Vex Appeal is a weblog and collection of projects by Guy Parsons, a game designer, online community and digital strategy dude in London, England. Read more about the saucy butcher boy here.

Portrait of the artist as a young man.

subscribe to VA by feed or email by clicking the thingy:



projects:

law 37 / sleeper cell / lets change the game 101 things in 1001 days
psychopatch
LOLgod

elsewhere on the internets:

flickr
myspace
zoominfo
linkedin
facebook

guy.lewis.parsons@gmail.com

vexy young things:

jey biddulph
mike jewell
roo reynolds
dan hon
adrian hon
naomi alderman
steve peters

previously on vexappeal:

Back soon... Free Moshi Monsters Codes Spokeo... or spookeo, more like I'm Prove Very Where J.C Leyendecker and Team Fortress 2 Train of thought "Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin..." Links for FAME people They Tell Stories Ffffudging it slightly

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from Guy P'sons. Make your own badge here.

Vex Appeal

Modular gaming
Thursday, October 18, 2007

So, you know how the idea of 'episodic gaming' is to break up your usual 20+ hour frag-fests into smaller, more digestible chunks? Well, I'm thinking a bit about modular gaming, which is the opposite - coalescing small chunks of game into a coherent and satisfying whole, primarily using narrative as an intra-game glue.

So, to take the recent Half-Life 2, Episode 2, (Manchester United nil) as an example, it's really a mix of different games tied together through plot:

  • combat
  • physics puzzles
  • driving games
  • throwing/accuracy challenges
  • and a few more besides
When I was at Come Out And Play, it struck me that it would be great if you could tie together all these great live games into one huge, more diverse live experience - or perhaps as multiple events within a larger ARG.

Likewise, people are very excited about dem new-fangled "casual games" - you know, your Bejeweled and iSketch and that kind of thing. I wonder if you could glue these kind of casual games together, though, to become more than the sum of their parts. Some people might say that this would take the "casual" out of "casual game", but I'm not so sure - I think using this style of gameplay in the context of something like Kingdom Of Lothing (basically just a going-places-and-killing-monsters-grind, albeit an hilarious one) could be deeply awesome.

So yes, making a light-but-lengthy web/browser-based game, consisting of a variety of minigames, all tied together with plot and elements that persist for the duration? This, I think, would be worth trying - maybe we'll see Miniclip or Kongregate try it soon...

Labels: , , ,

comments (0) | permalink