An interesting new blog/essays on single player gaming...

[curiously undead]

gordon farrell, a household name to city builders, whose worked as a designer on most of the modern city builder games (caesar 4, children of the nile0 , and created some of the best campaigns for games like zeus and stronghold.
the blog is hosted on heavengames and looks to be an on going series of essays on single player gaming, solo, as its referred to.
http://solo.heavengames.com/

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Looks interesting.

 

[magerette]

That's a thoughtful essay, c.u.

I think his distinction between multiplayer games as sport and sp as potential art is interesting and makes more sense than a lot of the games as art arguments out there.

I particularly liked this quote, as it explains the reason why I read books published in other centuries, and enjoy the Impressionists:

Art is also shared across time.

When I read a Robert Frost poem, or listen to a Bach sonata, I know that voices from many decades ago in the first instance, and from hundreds of years ago in the second instance, are being faithfully reproduced. I am experiencing what millions of people before me have experienced, essentially unaltered, in the same form that they experienced it.

The idea of art being a particular human experience existing as an unchanged shared singularity as its passed across time is a cool concept.

 

[curiously undead]

part 2 is up "the altered soul"
http://solo.heavengames.com/