Allen Varney Legacy Author, Author at The Escapist

Mobile Gaming

Un-Laming Phone Games

If mobile phones are the hallmark of our high-tech networked age, why do most of their games date from 1987? Check this June ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorDecember 5, 2006

Block Party

StarForce Must Die

I think all responsible should have their heads cut off and sent to their mothers. They are scum and should be accountable for ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorNovember 21, 2006

Editor's Choice

Red vs. Blue Makes Green

You have to wonder, why doesn’t Cartoon Network produce its shows the way Rooster Teeth Productions creates its comedy hit machinima series Red ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorOctober 24, 2006

With A Thousand Avatars

My Hindu Shooter

Regarding the pacifist first-person shooter I designed in 2000-2001 to teach Hindu principles of non-violence using the Unreal Engine, you may justly feel ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorOctober 10, 2006

All in the Cards

Trading (Web) Cards

In a career riddled with mistakes of minor consequence, I look back at 1980 as the one blunder of colossal magnitude that proved ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorOctober 3, 2006

Refrigerators to Eskimos ...

Feelies

Woohoo! Just look at all the cool stuff in these game boxes: ” Full-color cloth maps of Britannia, setting for Origin’s Ultima roleplaying ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorSeptember 12, 2006

Sixteen Ton - Whaddya Get?

The Wideload Way

Game publishers offer an interesting incentive plan: “Work like a slave for two or three years to ship this game, and as a ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorSeptember 5, 2006

Ubisoft: Ubi, Uber, Uni

Ubisourcing

Next time you eat lunch with coworkers, ask them, apropos of nothing, “What do you think of outsourcing?” Watch what happens. Some people ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorAugust 15, 2006

In Too Deep

Immersion Unexplained

“My freshman college roommate bought Civilization when it came out in ’91,” my friend Rob recalls. “We brought it back to his dad’s ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorAugust 8, 2006

Against the Gods

Raph Koster on Fire

Raphael Koster is a prolific theorist in the young field of massively multiplayer online game design. For many years, he has developed his ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorJuly 25, 2006

In Spaaaace!

Wing Leader

Chicago, summer 1990. The quiet aisles of the Consumer Electronics Show grew suddenly loud when Origin Systems turned on its sound system. Stirring ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorJuly 18, 2006

2020 Redux

Lifegame 2.0

The least controversial article I ever wrote – that anyone noticed, anyway – was “Lifegame 2020” in The Escapist issue 5. That piece, ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorJuly 11, 2006

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