Alan Au Legacy Author, Author at The Escapist

Everything Good Old is New Again

Games get official sequels, spiritual sequels, spin-offs, and remakes even decades after the originals were released, but nostalgia is a funny thing; despite ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorJune 7, 2011

Meant to be Broken?

Misadventures in Role-playing

Lord British is a jerk. First, he hassles you with obscure copy-protection questions, then he doesn’t even have the decency to die properly. ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorMarch 2, 2010

Parting the Digital Sea

Designing Religion

Religion, with its complex social, philosophical, and political ramifications is inextricably connected to the development of human society. It’s no wonder then, that ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorJune 9, 2009

Paid to Play

Button-Mashing Monkeys

Testing unreleased games is both fascinating and mind-numbingly boring. It’s a strange contradiction. Testers get a chance to see the development process unfold ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorJuly 22, 2008

Critical Success, Commercial Flop

X-Com: The Truth Is Out There

X-COM: UFO Defense (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown, or often just “X-Com“) is regarded as one of the all-time classic videogames. IGN rated it ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorMarch 4, 2008

Conventioneering

The Penny Arcade Expo

On the last weekend of August 2007, tens of thousands of gamers descended upon downtown Seattle to attend the annual Penny Arcade Exposition ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorNovember 27, 2007

Raid

Fansy The Famous Bard

In massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) player actions seldom matter. Although developers and publishers tout the persistent aspect of their online worlds, in ...

By Alan Au Legacy AuthorOctober 23, 2007