Cool! I never thought of applying the sort of turn-based real-time system in SteamBirds to a soccer game, but it makes so much sense!

I had a dream last night where I was watching an unfinished behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of a French-themed notgame designed by Raph Koster.

I have actually designed a real-time programming concept (when discussing such a feature in a Unity beta group). I should find a programmer and make a working mock-up of this concept to see if it would actually work. It was specifically designed with Unity in mind, though. So it's probably not as ideal as it could be. Though I think it would make programming a lot more fluent -and a lot more fun- for many people.

I'd be very interested in hearing your idea. Would you be willing to share it on this forum.

Just found this.

You can play it here:
http://1110.n01se.net/

Inspired by this:
http://xkcd.com/1110/

Nothing to do but explore.

Bret Victor has a new article up on his site, and it is so awesome:

Learnable Programming

YES!!

A lot of the stuff that we want, he talks about being a necessity. Now how do we make this actually happen...

Welcome! I like your blog and your pixel art.

That makes sense. I have noticed that he has a very widely encompassing view of what games are and could be. I especially appreciated his series of posts putting other game bloggers' definitions of "game" in the wider context of various "aesthetics" of gameplay.

I have only played the first episode of The Walking Dead. I liked it. Except for when it asks us to make Big Choices. Those moments felt incongruous with the entertaining atmosphere of comic strip pulp. But other than that, I think it does a great job at being a story that you play, rather than read or watch. Puzzles and problems occur naturally in many stories. Part of the fun of reading is wondering "how will the hero solve that?" So there's no reason to exclude such elements from a story-game.

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I should actually play some of these games instead of just reading about them...

It's been a while since I've really played a game.

I think it's amusingly skewed. What is shoved into the corner as "Peace" seems to me much bigger than the categories of "War", "Challenge", and "Puzzle".

Would Bunni be an example of a "Peace" RTS?

I guess I just read into it whatever I want to believe he's saying.

I interpreted it as "You have this existing story, The Walking Dead, and you want to make an interactive version of it. What do you choose? An adventure game? An RPG? Or something else?". The idea that there is something else is inspiring to me.

Here's a new article from iHobo, about the under-explored potential of games of "Peace" (notgames):
http://blog.ihobo.com/2012/09/war-and-peace-regimes-of-play.html

As opposed to "War", "Challenge", or "Puzzle", there is "Peace", and that is where the most innovation is happening now.

Art/games since 2005 (the year of both Façade and The Endless Forest) have been experimenting with what can be offered in this space, with Dear Esther and Proteus being recent additions to the artistic exploration of the kinds of thin play only possible under a Peaceful regime. It seems far more likely that innovative play experiences will come out of this side of the regimes of play than out of the well-worn track of War, Challenge and Puzzle

It's interesting to see the many ways that traditional game design thinkers conceptualize notgames.

I have to say, the reason I shared this (and I think the reason the author posted this) was not to promote RPG gameplay, but to promote the idea of removing game mechanics entirely from story games. Both adventure puzzle gameplay and hack'n'slash gameplay are diversions from the story, and (as I see from your responses) are often unappealing to some portion of the potential audience. So get rid of it entirely.

Here's that quote again:

In playing The Walking Dead, I want the experience to be nodal. I don’t particularly care about finding a spark plug to shatter a window, or having lots of checking-in conversations with characters that go nowhere. I don’t want to have to solve the puzzle of getting Kenny to leave his chair so that I can get at a map. That’s just noise. I want the experience to only be about the big choices, and for those choices to make sense. I want to feel as though there is a way to find the true course, and for every conversation to be important.

I just found this nice article from the What Games Are blog:
http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/09/great-story-bad-game-should-the-walking-dead-be-nodal.html

Basically, it talks about why adventure games are boring, and how you really need either dynamic gameplay (like RPGs) to carry it along, or get rid of the game-y busywork entirely (like notgames).

Good stuff.

In playing The Walking Dead, I want the experience to be nodal. I don’t particularly care about finding a spark plug to shatter a window, or having lots of checking-in conversations with characters that go nowhere. I don’t want to have to solve the puzzle of getting Kenny to leave his chair so that I can get at a map. That’s just noise. I want the experience to only be about the big choices, and for those choices to make sense. I want to feel as though there is a way to find the true course, and for every conversation to be important.

Even if that makes it shorter, it would be a far better experience. I feel that the next phase of interactive fiction needs to go this way.

I played Noctis until my ship ran out of fuel and I couldn't figure out how to get more.

I liked it when the surf came up to my avatar's feet.

I tested on Windows 7, and the scroll wheel is clickable in other applications (like Firefox). It has a 2.6 GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM, and I don't know how to check the GPU.

I won't be offended if you choose not to address my feedback. Do what you will. I hope other people are able to appreciate it better.