July 28, 2005
An Ernest Review of Façade
The Gamasutra column “The Designer’s Notebook” by Ernest Adams just came out with a knock-down fabulous review of Façade. Wow!
It’s particularly nice how Ernest discusses the distinction between drama and game, and how he breaks out the various design and technology fronts that the project pushes on.
And he didn’t even tease us again for requiring installation to the c: drive! :-)
July 28th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Very nice!
While GTxA readers are browsing the site, they should probably take a look at this excellent article on what every game designer should know about story. Most of what it says is probably old news to the actual bloggers here, but it’s very thought provoking, and for those of us who haven’t studied narrative theory and such it’s a must-read.
July 28th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
… and then follow on with Ernest’s rebuttal to that John Sutherland article about story, “Just say no to Sutherland and Structuralism!“.
(To balance things out a bit, a little defense of McKee — we found McKee’s discussion of beats useful, and took that as a starting point for organizing story content in Façade; we cite McKee in all of our papers.)
After reading Sutherland’s article, try a more forward-thinking Gamasutra article on story (from 2003), Randy Littlejohn’s “Agitating for Dramatic Change“. (Yes, it plugs Façade too, but only at the very end of the long article.)
July 28th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
Fair enough. I don’t know enough to say that structuralism is a good or bad approach. The core idea of “story” being the entire game experience and not just dialog was a good reminder to game devs though. (I’ve only worked on simulation-based games so far, so I’m not saying that most developers working with a fictional context don’t understand this, but if they don’t, they should.)
July 29th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
There some reaction to and discussion of Ernest’s article over at Shacknews.
July 31st, 2005 at 3:33 am
No mention of c: drive problem? Well that’s just something I have to remedy isn’t it? :) No seriously, I was crumbling my toes when I realized it was planted right there on my previously tidy c: drive. I understand this is free without charge, but I’m telling ya, if I were a paying customer! :)
July 31st, 2005 at 3:48 pm
I am so disappointed with this game. I really wished I could even play it. I have downloaded it with bittorrent twice totally for over 4gb of upload and download bandwidth. Both times, the installer has been corrupt.
This game is officially the biggest waste of time I have ever experienced with a modern game.
July 31st, 2005 at 6:34 pm
I’d suggest checking out the help and troubleshooting page, which may have a solution for what’s wrong with your download. Sorry to hear it’s been frustrating for you to get a hold of the installer.