldies. 16:10 2560 x 1600 1920 x 1200 1680 x 1050 1280 x 800 16:9 1920 x 1080 1600 x 900 1366 x 768 1280 x 720 4:3 1600 x 1200 1280 x 960 1024 x 768 800 x 600
British history is marred, in part, with the stain of imperialistic dominance, racism and the desire to kick the shit out of anyone who stopped us from nicking their country. In the 19th century this included India – who’d already been under British rule for quite some time – and while some may argue that we brought technology and government stability to that country, we still did some pretty awful things. Gandhi freed India through a remarkable campaign of non-violence and non-cooperation. This is pretty incredible since prior to this, the only viable method to achieve such aims was to attempt to remove one of your oppressor’s vital organs while donning a metal hat.
Maybe your idea of game art is based on pixelated plumbers dodging barrels thrown by an angry gorilla, or that the environments gamers inhabit consist solely of dull corridors and shallow worlds. To rectify this skewed view some may have about the aesthetic merit of games, this post will attempt to showcase some of the amazing visuals they’re capable of. These are images that should not just be celebrated for their style or technical achievement in realism but also for their ability to evoke a sense of wonder and imply a sense of place and meaning. I plan on updating this post every now and again with more examples of game photography and hopefully get some older games in there along with the modern titles.
Horror games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space, F.E.A.R. and the Fatal Frame series, among others, have been scaring us for years. With Amnesia: The Dark Descent, gamers have seen a new approach to the design of horror that works particularly well. But what is it that makes these games so terrifying? Fear, like other emotions, is complex, but with a bit of research and some personal experience of these games, I believe we can pick out a few of the features that make them so scary.
I remember when I was young reading a set of fairy tale books that all came with an accompanying audio cassette. There were plenty in the series including The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk, to name a few. There is quite a dark side to children’s fairy tales however, and the two that I found most harrowing were The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids and The Three Billy-goats Gruff. Something about the imagery in those books, the sinister plotlines and the style of painting – so different from some of the cutesier modern day look of children’s books – made my hair stand on end. At one point, during a car journey, I remember turning a page of The Billy-goats Gruff to...
A few weeks back a friend of mine discovered that I dabble in EVE Online. I’m reluctant to use the word ‘play’ in this regard and would much rather use ‘dabble’. It seems these days that anyone using the word ‘play’ in regards to an MMO such as EVE Online or World of Warcraft is instantly stereotyped as some socially retarded, malnourished loner who immerses himself in the same virtual world, 16 hours a day, pissing in to a nappy and outsourcing his character to some Chinese player while he sleeps so he can technically play TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY. Unfortunately, all of the above does actually apply for some people but it’s pretty much the same as saying “What?! You drink beer?! You must be an alcoholic!!” So on discovering that I ‘dabble’ in EVE Online he said “You know...
With the slew of modern games mostly revolving around beating ten tonnes of shite out of something, someone or even each other, it’s refreshing to know that we do have a few alternatives. The kind of games for those off-days where we feel like slipping in to a hypnotic coma and waking up to a repetition of colourful lights and custom music. Meditative gaming (although not strictly a recognised genre yet) is an aspect of gaming that I have been rather enthused about on and off for a long time now. Coincidentally, the frequency of such experiences always creep up on me, unawares, in much the same way as the hypnotic states they induce, such as a daydream or hallucinogenic drug that suddenly catches you off guard. Subconsciously I’m drawn...
The famous man looked at the red cup… The success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has attracted controversy over the years, not least for its content, but also for its quality of writing. On the one hand, it has garnered huge sales and massive popularity. Yet critically, it is often seen as a failure and lambasted by many. Famous critics, authors and even comedians have criticised both the book and Dan Brown. The British comedian Bill Bailey once described the author as the “pudding-faced, currant-eyed murderer of prose” and his work as “words randomly arranged to form millions of dollars”. Salman Rushdie was once quoted as saying “Do not start me on ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ A novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.” The...
In 2006, a self-proclaimed investment banker walked away with 120,000 US dollars that did not rightfully belong to him. This money had been invested by clients of the bank under the assumption that it would accrue interest; it did not. Instead, the owner of the bank waited until there was a sufficient amount to satisfy his needs, took the money, and ran. Interestingly, the banker’s actions were completely legal, no crime had been committed. The authorities did not get involved, and nobody even reported the incident to the police. The bank in question was in fact, part of an online virtual world known as EVE-Online and although the money was virtual, it had a real world value of 120,000 US dollars. Edit: This article was written back in 2007 as an essay...
