Cthulhu Thursday: Cthulhu Video Games
Sadly this is going to be my last Cthulhu Thursday for a while now 😦 as I’m a bit busy on a number of project, including Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land – which means that most days are Cthulhu ones for me now! 🙂
I wanted to end on a summary of all the Cthulhu-esqe video games there are.  However I’ve not been able to find a definitive resource that lists them all, but there are some good lists.
There is this one on the CthulhuWiki, a good list on HPLovecraft.com and also on this site, Games of Cthulhu. Â It would be good to have the time to unify this and update it.
Not only is there a list of games on Games of Cthulhu, but they seem to make a game too, the card-style video game, Necronomicon, which you can play! (There is also the iPhone game of the same name but developed by different people)  There is also Cthulhu Saves the World and the Elder  Signs: Omen for iOS.
Here’s a few choice screenshots from the selection…
From the grandfather of survival horror games, Alone in the Dark:
Alone in the Dark
The 1995 PC game, Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice…
Prisoner of Ice
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corner of the Earth
Update!Out game is now out if you want to join us in the Wasted Land…
A hideous hybrid creature emerges from the mustard gas... (iPad screenshot)
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also for more Cthulhu news, sign up to the cthulhuHQ twitter feed. Enjoy!)
I Know Its E3….but can we have Fair Trade Coltan?
When I designed Savage Moon, one of the minerals that you mined from the alien moons was Coltan, this was a subtle attempt to link, via the game’s narrative, the mineral to conflict.  At the heart of Savage Moon’s story is that we (humans) were the baddies, taking resources from aliens to feed our habit.  The unspoken plot-line being that we’d exhausted the resources on earth…
It’s E3 now and the focus will be on new games and technology to play them.  I love games and I love playing them, so yes I’ll be seeing what is going down there.  But I also want to take a moment to consider that some of that technology is being built using minerals like Coltan, some of which is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo  – lots of which is being torn from the land and its people:
The major UN investigation into the war explained how it happened. They said bluntly and factually that “armies of business” had invaded Congo to pillage its resources and sell them to the knowing West. The most valuable loot is coltan, which is used to make the metal in our mobile phones and games consoles and laptops. The “armies of business” fought and killed to control the mines and send it to us. The UN listed all the major Western corporations responsible, and said if they were stopped, it would largely end the war.
So it is time we started to ask where the Coltan in our mobiles came from. If there was a will to know, we’d know. Â We can create that will by asking the people who make and sell gadgets and electronic devices where the Coltan in them comes from. Â We can take action to help those impacted by our digital push.
Its worked well for tea and the FSC logo worked well for wood (according to Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, anyway) – why not Coltan?
Spilt Milk Post-Mortem Update IV
Part IV (One and Two here, missed three):
The Beta Players (not a band!) all got an invite too, though spread out as they were this was obviously more an act to acknowledge their input and value than an honest hope they’d be able to turn up. We picked a venue: the Southbank in London, during a lovely sunny weekend while the Festival of Britain was running. We were excited, and announced it on twitter too – basically anyone who wanted to could come, and if they brought their iWhatever they’d get the latest build for free.
So the day came, and we had 8 or 9 people turn up. Not bad, to be honest, though a tiny piece of me wanted it to be a surprising success. We got tons of great feedback, had a great time, made new friends and generally lived on a praise-fuelled high for a few days afterwards. We also got some genuinely useful feedback about the game (particularly the rules for spawning the Invincibility powerup in Deadline mode, now tied to the clock) and recorded the whole thing for posterity (and also for inclusion in our upcoming trailer. More on that in another diary.)
Is Sony making the NGP more like a Smart Phone?
While thinking about Sony’s games strategy and then focusing in on their mobile games area, this caught my eye:
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Sony may be planning to halve the originally intended amount of RAM in the NGP handheld, as a means to reduce the device’s price.
French website 01net claims that the version of the NGP without 3G capabilities will only feature 256MB instead of 512MB RAM. The amount of VRAM graphics memory is reported to stand at 128MB.
It is also suggested that the cheaper non-3G model will not include internal flash memory, but instead rely on a traditional memory stick. The site suggests that this is unlikely to be too problematic, while claiming that the size of the console’s operating system has also been cut.
The speculation on the source site is that this is to compete with the 3DS – which it could be. But I’d like to suggest that it is more about trying to position the NGP as a smart-phone-like device. If Sony wanted to put space between the NGP and other mobile devices then upping the power would be a strategy. However by narrowing the gap between say an iPhone 4 and the NGP (in price terms) you position it as an alternative.
the NGP
Cthulhu Thursday: Sanitarium
This new film project based on Lovecraft’s work looks interesting!
Arkham Sanitarium is an anthology of three short stories faithfully adapted from the works of H.P. Lovecraft – each of the three stories is set in 1930’s New England (specifically Providence, Rhode Island and the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts). The stories are connected by an original ‘wraparound’ story. In this story – set in the 1950’s – Alice Crow investigates the strange stories surrounding the infamous Arkham Sanitarium.
IMAGE FROM H.P. LOVECRAFT'S ARKHAM SANITARIUM!
Hat-tip to Mike D for the link.
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also for more Cthulhu news, sign up to the cthulhuHQ twitter feed. Enjoy!)
Martha from Wellcome did what I hear was a great talk at the Science Communication Conference, and she’s done a blog post about it too:
Games can educate, they can impart information to the player. They can do more than that, though, they can really engage the player, get them to think and get them to actually use what they’ve learnt in order to successfully play they game.
They are experimental, some times almost mirroring the scientific process of forming a hypotheses and then testing it. This is true of games from Resident Evil (OK, this time, I’m going to try running past the chainsaw wielding zombie maniac to grab the shotgun shells, then hiding out here and using them from a distance to wipe him out. Let’s test it…) to Angry Birds (I reckon if I hit that wooden bit, it will topple the tower over towards me and I’ll have a clear shot at that bastard chuckling pig with a helmet sat in the middle).
They can even be used for genuine scientific research (don’t believe me? Read on…). Moreover, they are (usually) fun, a motivating factor in making people actually want to get involved. And knowing that people are having fun and doing something that is improving their knowledge and understanding has to make you feel good, right?
Thoughts on Sony’s Mobile Gaming Strategy
Following a previous look at Sony’s gaming strategy, I wanted to think a little more about their approach to mobile gaming. I had said before that the PSPgo was a good games machine and sad it has been discontinued. However back in the PSP days, before smart phones, Sony only really had one mobile games platform. Now it has 2 – the PSP, the Xperia and is planning to launch the PSP2 also. This gives it 2/3 games platforms at least, and assuming it iterates the Xperia to new versions – possibly even more. To me this creates a degree of confusion – what is the games platform they suggest? Is the Xperia a games console or a phone – or a phone for gamers? (‘cos smart phones are really both) Possible answers to this question has echoes of the N-Gage and its move from being sold as a games console to being a phone for gamers. I say this because if the Xperia is the mobile games machine you need – then why buy a PSP(2)? These are the questions being asked…
So what’s it gonna be, folks? It’s a little bit difficult to judge at the moment since most of these specs (especially on the XPERIA Play,) are still technically unannounced. We’d like to say you’d be better off with the phone if you’d like more across-the-board functionality, going with the NGP if you want games specifically, but it’s not that simple. If you could find a way to connect the NGP to a 3G or 4G network, it appears as though it’d be a superior machine as far as social interaction goes (isn’t that strange?) But when it comes to apps further reaching than what PlayStation and its affiliates are going to offer, it appears that the XPERIA Play might be better suited to your needs, especially since it’s got a MUCH better chance of being jailbroken within the first 10 minutes of its release, leaving you open to thousands of not only games, but apps that can do much more than skateboarding on a screen.
Currently Enjoying: Dungeon Raid
I’m currently really enjoying Dungeon Raid on iPhone/iPod – a really nice little game that strips the level-up element from an RPG and combines it with a puzzle game. Â It’s great fun. Â A quote from this review gives a flavor of the game:
You begin each game of Dungeon Raid with a unique text introduction. For example, in one game you may be setting out on a vision quest, and in another you’ve accidentally opened an inter-dimensional portal. Either way, the results are the same: You must battle nameless, faceless monsters and survive for as long as possible.
Skull and bones.
In a typical Match-3 setup, you’re faced with a board full of icons. Instead of swapping them, though, you have to trace a line between at least three to make them disappear off the board. Potions restore your health, shields add to your defense, and gold lets you buy new items. You can also destroy enemies by tracing through skull icons, along with sword icons that increase your attack level.
Horror in Video Games
I’ve been writing some stuff over on the Red Wasp Design blog looking more at the idea of horror and how it relates to the video games genre. If you are interested, then here are the links…
THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. …
Then I quoted some more and gave a link to a short film on the subject.  Then I took to discussion into the realm of perspective; in literature you write from the 1st, 2rd or 3rd person view point.  In games we really only have two – 1st and 3rd.  How you view the events/action, I think, changes how the horror works…
In a 3rd person game you see the body of the character you control, so there is a slight dislocation between your view and theirs, but its not long before you see them as you, so when your character gets hurt, so you you.  The same happens in 1st person, however because you don’t see the body of the character as much (if at all) then there is (I feel) a slight dislocation of the damage done to your character.  For horror games, this is a crucial way to evoke fear.
More horror media, this time from film...
Cthulhu Thursday: Pics from This Week in Hell
This week I thought I’d keep it simple and just share some of the best images related to Cthulhu that I’ve come across online. Oh the things I see…
We start with a de-motivational poster:
Insanity Cometh (from the Lovecraftsman)
Yes, indeed. But the dark-side over, here comes the fun things:
Something to eat…
Nom-thulu
Something to wear…
Mi-Go Necklace
Something to hug…
The Call of Pikachu Cthulhu
A Great Becoming... 