Old Games For Sale - Legit!

GOG, if you haven’t heard, is a way to purchase older games that work on newer systems. Many of the games are from the late 90’s and early 2000’s (although there are a few older than that), designed for either MS-DOS or the MS-Windows 9x line of operating systems. As such, some of the games are unplayable on modern systems (especially on the NT based system such as Windows XP). The prices are rather reasonable: $5.99 to $9.99.

One game from that era I never played, but recently wanted to, is . The reasons being:

• The developers had opened the source code a few years ago
• I like space sims and haven’t found one I like for Linux
• X3 was not available (although it finally will be Nov 28, 2008)

Some weeks ago I searched for a legit copy of Freespace 2 for purchase. E-Bay was a rip-off and I stopped looking.

The good news is both Freespace games are available from GOG, so I purchased Freespace 2. One wonderful aspect of this is their service does not require any special client software to use (unlike Steam or Impulse), other than a browser. A second
wonderful aspect is their installer works great with Wine 1.0.

Within minutes of download, Freespace 2 was installed and I was enjoying FSSCP. This will definitely bring me back to GOG. Hopefully they will continue to add games to their library.

Comment: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies

At Gamasutra, one finds a good
article entitled Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really!
. It performs excellent analysis upon the current and future state of virutal worlds
(MUDS, MMORPGs, MMOGs, etc). In short there are four main reasons driving
the design of virtual worlds:

1. Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
2. Newbies won’t play a virtual world that has a major feature they don’t like.
3. Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
4. Many players will think some poor design choices are good.

Read the entirety of the article for the explanation of the points and
continued reasoning, or tirade as he calls it.

One thing I would add: basic economics. All commercial games are developed
and guided by the basics of economics. Each must, or at least should, attempt
to break even, better, earn a modest profit. There must be enough appeal
for both the hardcore gamer and casual gamer to accomplish the economic
goal. With current game development costs very high, a wide audience appeal
is a necessity.

This necessity can add weight to design decisions. In short, if a design
decision can result in a smaller audience, the pressure can be greater to
change or drop the decision.

While this current dynamic is in force, the vocal majority, the mis-guided
newbies of Mr. Bartle’s article, exerts more influence than the hardcore oldies,
the minority.