A Goldmine of Distractions

While checking up on the progress on AGDI's Quest for Glory 2 remake, as well as the inevitable, if somewhate doomed Hero 6 project, I discovered, I do not know how, Acid Play, a repository for freeware games. There are hundreds of them, many of them Sierra-style AGS games. Spent a little while today downloading the most interesting sounding titles ("Ozzie and the Quantum Playwright" sounded fun, if for no other reason than because it might be the first game ever about a college theatre major).

In my search for games, I also discovered Reality on the Norm, a sort of project in online role-playing-game story telling, in which each game is basically a new chapter in the continuing, semicoherent life of the town Reality. Game designers reuse each other's characters as leads and secondary characters in their own projects and in this way, they sort of tell the story of a peculiar, adventure-ridden town. It's a neat idea.

One thing I always liked about Sierra's role-playing games, and didn't much like about the shoot-em-up games that eventually took their place, is the way in which they told stories. Game series really created interactive stories for people to be told, thick with plots and twists, and in the best cases, these stories were really satisfying and moving. More than the books I was forced to read in school, these games were responsible for me reading in my early adolescence, and in some ways, they're responsible for shaping my first efforts in writing (which says whatever it does about my writing...).

What these sites say to me is that I wasn't alone, and even though the tides of digital tastes have changed, there are still people out there who want games that are stories and not just bloodbaths. And there's a new generation of people willing to tell new stories. Or recycled versions of old stories. And that gives me a warm fuzzy.