I have been a managing and working with cross border teams for more than 19 years and helped companies find their international calling. In resent years I started working with Creative Companies building connections across the Americas.
There has been a lot of buzz in the internet in the past few weeks related to one of the writers in TheVerge.com, Paul Miller a somewhat famous technology blogger has decided to stay offline for a year, and will be writing about this experience as a technology writer without the internet. Some people have stated that is a promotional stunt, he is foolish, there is no real reason to do something like that. All I was thinking while this was happening is that, good for him.
The internet is a great tool, it give us access to lots of information, and also lets us stay connected with the world at all times, people can send us email from the toilet, we can read them in the street or have the car read it to us, news feed are instantly updated thanks to tweeter, we know whatever is happening in our friends lives thanks to Facebook. This all sound great, but as is a blessing, it's also a curse. Emails of messages in the middle of the night, hundreds of work related email every day, more email on personal business, people are not thinking about essays, and inspiration is lost. Even I had troubled keeping my goal of writing two articles every week for this Blog; due to overload of information I have been receiving all week. It’s tempting to take a holyday from the internet. Disconnect your ties to the world, just keeping a regular cellphone, without messaging and internet access.
Don't Get me wrong, I love the internet, It has given me opportunities to learn a lot of stuff that in my country I hadn’t access to, comics, literature, music, movies, I am a culture consumist in the end, and that is hard when you don’t have access to culture. But sometimes we also need to disconnect, to be more productive asPaul states in his writing, without the worry to seeing an email that needs immediate response.
I recently wrote about my love for the
adventure genre of video games, still while the genre has been reduced to a
downloadable format of games, with few exceptions on big budget productions
(Heavy Rain for the PS3 comes to mind), it has growth to new markets, in much
different styles of play from the one I used to love. The most prominent
developer of these kinds of games right now is Telltale Games, and while they
are fine in their own, I still think the old games are better. Tell Tales have
done something very interesting with a business model were they have not really
created new properties, they have made adventure games using a mixture of
comics, TV and movie licenses like Strong Bad, CSI, Back to the Future, Jurassic
Park, Law and Order and also old video game franchises like Monkey Island, Sam
& Max (also a comic) and in the future Kings Quest. Their latest release is
a license of The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead is a black and white comic
book series, published by Image, created and wrote by Robert Kirkman. The
comics are very dark in its topics, and are centered on the survival of a
varying group of characters in a world where the dead walk the earth chasing
living beings and trying to eat them. It has no end in sight, and the author
even say there is no objective, no end game; it’s just trying to survive and
the struggle of the cast to keep their humanity and body parts without becoming
one of the walking dead. It has spawned a popular television series, and a
novelization, I haven’t read the novel, I have read a great length of the comic
book that is reaching number 100(I have read until #71 more or less), I didn’t care
much for the TV series, while I liked most of the first season, the 2nd
one didn’t grave my attention, while still watched most of it. Then there is
the Video Game, I loved it, great and dynamic story(at least in the first
episode), the artwork is effective enough, giving it a lot of emotion even with
a style reminiscent of the comic books (is almost cel-shaded with some detail
in the characters, to give them more emotion), the game also features very good
voice acting, that give the game emotion it deserves, and makes it feel a
mixture between a comic book and a movie, with interactive moments and a
branching path that takes to several endings depending on how people see you
and how you´re character interacts with them.
I was amazed how my wife, who never plays games
and rarely watches me play, she doesn’t like zombie movies and even less comics,
and she was completely engaged in the story and wanted to know what was
happening to the characters. That for me is a good sign of a story well put
together in a complete package. I recommend the game for everyone who likes the
license and especially lovers of old adventure games, I haven’t seen such a
great representation of the adventure game in years and am really glad to see
it from the same company that is bringing back King’s Quest.
When I started playing PCgames on 1986, my first game was King Quest: Quest for the Crown, a graphic andtext based adventure type of game where all actions where dictated by typedcommands and there was a graphic representation of the space and an avatar thatdepicted you're actions and movements (today is called third action view).There were no pointing and clicking, just typing verbs+nouns. Sierra Online inmy opinion had the best lineup of games and some of these great games were re-released not long ago by www.gog.com to be played on all they're text typingglory.
The King Quest series has a lot of charm in its story writing that is unmatched today, the first three games are hard to go back and play them again due to the graphic limitations and difficulty of the games, 4 and 5 are great adventures and 6 is really good, and has a very imaginative story and setting. I really want to try again 6 and complete King Quest 7, the only one I didn't had a chance to play when it came out in 1994, and it was really hard to get a copy in my native country (Colombia). By the way, don´t even try King Quest 8, it’s just a terrible try to build an action adventure story on a bad 3d engine. At least they did succeed somewhat in doing a good story in a 3d engine with Gabriel Knight 3.
For me the real Jewel in the crown found in gog.com, is the Space Quest series of games, they are all really funny have perfect comedic timing and are just love to play them again, even if as I mentioned earlier, the first three are games are text adventure games with graphic avatars. They are difficult, I really admire the imagination I had as a child to figure out the puzzles in those games. Space Quest 4, 5 and 6 are just plain funny. Here is a video made about the best moments in Space Quest 4.
I still cannot believe that the series that has endured the most of all the adventure games made by sierra Online is Leisure Suit Larry, the series had some good moments, but the quality of the writing compared to the Space Quest games is not even comparable, this series is above and beyond most of the comic games today. I’m going to try the fan made 7th game in the series and will look with interest if the Kickstarter project initiated by the two guys of Andromeda(how the writers used to called themselves) does in terms of getting a new version of the game.
I know that the old Lucasfilm games of are the most popular right know between adventure gamers, especially since they have recently released special editions of the first Monkey Island Games (that are specially great in the sword fighting parts) and the new releases made by Tell Tale Games of the Monkey Island and Sam And Max universes. These games are much easier to play than the old text adventures but they still have great quality writing.
The genre has evolved much, at first just text, then came the graphic nature with text input developed by Roberta Williams and Sierra Online, then came SCUMM with the release of Maniac Mansion, and was mostly popularized by the Lucasfilms Games, it was the beginning of point and clicking and a trend that really annoyed and pulled away many gamers, pixel hunting. There were great games that came from this system, Day of the Tentacle being probably the best comedy one in my mind, and several smaller studios adapted a similar system, while Sierra developed an Icon Based technology that was used in its adventure games until 1997 were you can point with the mouse and choose an icon to perform an action, like taste, talk, take, among others. Lucasfilms final two adventure games (Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island) implemented GrimE, a better implementation of a 3d adventure that sierra could never master, and is similar interaction as to what the engine of Telltale Games uses for control of the characters or even what you do in Heavy Rain(2010) as one of the last big budget adventure games, created exclusively for the PS3 console.
There has been a resurgence of Adventure games, bringing special editions of the Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2 in the iOS platform, I have also seen the Broken Sword games there and a DS port called Ghost Trick that is real good, there are a lot of creative talent are trying to improve the genre, Machinarium and Botanicula being resent examples, and if you dig in the internet, there are a lot of remakes for the Sierra Games made by fans. Telltale Games have done a memorable job in bringing the genre back at accessible prices and multiple platforms, I specially like they're last game, The Walking Dead, that inspired me to write this article, it had been a while that I really enjoyed a good adventure game.
It’s not a bad time to try these games, but be prepared to be frustrated, is not an easy genre to love, there is a lot of pixel hunting, confusing puzzles, and sometimes it’s hard to understand the logic of the writers.
PS: There are lots of more adventure games that I haven't try due to the difficult of getting them in Colombia, some of the best regarded games are: The Longest Journey and other European made games like Broken Sword, the Japanese have they’re one interpretation of the genre (mostly dating game, or at least the one’s I have played), and there are lot of independent games like Plan 9 from outer space, Amazon, Goblings, Sex Vixens of Outer Space, Simon Sorcerer, Dragon’s Lair, among others. I have also heard that the Freddy Parkas game by Sierra Online is one the funniest games out there, but I haven't tried it yet, maybe one day I will write about it.
I have been playing video games for such a long time, starting with a CGA Monitor in 1986 (I think!), and was amazed by my first play through of King Quest by Sierra in its glorious 4 colours (Magenta, cyan, white and black) at 320×200 pixel resolution. I did played with an Atari 2600 before that, but to be honest I was too young to have a good memory of the games I had, in my memory I really started playing video games with King Quest and Space quest. Looking how far have the games come its just amazing, there was no way to dream back then that these pictures will be from video games on a PC.
Check the page for finding more amazing art in video games:
I will share some of the DEADENDTHRILLS images i found most appealing, and show you what was avaible to me in 1986 when started playing on PCs(found in http://www.thehouseofgames.net):
I have toadmire the effort of Marvel Studios, knowing the history of Marvel Comics and MarvelStudios and the tribulations that they have gone to get to make the movie The Avengers,released on Colombia and the United States last Friday (April 27th of2012). The studio have finally given a resolution to a story after connectingthe universes of the Iron Man, Thor, Incredible Hulk and Captain American moviefranchises, and reacquiring the movie rights of the characters. After the company filed for bankruptcy on1996, they started to recover on several deals and fusion of companies that allowedit to create the studio and toy line, just in time for the comic book boom ofthe industry of the 2000s, and to great avail of marvel studios and a greatstring of comics based movies starting with Blade on New Line Studios in 1998 andX-Men on Fox Studios. Most of the 21movies released since 1998 in coproduction with several movie studios have beengood, with the particular exception of the Fox co-produced movies not directedby Brian Singer and the last X-men movie of last year, and also the terrible GhostRider Movies by Columbia Pictures. The most interesting movies have been the additional6 movies they produced independently and that have been the basis of TheAvengers, starting in Iron Man in 2008, introducing the characters, the topics,the personalities and Shield as the governmental entity that unites theAvengers in the movie. I wonder what is the feeling of a person that have notseeing the previous movies, specially Thor, that is the most direct prequel ofThe Avengers, it shares the hero, the villain and is the one that the SHIELD’s Director(Played by Samuel L Jackson) most directly refers as the effect that causes thecreation of the Avengers Initiative, you now, it’s the movie that introduces extraterrestrialaliens to earth.
In the end the movie is a great action flick with great characters and a thrilling story,but it also means that someone who hasn’t seen the previous movies will be lostwith so many topics and characters. I really liked the interpretation of MarkRuffalo as the Hulk and Bruce Banner, I improves a lot the previousinterpretations of the character, Chris Evans is better as Captain America, butit gets a little lost between all the characters, especially in the presence ofRobert Downey, Jr as Tony Stark who is still a scene stealer all the way. The newadditions are Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton (alias Hawkeye in the comics) andScarlett Johansson as the Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff, who still feel a littlebit as seat fillers in a team of greater than men heroes, but give greatperformances and give a human perspective of the fight, specially Black Widow,giving a great interpretation of the spy game, even if the fights (specially herfirst one) seems a little fake.
I recommendthe movie, but I greatly recommend that everyone who is going to see it watchesTHOR before, and if they can watch Captain America is not a bad idea, there isa lot of background talk about in the movie that are references to his movie.
