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Lately I've been watching loads of Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation . It made me really want to play an RPG that allowed people to explore that type of wonder in space. Star Trek's episodic approach is what separates it from being a pure space opera. That's an oversimplification, but helps to frame why I love and enjoy Star Trek. You can estimate the budget of any Star Trek show like The Next Generation or Enterprise by looking at the fake rock walls that exist on every single planet. The starting point of these walls is obviously fabric and paint, but the ending point is an alien world. For anyone who can suspend their disbelief, the optimism of Star Trek makes the kitsch of Star Trek feel just a bit more genuine. I've been working on making a tabletop RPG that is largely inspired by these things. The goal is to convey Star Trek's characteristic optimism and wonder while allowing the players to build characters that they can rely on, bo...

No Man's Sky is a perplexing game. It plays out like a slowly unraveling mystery in both gameplay mechanics and narrative. Ignoring the vast majority of the pre-release hype, the game appealed to my taste for exploration and the basic gameplay loop is relaxing enough to pair with the interstelllar exploration goal that takes up the bulk of the game. Cool Ghosts produced an analysis of No Man's Sky that I largely agree with. This game however is like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series in that your mileage may vary. Buying in to the world is far more of a necessity in NMS than it is in a Bethesda game, but the concept is the same. That being said, Sean Murray is captain of a mysterious and terribly frustrating ship. I have no idea what to expect in terms of support for the game in the form of content patches or DLC. I have grown tired of the current iteration of NMS. I have little to no respect for absolute silence, all I need is a single tentative timeline talking about what...

Pokemon GO is bad. Pokemon is ripe for the most amazing "social" gaming experience of all time. Just let them battle each other and don't screw with the existing formula that WORKS. Ahhhhh... Really though, knowledge of the underlying systems (mostly due to modding games and learning how to use GIS software) means that I can conceive of both the mechanics they utilize as well as how they got there from a design perspective. They want eyes on their app and they're going to do it with an interminable power creep as the generations of pokemon are added over time, mark my words. Instead of focusing on pokemon the game to use as a template, they're using it as a brand to market their existing formula. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who likes to learn about app development, but it is still mightily disappointing to anyone excited for a real life pokemon game. Judging by the player base of this broken game, that audience seems to be quite massive. As ...