Allen Varney Legacy Author, Author at The Escapist

Speed Thrills

Bethesda Softworks’ Morrowind roleplaying game has a main quest storyline intended to last 60 to 80 leisurely hours. But if you play Morrowind ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorJuly 4, 2006

New China

Red Blindness

For most of the last 3,000 years, the Chinese were the planet’s most technologically advanced culture. They fell disastrously with the Industrial Revolution, ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorJune 13, 2006

Dungeons & Dollars

Wal-Mart Rules

Do you buy your electronic games at Wal-Mart? Never mind, doesn’t matter. The retail games you buy at GameStop or Best Buy or ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorApril 11, 2006

The Revolutionaries

Metroid Primed

Unerringly, Svengali-like, you can tell if a friend has played the original 1986 Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Pick your target and ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorApril 4, 2006

Ludo, Ergo Sum

My Eyes Glaze Over

Are you a Gamist, a Narrativist or a Simulationist? Do you generally favor Actor, Author or Director stance? Do your chosen reward system, ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorMarch 14, 2006

The World Without Games

I Will Survive

“If you were legally enjoined from creating games, what would you do instead?” The Escapist asked this question of many professional game designers ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorMarch 7, 2006

Wanna Be My Friendster?

Attack of the Parasites

Many online game “communities” feel like those housing subdivisions spreading around every American city like carcinomas on a pancreas. I live in one ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorFebruary 28, 2006

Do You Want to Play a Game?

Les Grognards

By cruel fate you are the only board wargamer in Kankakee, Illinois. No, make that bored wargamer. You’ve set up all three poster-sized ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorDecember 6, 2005

The Home Invasion

Game Design in the Transfigured World

The Argument In the imminent world of fast-constant-ubiquitous net, new reputation economies will pervasively reshape culture as dramatically as the invention of money. ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorNovember 29, 2005

Generation G

When Gamers Breed

Donna and Jack Kidwell’s first recruits to their World of Warcraft guild were their three children, Harrison (12), Epiphany (9), and George (6). ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorNovember 22, 2005

Griefer Nation

Real World Grief

Individualist anarchism, a political philosophy hundreds of years old, has now been conclusively discredited by massively multiplayer online games. These cyber-societies give players ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorNovember 15, 2005

Otaku

The Asian Weird

Observe! My right hand rests on a stack of Bibles. A polygraph cuff encircles my left arm. My brainwaves are being audited by ...

By Allen Varney Legacy AuthorNovember 8, 2005

Posts navigation