Chris Baer

A Voice Indie Wilderness: Jeff Vogel on Gaming

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I’m not sure when the transition occurred, but back in the proverbial day, the name for games produced by small companies and sold online via unlockable demo was Shareware. You downloaded the demo on your creaking 22.8k modem, played until you got to the dreaded Shareware barrier, and then either ponied up the money to keep going or moved on to some other game.

Now this self-same business model goes by the name “indie.” Whatever. It’s still Shareware to me and, I get the sense, to Spiderweb Software‘s Jeff Vogel as well.

Spiderweb has specialized in single-player computer RPGs since 1995’s brilliant Exile, a game that had a literal Shareware barrier blocking off the majority of the map from exploration until you paid to unlock the rest of the game. And it was worth $25 fourteen years ago to keep going, no question.

Avernum 5 Screenshot

Is it worth that much today, when you can get older big-budget games with installations spanning multiple CDs for $10? Jeff Vogel’s new blog, The Bottom Feeder, takes on these questions and more:

I can’t compete on price with old classic. Nobody can. To expect me (or anyone) to match price with a handful of old games is completely ridiculous. Can’t happen.

But my games have an advantage. They’re new. Go ahead and play the old classics, or at least the ones you haven’t played already. Go play Fallout or Planescape: Torment. They’re SWEET.

You’ll be done soon enough. And, when you are, I’ll still be here.

Admittedly, I’m not completely objective here. I beta tested seven Spiderweb games and even got a NPC named after me in one of the Geneforge games—talk about niche geek cred! Jeff and his small team at Spiderweb produce huge games, with amazing amounts of text and great storylines, for Mac and PC. On a cost-per-hour basis, these games are bargains.

As gamers, we need games like these to continue being produced, so check out them out if you haven’t already.

Bill Lyon on Harry Kalas

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For as long as I’ve been alive, one man has called Philadelphia Phillies games, a voice I remember from a tinny bedside radio on summer nights visiting my grandmother in Fishtown, the play-by-play competing with the sounds from the narrow street below the rowhouse. He called every one of “Michael Jack” Schmidt’s 548 home runs. He was the voice of the Phillies for several generations of fans.

The Parade on Flickr.com by thewestend, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives Licence.

Harry Kalas passed away yesterday before the Phils took the field against the Washington Nationals in the Nats home opener. And, as is often the case, Bill Lyon returns to print in the Inquirer to help the city come to terms with another momentous event:

Harry the K did play-by-play, and he not only did it uncommonly well, he spared us the histrionics and the shrieking and the rudeness that pollute far too many airways these days.

Harry the K was an oasis of calm in a roiling sea of nastiness and raging negativity.

He was, of course, the property of the Phillies, but he never played the role of fawning company shill. It was the Fightin’s he wanted to win, but he credited the opponent when it was deserved.

I’m the first person to admit that I’m not much of a baseball fan and that I haven’t listened to Harry Kalas call a game in years. But even I know that Philadelphia has lost just a little bit of its soul and that Bill Lyon has helped by putting it right back.

(Image courtesy of thewestend, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives License.)

From Here to Boo-ternity: The Boo in Philadelphia Sports Culture

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By my quick calculations, the 2008 World Series winning Philadelphia Phillies were only World Champions for fifteen pitches before being booed again in the second inning of the first game of the new season.

From Andy Martino’s recap of the game in the April 6, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer:

[A]t 8:27, rightfielder Jeff Francoeur hit Myers’ first pitch of the second inning into the left-field stands. Some in the crowd, so boisterous during the pregame ceremonies, voiced the first boos of 2009.

At 8:30, centerfielder Jordan Shafer, in his first major-league plate appearance, hit a 3-1 pitch into the stands in left-center field, and the booing became louder and more widespread.

Sounds about right. As a fan of Philadelphia sporting teams myself, I understand the love-hate relationship that exists between the fans and the teams in the much-maligned City of Brotherly Love.

But it’s an easy trope to trot out, a broad brush to paint a city’s fans with, this whole “Santa-booing boors” thing, and many point to the city’s relative paucity of championships in the past few decades as deriving from the apparently negative atmosphere the fans create. Perhaps a fair point.

No doubt there are athletes who do not perform well when they are derided for their efforts, who prefer to play in comforting arenas filled with unstinting supporters. They don’t tend to do well in Philadelphia, and perhaps they have played below their potential while there because of their rough treatment. But for every athlete who wants to get out of town, there’s another excited by the prospect of playing there.

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Who Got Pop Culture in My Peanuts?

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If your only exposure to Charles Schultz’s comic masterpiece, Peanuts, is via the “Classic” Peanuts feature in most newspapers that endlessly repeats the strip’s greatest hits, as it were, then you can be excused for thinking that Peanuts floated, unsullied, above the pop culture storms during its multi-decade run.

Thanks to Fantagraphics’ Complete Peanuts project, which is reprinting the entire series in chronological order, we’re able to see that Schultz did, on occasion, make reference to current events that, to modern eyes, seem quite outdated, like these panels from March 8, 1972 (in The Complete Peanuts: 1971 to 1972):

Johnny Who?

Talk about a time-bound joke! Though the context makes it clear that Johnny Horizon is somehow associated with the environmental movement, he’s hardly a household name some thirty-seven years later.

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Sir Chair of the Duchy of Desk: MMO Name Inspirations (or the lack thereof)

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Virtual worlds blog Terra Nova takes a look at some of the choices players make when naming their avatars in Massively Multiplayer Online games, examining the rather mundane inspirations that guide some decisions.

Can you find the stupid names in this picture?

While focusing mainly on a World of Warcraft forum thread (now expired) that examines avatar names derived from common household objects, Terra Nova’s Timothy Burke also touches on a very interesting point about the intersection between names and voice communication:

Other times, we’ve given some thought to how a neologism or random name sounds. But other times, the question itself is a bit of a surprise, and we suddenly realize that something which was entirely textual up to that point is now also oral. It’s really interesting to see how people negotiate that moment of invention, where they have to decide just how to say the character’s name, or decide that they don’t really care how it’s said and will respond to any recognizable variant pronounciation.

As I’ve examined in the past, character names are important to a player’s immersion in the game world. If my character’s name is unpronounceable, or untypable, I have to accept that other players will refer to me by a nickname or shortening of my chosen character name. If you cannot adapt to the name that is bestowed upon you because of the inherent complexity of your chosen name, you’ll find your immersion lessened.

The fact that most games put up barriers to name changes, ranging from a not-insubstantial fee (as in World of Warcraft’s $10 charge) to a complete prohibition on changes (as in EVE Online), suggests that game developers understand the importance of a consistent name, both for continuity of reputation within the game world and for that sticky, immersive quality that keeps players playing—and paying for—the game.

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Roast Pork in a Box?

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Tony Luke’s recent unveiling of its frozen Roast Pork Sandwich puts Movement Point‘s longstanding advocacy for Philadelphia Roast Pork Sandwich Awareness to the test.

Image from https://web.archive.org/web/20090308002055/http://www.philly.com/philly/business/40631707.html

Any effort to get Roast Pork Sandwiches into more homes and hungry hands must be celebrated, because these sandwiches, with their bewitching combination of tender roast pork, sharp provolone, and slightly bitter greens, have flown under the nation’s culinary radar for far too long. But can Tony Luke’s really pull off a good, frozen Roast Pork Sandwich?

Speaking in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the near-eponymous Tony Lucidonio, Jr., says he can:

“I can’t get into too much detail because we have a Patent pending,” Lucidonio said of the new frozen-sandwich preparation process. “It is the way the meat is made that allows the meat to go from a raw steak into a microwave or a boiler bag and come out as if it were grilled.”

Though he is speaking there about his frozen cheesesteaks, one assumes the process is somewhat similar for the Roast Pork Sandwiches. The proof will be in the pork, as they say. I think…

(Image from The Philadelphia Inquirer)