Monday, February 11, 2008

Armchair Generals

Gameplayer - Australia's Premier Gaming Website
Feature: The Armchair Generals - Official Xbox 360 Magazine
It's no fun being the odd one out. As the only team member with an attention span counted in hours rather than seconds, I'm regularly taunted in the office for loving PC strategy games. The other team members treat me as if I'm backward and nerdy; and it's true I do love strategy games, tactical combat games, turn-based games. Yet there's a shift going on, a shift of strategy developers towards consoles, both in the numbers being developed for the Xbox 360 and how they're being altered to fit it. Soon there will be more strategy games on the console than beat 'em ups, an unthinkable thing five years ago.

A super-long feature I did on console strategy games as my Parthian shot at OXM has gone on-line. If you like sending thousands of men to death and/or glory it's an involved and in-depth read - read the Gameplayer version though, as it's more legible. It involves interviews with Michael de Plater from Creative Assembly, Jim Vessella, Associate Producer on the forthcoming expansion Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, Jim Bottomley, Lead Designer of Vivendi’s recent PC hit World in Conflict, Barry Caudill, Executive Producer at Firaxis Games talking about Civ Revolution, James Carey from Creative Assembly, and Mike Kawahara and Jim Ngui from Namco, developers of Mark of Chaos. That's a lot of developers!

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