Not mine, but an interesting read about LA Noire. Kind of half game reivew, half discussion on story telling in games.

I found an interesting blog post about video games and the direction of the market and design related to board games. You can read it here, and I suggest you do, the author makes some very good points about things possibly not turning out well for video games. He mentions the consolidation of the game publishers, which is already happening in video games, there are a couple huge publishers that pump out a lot of games, which leads to a lack of innovation, which also already happens.

But I think he missed one big point, it is much easier for a small independent gaming company to make a quality game, release it, and have it become ‘successful’, than it is for a small independent company to create a release a quality board game. Granted success has a lot of different meanings, but there are big differences in teh two markets when it comes to building and distributing the product. With a board game there are physical items that need to be manufactured, packaged and then sold at a store, well you could sell them online as well, but you still need a bunch of storage space at least. With a video game, all you need is some computers and some programmers and artists, which could be all the same person. The cost and commitment is much lower. With the loads of different platforms for gaming, and different distribution options, even on the same system, an independent company can make an impact. Look at Braid or Sins of a Solar Empire for example. Braid is one of my favorite games on the Xbox 360, it is just so beautifully done, the art, the music, the gameplay, it all works together so well. I haven’t had a chance to play Sins of a Solar Empire yet, but some of my friends are big fans. Thats a big game, and it supposedly was built on a budget of less than a million dollars, and they built their own graphics engine.

Anyways, I was just trying to point out that I don’t think it’s the end of the world for video games. I think there are a lot more talented people with good ideas and the ambition to try and make their visions playable. Heck, even board games are making a comeback with the more hardcore style games, although Europe still seems to be making the funnest games.