I enjoyed chatting about it - getting involved in my own narcissism obviously - and it brought back a lot of memories.

Part two will be out in a week or so so subscribe to his blog if you want to catch it.

Here

This is missing the art for the most part which I'm going to re-scan and insert into a later copy of the PDF as well as post on here as well. The book itself is still for sale should someone want a hard copy with the art included. Without the art, the book weighs in at a lightweight 990K so it'll even be light enough to download to a palmtop or smartphone.

I'll include a link in the downloads section too. Enjoy! Please add a comment below if you download it

Lewis Pulsipher at GameCareerGuide writes that All I Really Needed to Know About Games I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons

He has some core points which apply to any game but especially one which involves multiple users (a Massively Multiplayer Online Game) for example.

As a designer:
You don't need high-level technology to make an "immersive" game.
For human/psychological games (as opposed to computer-mediated challenge games), players enjoy the journey, not the destination.
Some people like to be told stories; others like to make their own.
The objective is to make the players think their characters are going to die, not to kill them.
We all like to improve.
User-generated content enriches a game immensely. (In this case, adventures, monsters, classes, etc.)

Lewis continues:
As a player:
It's more fun with more than one person.
Cooperation is required for survival.
Think before you leap.
Get organized!
Don't run headlong where you've never been.
Keep track of the stuff you've got; otherwise you may forget something that could save your butt.
Always have a viable "Plan B".
Always have a way out.
Don't depend on luck!

If your game can take into account all of the above points then you're well on your way to developing a game that I'd like to play. Nintendo shows us that we don't need the most cutting edge graphics to make a game that truly involves the players - in fact - the cartoony lack of realism in the games on the Wii platform serve to make it more memorable rather than less when compared to the Hi-Def Not-Quite-Realism that you find on the PS3 and XBOX.

For myself, the 'fun' in the game has always been in the story and there is some pseudo-theory around this, the concepts of 'gamist', 'simulationist' and 'narrativist'. I identify with the latter category, being more interested in the story, in the interactions and in the 'soft' outcomes. In contrast, a simulationist will strive to have the most realistic 'reality modelling' experience possible. They might enjoy Call of Duty more than Left4Dead or Halo because the content is 'realistic'. Zombies and aliens, despite being fun, are not real. Lastly, the gamist is in it for the game. For the challenge, for the achievements and perhaps even competitively for the win. There's nothing wrong with being in a category and it doesn't make what you enjoy into BadWrongFun and it's perfectly possible to jump between categories depending on the game itself. For example, while playing "Infamous", I was in it for the story and I found "Prototype" to be an unenjoyable button-masher aimed at Gamists but when playing any first person shooter against other humans, I tend to be a determined gamist, it's all about the challenge and all about the winning. Similarly I want a racing game to have realistic drift physics even if the content is all about superfast floating flying machines armed with missiles and if I die, I just come back to life. It's a joint gamist/simulationist experience for me.

Games are more fun when you're not alone and I find the co-operative balance of games like Left4Dead to be immensely compelling because it's the first game I've ever played which must be played cooperatively. Yes, there's a certain mechanics to making sure you have the right equipment and you know the way in a game like that but similarly the 'chaos' introduced by other humans in the game is just the very reason I play - especially as they, through communication, can add unobvious twists to the game itself (like playing Call of Duty using only knives or Left4Dead using only pistols). My love of the story means my motivation to have the right equipment and ensure effective communication with the team is entirely because there's nothing more frustrating than having to play the same 'level' again and again due to the mechanics of a game being poorly thought out. I've experienced this mostly with console games which require you to have twitch fingers as well as intimate knowledge of which button has a circle and which has a triangle. The fact this 'out of game' knowledge is required, completely jolts me out of immersion in the plot and reminds me I'm mashing buttons on a game controller.

An aside to this is the necessity of controlling player character death. There's nothing more frustrating than your character dying because her avatar edged a pixel over some mathematical value which dictates whether the character stands or falls. At least, again in Left4Dead, some designers have thought about this. It's not perfect but it beats the extremes of either falling when your pixels are 51% past the border or being able to stand in mid air because one of your pixels is still touching the edge of the cliff. Always err on the side of playability - as it says above, your job is to inspire the fear of character death in the players, not set out to actually kill them. Don't punish the player for the poor edge detection algorithm in your game engine or for touching something that doesn't look dangerous in your description or image.

Don't miss the point about user-generated content. Some companies see Open Source as being a method of saving on developer time or a political statement designed to attract a certain demographic. I have long been of the opinion that you should let people make up their own stories. Being too restrictive here means there's no Harry Potter RPG and there are only videogames for the franchise which permit a very limited range of activity. The potential content is controlled, closed, censored and choked. Chairman Mao Zedong of China said:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

before doing his own controlling, closing, censoring and choking.

Whether or not you think he was using this to entice dissidents out of hiding is not what I'm here to debate but what I will say is that this school of thought is pretty much responsible for Twitter and Youtube. What can be more fun than seeing your creation being used in new and innovative ways. Back a hundred years ago in 1996 when I produced my first book, I loved seeing that someone has written extra content or modified my rules - because it meant they read them. I was often asked to explain my design decisions and why several rules were labelled as 'optional' and entertained by someone else's take, someone else's story using the background and content I had originated.

I'd love to hear some opinions on what is your favourite game and why. Do you identify most with Gamist, Narrativist or Simulationist (also labelled Narratology and Ludology in Aphra Kerr's book: The Business and Culture of Digital Games.)

It feels good to be getting the stuff out there however - not quite as good as getting someone else to handle the US distribution but good enough nonetheless.

I'm still wondering what to do about Key20 and the non-payment of money from books sold. I have a feeling that's going to stick in my craw for a while yet.

We'd been distributed through Key20 for the last 18 months (and previous to that as well) and we'd sent them the vast majority of our stock. As of last week, they couldn't pay so they're sending back the remaining books and the only money we're getting is likely going to be paying for shipping back to us.

This is angering me because they received nearly all of our copies of Zombi, for which we're getting diddlysquat - and that leaves us up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

To this end, we're just going to offer fulfillment directly through Paypal and work on getting the PDFs done. It'd hard to find the time to do all of this especially when you consider that we're out a lot of money.

We've got a few books of each variety and we'll be receiving the shipping of the remainders coming soon and aiming for a second printing as soon as we can afford it.

Click on the image (or here) to go through to Store. We'll be adding more Ts as time goes on.

The original was quite clean and had a name like 'corroded' or 'corrupted'.

The potential new one is CM Corruged by Charly Masci (link is down).

I think it's actually an improvement.

The ISRB (Inter Service Research Bureau) operated as a cover for the SOE and was responsible for developing modern clandestine technology as well as recruiting agents for the SOE. The Frythe Estate near Welwyn Garden City was the initial test ground for the use of psychics in espionage under the guise of a wireless research unit code-named "Special Signals". Later, it became Station IX, a weapons development centre and the Special Signals group was moved to a small building on Fieldgate Street in Whitechapel. The SOE was dissolved in 1946 and most of their operational functions absorbed by MI6. The Special Signals group, however, survived. Their staff roster was filled out with German scientists, recruited from the post-war skirmish between the Allies for their knowledge.

Dr Saul Benedict had been head of Special Signals since it's inception and guided the group through the post-war political turmoil by forming a significant attachment to the then-prime minister, Clement Attlee. While Attlee could not be convinced of the need for the SOE, the Special Signals group were able to secure their own future and Attlee consulted with precogs and telepaths regularly. He became known as an extremely effective politician and possible the most effective Prime Minister to date. Their consultations helped him decide the correct course of action and also how to build a cabinet of people he could trust. In return he pledged support for Benedict's special interests and permitted the Project in Whitechapel far-reaching authority.

The establishment of the National Health Service in 1948 paved the way for regular screening of the population for psychic potential and the Whitechapel Project enjoyed a regular stream of enthusiastic recruits, young, cheerful and ready to do their bit for king and country. A centre for psychic research was opened in Huntingdon, funded by the NHS rather than the Special Signals group. When Churchill succeeded Attlee he was astounded his own words were so prophetic when he had accused Labour of introducing "some form of Gestapo, no doubt humanely administered in the first instance". One of his first actions was to restrict NHS funding to Huntingdon and from that moment on Benedict and his advisors realised their remit had a wider reach than the ephemeral governments

There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.

The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn't have time to play with.

Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you'll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil's Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.

See the Youtube video for more

The business model is simple. Aiming for a $1.99 price for a standard comic (equivalent to 22 pages in a standard American size comic), Apple take 30% of the money as their commission. InfuriousComics take 10% and the remaining 60% goes to the creators. Seem harsh? Not so much when you hear tales of how much comic creators get when their comics are sold - sometimes they have to sell in excess of 9000 copies just to break even - even if carried by a major publisher. This new model would mean creators get paid for every book they produce. If you sell 200 copes, you get 60% of cover. If you sell 3000 copies you get 60% of cover. That's a lot better than the rates offered in print.

BUT....

MURDERDROME has been banned from the App Store for breaking rules about content. Please view the video and show some support for content being made available on the App Store by commenting on the article here.

You'll also find links to other coverage of this cool new application.

Why is this relevant to LateGaming?

Apart from my association with Paul and Philip and subsequent involvement in InfuriousComics, there has been discussion about using their cool reader technology to build 'decision tree books' or as we used to call them 'Choose your path' style books. That has interest to me!