Everbody knows about the big internet boom (and bust) of the early oughtties. Basically, we had a lot of startups making internet-related stuff. And a lot of it was funded by stupid money so the whole thing crashed. But who remembers the
multimedia boom in the mid-nineties? Well, I do! Those were the glory days when Starbucks was still hip, and people were actually impressed if you had a cell phone.
About the time CD-ROM drives started coming preinstalled on new PCs, a whole industry of software and multimedia development sprang up. CD-ROMs were huge when they arrived. You could put just about anything on a CD and suddenly have a product that made you a fortune. Hundreds of small studios, like the one I worked for, thrived by putting together content to match the whims of cash-hungry publishing clients. The stupid money flowed. And then eventually the stupid money dried up, because like all very cool technologies only a small subset of the ideas to exploit it panned out.
I've still kept my little fetish for the shiny discs. I can push a lot of cool stuff onto those 640 megabytes. And once I put the disc in your hands, all that data is there for your immediate pleasure. No waiting around for downloads. No dependance on cables or ether, some far away web server or radio station. You get it all in one atomic transaction, and then it's your's forever. Or at least until the media rots.
And yet, there's trouble. Just as video killed the radio star, internet distribution may soon kill the discs. Some people are saying that games will be mostly sold from the internet in the next five years, because everybody's going to have broadband, and it's more efficient to get games to people that way. I'd rather buy songs off iTunes or Rhapsody these days, especially with the physical media priced at twenty bucks like a test to see who is chump enough to buy it.
Is the disc dying? There is one big reason to put things on a disc that trumps the efficiency and convenience of the internet.
Love.
Yes, I said it, and I meant it. We put songs, games, pictures, and movies onto something physical because we love them. We want it to be more than just data. A jewel case, so aptly named, can be a miniature shrine and sanctuary for that beloved data. It gives us something real to admire in our hands and place smugly into our collections. This is why I'm going to pay the twenty chumpbucks for that latest Depeche Mode CD when I get around to it. I've got all their other albums starting with
Speak & Spell, and I can't break the lovechain by dumping downloaded tracks onto a crummy CDR. Well, I could, but it just wouldn't feel right. When it comes to our own Caravellian creations, the presses must roll even if they are just vanity presses. Last week, I sent Larry Murk and all the contributors for
Perfection our finely packaged versions of Larry's Perfectionist vision. We do this to celebrate our little accomplishments. It makes a nice trophy to show that something came of the time spent.
Let me go count how many
Perfection CDs I've got left. I'll be right back...
Twenty-Five Perfection CDs Left
Okay, there were 26, but I took one out for myself and put it in the trophy case. Now suppose you wanted to buy a
Perfection CD, how would you do it? Well, you couldn't. It's impossible to buy one and probably always will be. I've thought about it, and it's too much work to sell and ship every
Smitemaster's Selection we produce individually, so we're not going to do it. That's the bad news. Don't worry, though. The bad news was bad, but the good news is gooder.
Smitemaster's Selection CD Subscriptions
Smitemaster's Selection CDs can now be sent to your house on a subscription basis. You order the subscription and then we mail you a CD "
issue"
each quarter. You could even just order one issue--the next one we print. Like a regular magazine, we will only print a quantity of issues equal to the amount of subscribers with a small overage. We will ship all the CDs out at one time. So from our side, it's much more efficient and lets the disc dream live on.
But it's better for you too, because we're putting some extra content on the
Smitemaster's Selection CDs. Here's what's coming up on the
Winter 2005 Smitemaster's Selection entitled
Halph Stories. (Yes, I know it's 2006, but Winter started in 2005.)
*
Beethro and the Secret Society, a new hold by Jacob Grinfeld.
*
Halph has a Bad Day, a new hold by Eytan Zweig.
*
The Shadowman - Part 1, a half hour audio drama from the
Dry Smoke and Whispers series.
* Two songs and an interview from Jon Sonnenberg of
Travelogue. (By the way, Jon finished the soundtrack for our upcoming game,
DROD: The City Beneath last month.)
* Demos of new indie shareware titles.
* And a few other nifty odds and ends that will come together at the last second.
"
What's this audio drama stuff?"
, you say. I have for a long time been enamored with the audio drama form of storytelling. It's just a theatrical production brought to life with sound. The artform began with early radio programming. Shows like
The Shadow,
Dimension X, or
Fibber McGee and Molly were audio-only predecessors of today's television programming. While mainstream tastes have moved on, there is a movement of audio drama production today that parallels what indie game developers are doing. You make something small with a microscopic budget, but you make it how you want without external pressures to justify a huge investment. Within those parameters, producers have more creative freedom, and on occasion you'll see something wonderfully different appear.
Marc Rose and his crew have been slaving away on the
Dry Smoke and Whispers world for at least as long as we have on DROD. It's a crazy-huge universe of stories, characters, and events, comparable in scope and detail to something like
Star Wars.
Dry Smoke has won the 2004 Mark Time Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre, and is broadcast on XM radio. The first part of one
Drysmoke story, called the
The Shadowman Saga, is going onto the
Winter Smitemaster's. I think it will give you something interesting to listen to while you're playing DROD. We are currently planning to bring more
Shadowman episodes to the
Smitemaster's CDs in serial fashion.
So you can now sign up for a Smitemaster's Selection subscription. It costs $15 per CD inside the USA, and $18 outside. Shipping is included and accounts for the difference in cost for people outside the USA. If you buy four or more issues at one time, you get 20% off.
A Secret Offer for people reading this by e-mail:
This secret offer can't be revealed publicly on our website, so its text has been omitted here. It was only sent to people who receive the Illumination
by e-mail. We've had a few secret offers like this so far, and there will be more, so getting the Illumination
once each month by e-mail is recommended. If you've got a Caravel Forum account, you can change settings in your profile to receive it. There is also a sign-up form at the top of caravelgames.com.
More Smitemaster's Selection info
I am realizing that there is a lot more I could say about
Smitemaster's Selection, but I've already said so much, and it's probably best to move on.
There Is No Problem that Can't Be Solved with a Really Big Forum
Patrick Fisher, Wesley Chua, Matt Schikore, and I remade the entire drod.net site into something indescribably different. Or I should say that describing it all would bore everyone except maybe the above four people. But here's what's good about the rather drastic changes, and fundamentally more important than just "
we redid the website"
:
Every article on the new web site is generated from a forum post. We've set up hidden boards on the forum that serve as containers for forum posts published as web site articles. So in theory, anybody who knows how to post a message on the forum, can create a page for our website. Patrick or Wesley can just publish the post. We don't really do HTML editing anymore, and it's all very easy. Prediction: the new site will grow like mad with new content.
The old site can briefly be seen at
http://drod.net. But not for long, since that URL will soon redirect to the new site.
The new site
Deflectomundo!
The new contest for February is about creating paths for lasers to travel over a grid. Contestants will compete in a timed trial on the 20th. I encourage everyone to join the contest. Even if you aren't fast enough to win, it can still be fun. I've made a warm-up puzzle for you to try out. I'm a little embarrassed that everybody says it's terribly easy. I'll have to make something a fair bit harder for the actual contest.
Contest info
Topic Picks for February
As usual, a lot of stuff went down on our forum. Here's some highlights:
The Deadlies Winners Announced
A number of player-created holds won awards in different categories of excellence. And the Hold of the Year is...
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=8802
TAPAKAHbI yCaTbIe 2, J'nis Tomb, Journey to the Goblin Kingdom, Arena 3, Figure or Ground
These are all the new holds (level collections) that have been released since the last newsletter. Man, is Larry Murk prolific or what?
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewboard.php?BoardID=11
Contributions from Above
Patrick Fisher, our chief editor for the site, is asking the general populace for site content submissions. You creative types should have a look!
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=8936
Volcano Mod
William Frank, author of the popular Sanctum 2 mod style has made a variation called "
Volcano"
.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=6928
Bloodless DROD
A guy called Swivel has come up with a solution for people who don't like blood in DROD.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=9033
Hex-a-Hop
A game author announced his likable logic puzzler on the forum, and it is getting a great response from those that played it.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=8902
Chronicles of Riddick Movie Unfairly Ignored
Chalks has to know: Why aren't they making a sequel to
Chronicles of Riddick. Is the world just not ready to accept a bald action hero?
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=9086
Deadly Legos of Death
Tailchaser makes a scene with legos.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=8848
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals |
twitch stream |
youtube archive (NSFW)
[Last edited by mrimer at 05-18-2008 05:43 AM]
but since they have 9 other CDs by them I'd guess it's only, er... a question of time. 
