Tag Archives: doom

games with defects

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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While attending the ↑Third Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (↑GFF), at the University of Zurich I got to know ↑René Bauer, a game designer who teaches at the Hochschule der Künste in Zürich (↑ZHdK). He showed us quite some of the projects done by his students—see yourself at ↑and-or—wonderful, fantastic, up to absolutely hilarious. I especially like the idea of creating computer games with built-in gameplay defects which are making you think. Take for example ‘↑laichenberg‘, a first-person shooter which was advertised as being ‘more realistic than doom3, unreal etc.’  With the graphics craze of the last decade … Continue reading →

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doom post mortem

Posted on by September 21, 2012
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It took them quite a while, but finally, in 2011, ↑John Romero and ↑Tom Hall did a post-mortem on ‘↑Doom‘ (id Software 1993). You can watch the hour-long presentation, video and slides, ↑at the GDC Vault. If you do not readily understand everything the two guys are relating, I, for the umpteenth time, heartily recommend ↑David Kushner‘s ‘↑Masters of Doom‘ (2003). If you already have read the book, watch the post-mortem nevertheless.     For example, what I did not know: In March 1993 20th Century Fox offered id Software the Alien licence to make Alien the game. But the … Continue reading →

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shell of ghosts

Posted on by January 3, 2012
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Here is a snippet from the recent ↑interview with William Gibson, which Bryan Alexander (who ↵pointed me to it) ↵liked especially: It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve … Continue reading →

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interview with a doomed marine

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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Again those little mosaic-tiles keep falling in place—and the timing is perfect. Just some days ago ↑John Postill confirmed via email that a paper I proposed for the ↑11th biennial conference of the ↑European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has been accepted for the media anthropology network’s workshop ↑The Rewards of Media. Just one day before gamescares published an ↑interview with Peter Papadopoulos, Remedy’s community manager. Pete is an old friend of mine from the glorious days of Max-Payne modding. Within the online-scene he is better known as ADM, short for “a doomed marine,” of course an allusion to the … Continue reading →

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doom 4

Posted on by October 1, 2012
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  This time it does not seem to be an april fool’s joke, like last year—four days ago, on 07 May 2008, ↑id Software announced:  Production has begun on DOOM 4™, the next journey into the legendary DOOM universe. We are expanding our internal team and are currently hiring to work on this highly anticipated title.  “DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next installment of our flagship franchise to Earth,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. “It’s critical for id Software to have the … Continue reading →

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coolness

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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cyberpunked second living    Believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am getting cooler day by day—in “↑Second Life“ (SL) that is. Remember when I said that graphics-wise SL is ↵insultory to my hardware? Well, concerning the absolute majority of avatars I have met so far, and concerning almost all the architecture I have seen so far, this still stands uncorrected. I am running SL on the absolute highest settings here on my machine, but when you compare the looks to e.g. “↵Max Payne 2“ (MP2), a game released in 2003, SL obviously is inferior. Plus, there is no … Continue reading →

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ten years of doom

Posted on by October 6, 2012
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Ten years ago on December 10th, 1993, ↑id Software released the ↑Doom shareware, forever changing the world of PC games. Doom pretty much defined the very young ↑first person shooter genre, and set the bar for future games to come. With immersive, colorful levels, deadly enemies and some of the greatest gameplay any game has ever seen, Doom can be best described as nothing short of a masterpiece. Even to this day it is still cited as one of the best and most significant games made. Well, I am more than three years late with this “news”, but still “↑10 … Continue reading →

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speed thrills

Posted on by October 6, 2012
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It seems like ↑just.be in meatspace somehow ran into Thomas ‘↑Panter‘ Pilger, who in 1997 “spread throughout the ↑COMPET-N tables like a plague. By August, he was the first to do the third ↑DOOM 2 episode (Map 21-30) on Nightmare skill and was primed for the ultimate DOOM 2 honor, DOOM 2 Schwarzenegger. Almost a year in the making, Thomas ‘Panter’ Pilger finally achieved the impossible by recording all 32 maps of DOOM 2 on Nightmare skill in one demo in 49:49.” ↑John Romero‘s reaction to Panter’s feat: “I grabbed the demos and I’ll run them as soon as I … Continue reading →

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severity

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  Not too long ago, when ↑KerLeone—who introduced me to “↑Quake III Arena“ (Q3A), but meanwhile shamefully has defected to “↑Battlefield 2“, the traitor—asked me what people actually are playing nowadays when they are out for the deathmatch experience, I answered: ” “↑Painkiller” (PK), I guess.” My guess was based on two observations. Firstly the ↑Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) had chosen “Painkiller” for the ↵CPL World Tour 2005, and secondly the game indeed emulates gameplay, feel, and ambience of the classical ↑first-person shooter (FPS) games. But emulation is not the original, accordingly in 2006 the CPL fell back on Q3A … Continue reading →

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