What if the great events in history had turned out differently? How would the world today be changed?
Niall Ferguson wonders about this a lot. He's a well-known economic historian at Harvard, and a champion of "counterfactual thinking," or the re-imagining of major historical events, with the variables slightly tweaked. In a 1999 book Virtual Histories, Ferguson edited a collection of delightfully weird counterfactual hypotheses. One essay argued that if Mikhail Gorbachev had never existed, the USSR would still exist today. Another posited an alternative 18th century in which Britain allows its colonies to develop their own parliaments -- so the Americans never revolt, and the USA never exists.
Ferguson thinks becoming skilled at counterfactual thinking is helpfujl to any sort of job that requires thinking along 'what if' lines. And what does this have to do with video games?
Heres what he had to say,
"It'll undoubtedly be controversial. But it will also, he expects, be humbling. The power of counterfactual thinking is that forces us to step outside of our comfort zones. When we think about historical events, we have 20/20 hindsight -- so we forget how confusing and uncertain they were at the time. In 1943, nobody really knew how strong Germany was, or what Stalin was thinking. In modern conflicts, we often have a similarly false sense of surety -- too much confidence in our ability to predict the outcome of major events."
"When we play with sims, they knock us off our pedestals -- because crazy things usually happen we don't predict. Yet the chaos is useful, because we can run the same situation again and again, changing one little thing each time, until we've war-gamed it deeply and understand it better than ever. "
He finally added,
"Serious games are the next big platform," he says. Which might be the biggest counterfactual of all."
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A gorgeous real-world Miraidon from Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has been created in Japan by the Toyota Engineering Society.
JDR thinks the gaming industry needs more licensed IPs. It's basically a cry for Firefly: The Game, and why not? JDR delves deeper into why more isn't adapted for the interactive screen.
Nah. Video games are their own thing they wouldn't be improved by leeching off Hollywood more.
Read the article and it gives no mention of the many problems prevalent with licensed IPs, such as games and dlc being delisted when their licenses expire, Adult Swim games being the most recent example.
Only if they're good, if its going to be a 2D sprite art game, you can get away with a small team and small budget. But if you're going to make it a 3D polygonal game, you're going to need a large team with a large budget, and often times these licensed games are quickly pushed out the door, unpolished, rough, boring, bland, snorefest at best, and downright broken at worst.
We have an Indiana Jones and James Bond game currently being developed by two veteran teams with I assume fairly sizeable budgets. Let's hope they turn out to be worthwhile.
A new Mad Max game to coincide with the upcoming film would have been awesome. I loved the first game, I'm guessing it didn't sell too well as they never bothered following it up.
"The Game Music Foundation are today very proud and pleased to announce an additional concert, circling back to the roots of Game Muisic Festival in Poland. On April 28th, 2024, the National Forum of Music in Wroclaw will once again become a place to celebrate the art of video game music, featuring scores from The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II." - The Game Music Foundation.
Its a very interesting article