Fri 11 May 2007
I was reading an article on the making of Ghostbusters the game for the Commodore 64. I used to play a port on the Apple IIe. What struck me is I am distantly attached to the game through a one Dan Kitchen who was the CEO of the company I worked for doing the Casper: The Interactive Adventure kids game. He was part of a team which did the Ghostbusters intro sequences.
Ghostbusters was fun, even on the limited hardware it was running on. We need game developers to reach back and remember what fun is without having all the glitz of modern hardware. Nintendo does that well and Sony has a few games which are just pure fun but relies too much on glitzy graphics.
I can imagine simple games of the past coming back on the OLPC with the added element of the mesh network. We have a couple of game jams coming up and it will be interesting to see what they come up with. The XO definitely bring old school type games back in vogue with its limited graphics capabilities.
Why games on the XO? Because that is what gets children involved and learning. You don’t think you played hopscotch, jacks, hide and seek, candyland, snakes n ladders, and monopoly* just so you were out of your parents hair, did you? They all teach different skills which stick better when you are just having fun. Life isn’t all fun and games but when you are a kid it is a big part.
* These were selections from my own cultural upbringing. Other cultures will have a different set of games they played.
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May 11th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
How about trying to create games that can be played with friends? I mean something like mmorpgs but a lot simpler, and networked. Then even visually and audibly really simple games have something that can make their extremely immersive.
The idea is good especially if the games at the same time require using some skills, like languages… It would combine fun & learning, and make the kids play together with their XOs, near or far from each others!
May 11th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
erik,
That is the idea. Our current builds have all the bits to make that happen and even an example connect 4 game which takes advantage of it though the builds aren’t quite working yet since we just dumped a bunch of code in.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Thank you so much for linking this article! Oh, I remember all the hours I played this game on my C-64!
May 11th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Don’t forget, the reason we don’t play a lot of those good old games anymore is because we’re spoiled with the graphics and depth of newer games. These kids in under-developed countries don’t have all the luxuries of our cutting edge game consoles, so they don’t know the difference between Pit Stop and Need for Speed. Now it’s their turn to enjoy all the great games we once enjoyed. The ones that had a lot more replay value than what we have today. You know, in a way you kinda have to envy them for that.