AIR + PBBGs
With the release of AIR for Linux, Adobe has given us a very interesting piece of software for us to play with and attempt to work into our games. Myself, working mainly as a Actionscript developer, find this app to offer a wealth of potential to us.
For those that don’t know what AIR is, it simply put is a desktop widget system. But it much more than that. It offers the user the chance to interact with your web content from their desktop. Just imagine a player getting a notification in the corner of their screen that they have been attacked in game, or that their research has completed or they have new mail. Imagine that they could easily respond or perform a new action using the same interface such as reply to the map, check their status, or attack back.
This could be a big step for game design.
But I’m more curious as to what everyone elses thoughts on this is. This AIR widget of course wouldn’t be the core of your game. But just a way to always let your players interact with the game.
Current state of PBBGs
I am sad. Of late, I’ve been signing up to a late of different web games that promise to be unique, addictive, fun… So far these games have lied to me. Or the developers of these games are lying to themselves. The majority of games out there seem to largely be TornCity clones (Does anyone know the first big game of this type? TC was the first I noticed). And not even creative clones. Just clones. Sometimes with a better interface. Sometime with a worse one.
Then you have your strats. Clones of Tarvian (Again, anyone know the first game of this type in it’s genre?).
Oh and I can’t forget the slew of games that have maps that you control your character on. Some of these games are pretty damn cool, but again, the vast majority are clones and just suck.
Here’s what I do. I go to the voting sites and sign up to the top 5 games if I haven’t played them before. I give most of these games two or three days of play. And sadly only one of the new ones I’ve start (Omerta) has kept my attention.
Am I the only one with this problem? I know PBBGs are difficult to design (I’ve actually pushed my own development back again to learn more advanced PHP), and I know that coming up with original, and fun idea’s can be difficult, but com on! We are a large community. Or the last few years I’ve considered PBBGs to be the one last adventurous computer gaming platform, but it is starting to seem to me I may have been wrong.
So, let us bring this post to a point: What are your views on this? Where do you think PBBGs are now and how does the future look? Are we cursed to just clone each other, each time using slightly better interfaces and tech? Has gameplay advanced stalled? And if it has, do you think it’s from laziness of developers or technical hurdles?
