_Scary Games & Scary Days_

Rinku Hero

I later heard that the tradition may be continued by Chaos Nyte. Hopefully Scary Game 3 will add to the series' legacy.

The changes to this issue are minimal but worth noting. I've reorganized this contents format to simplified it: media is on the left, columns are on the right, reviews and articles are due south. I've also added avatars of each writer (see above for mine). Charbile the Great created the avatars, except for the Hachi-Roku one, which I created.

You'll also notice that a lot of the content of this issue came from my pen. This isn't necessarily bad, but I'd like to increase the value of this magazine beyond what a single author can do, and for that more submission of material by the readership is necessary. Pepsi Ranger wrote an inspiring request for involvement in this magazine, which can be found here. Read that, read the about page, and if you wish to contribute content, email me with your ideas.

The reason this is important to do is that game design is still largely an undiscovered country, with its potential dormant, and waiting. Here is a quote by one of the first computer game designers:

"Until now, games in general and computer games in particular have not been very impressive as art forms. The computer games especially are downright puerile. This is because the technology of computer games has been in the hands of technologists, not artists. These guys (and they are almost all male) can write beautiful operating systems, languages, linking loaders, and other technological wonders, but artistic flair has heretofore been treated as subordinate to technical prowess."
~Chris Crawford, in The Art of Computer Game Design.

Keep in mind, this was written *over twenty years ago*, in 1982, and it is still -- for the most part -- accurate of the situation today. Eventually, like Nietzsche pronouncing God dead, Crawford went on to pronounce the game industry dead. And it has been dead for about a decade now. With rare (and getting rarer) exceptions, what we have now in the commercial game world are not new games, but old games in new clothes, over and over, with all true advancement and progress aborted. They're not even copies of copies anymore, they're copies of copies of copies. If these scary days, as we might call them, are to change, then they will have to be changed by us and those like us, individual game designers, but only after we have rediscovered, and perhaps articulated for the first time, what games are and should be. It is with this in mind that I wrote my design article this month.

The Mathematical Basis of Game Design
Here I present a philosophical definition of games qua artform, and in specific I go into a certain aspect of them -- their essentially mathematical nature.
(RinkuHero)

Ludcept
An article on the term ludcept, which is "just as long as it needs to be."
(Charbile)

An Interview with PK-Fortis
Harlock finally takes up his job as dark inquisitor.
(HarlockHero)

A Note on Previews
Why we're going to stop doing previews of games, with apologies to those who submitted previews.
(RinkuHero)

A Review of Time Flies
The infamous moderator of the Zantetskuken boards recently released the final Ohrrpgce version of Time Flies. Dr. Shizuma reviews it.
(Dr. Shizuma)

A Review/Article of Walthros
Pepsi Ranger's review of Walthros also includes advice on game design in general, so it's known as a Review/Article.
(PepsiRanger)

Triple Review of Walthros, Dimensions 1, and Motherland
An extensive triple review and of three recent Ohrrpgce releases, with over 100 screenshots, and an exclusive on why Charbile is, contrary to common sense, a Communist villain of the most vile type.
(RinkuHero)