--Crisis in the Middle East: Mapping the Conflict (Truth Laid Bear)While the computer-generated flyovers do help give me some sense of geography on those rare occasions when I watch TV news, I'm really never satisifed unless I can click, click, click.
The house that Gates built will be launching XNA Game Studio Express, a set of (dumbed-down) development tools that will allow hobbyists and their ilk to develop games for both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Initially, these homebrew (is it still considered "homebrew" if you're using official tools?) games will only be playable to other coders part of a so-called "Creator's Club," a nice way to say that Microsoft will charge you $99 for a one-year subscription to play such games. --Microsoft to Let Regular Joes Develop Xbox Games (Gizmodo)I'm not surprised Microsoft wants a piece of this pie.
The following list is made up of a few things I've noticed in a lot of the interactive fiction games I've tested or tried out. I've tried these games for reasons I can't entirely fathom; admittedly, it's easier and leaves fewer disfiguring scars than self-flagellation. It is not necessarily any less painful though. --Michael J. Coyne --First-Timer FoiblesFrom a string of good narrative-related links on Grand Text Auto.
