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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 40</font></b></font></p>
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              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
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        <p align="center"><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8">Game 
          Programming in the 21st Century<font size="+1"></font></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          <a href="mailto:jhague@dadgum.com">James Hague</a> </font></b></font></p>
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<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.15/">2.15: Livin' With The Sims</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.14/">2.14: To the Extreme</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.13/">2.13: Not Just a Passing Wind</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.12/">2.12: It's Not Easy Being Green</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.11/">2.11: Inside Origin Systems</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.10/">2.10: Game Networking 101</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.9/">2.9: Tell me a Story</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.8/">2.8: Anatomy of a Video Game</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.7/">2.7: 1999 loonygames Awards</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.6/">2.6: PC Fight Club</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.5/">2.5: Paul Steed '99</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.4/">2.4: Sounds From All Over</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.3/">2.3: Kicking Back with a Bear</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.2/">2.2: End of the Line</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.1/">2.1: American McGee's Alice</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.41/">----- Volume 1 -----</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.41/">1.41: Put a Little Love...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.40/">1.40: Game Programming...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.39/">1.39: More loonygames @ E3!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.38/">1.38: loonygames at E3!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.37/">1.37: The ReRuns Issue</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.36/">1.36: Inside Raven Software</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.35/">1.35: Waking Graeme Devine</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.34/">1.34: Writing the Game</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.33/">1.33: Totally Tribal</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.32/">1.32: Under His Skin</option>
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<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.28/">1.28: Adventures in ASCII</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.27/">1.27: Serious Brass Ones</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.26/">1.26: Two Programs...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.25/">1.25: The Unreal Cliffy B!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.24/">1.24: Gimme Your Money!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.23/">1.23: Old Crusty Gamers</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.22/">1.22: Bugs!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.21/">1.21: 2001</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.20/">1.20: Can't Please Everyone</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.19/">1.19: The Rise and Fall...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.18/">1.18: romuluSngan HoH!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.17/">1.17: A Very Geeky Christmas</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.16/">1.16: 5 Years of Doom!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.15/">1.15: Tune Up Your Game!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.14/">1.14: NT + Games = ???</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.13/">1.13: Blue and Levelord...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.12/">1.12: When It's Done!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.11/">1.11: Hangin' With John Romero!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.10/">1.10: Still Sick of Games</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.9/">1.9: Gettin' Odd with the loonies</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.8/">1.8: LAN Parties...</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.7/">1.7: The Community Summit</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.6/">1.6: DRAW Pardner!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.5/">1.5: Taking Aim at Paul Steed</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.4/">1.4: Play Where You Like!</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.3/">1.3: *Special Duke Issue*</option>
<option value="http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.2/">1.2: Are You Sick of Games?</option>
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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">…popping in a new PlayStation 
          game and playing in less than a minute…with having to run an installer 
          for the latest PC title and having it misdetect your hardware.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">…pulling out a Palm Pilot 
          and jotting a few notes…with waiting for your PC to boot (and run ScanDisk 
          because you forgot to choose &quot;Shut Down&quot; before pulling the 
          plug last time).</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">…having the same zero-maintenance 
          Game Boy all through high school and college…with trying to figure out 
          why your month-old system seems to be generally unstable after an afternoon 

          of downloading demos.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It would be easy to go on 
          for pages, only to get frothing mail exclaiming that consoles most certainly 
          aren’t as useful as a Gateway box, especially when it comes to word 
          processing. The thing is, though, that it wouldn’t take a whole lot 
          to convert a next generation game console into a super dee-luxe old-skool 
          Coleco Adam that hooks to your HDTV home theatre. Put in the SonyWord 
          DVD, and be writing the Great American Game Design Document in less 
          than thirty seconds, with files saved on a 32 megabyte MP3 memory stick. 
          Now <i>that’s</i> appealing. What was an operating system used for, 
          again?</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm…you could probably write 
          <i>some</i> sort of playable game with NuonBASIC and 32 MB, too. Didn’t 
          <b>Civilization</b> squeeze into 32 MB? Or was that 64?</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Game Designers Are Going 
          to Get Older</b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, this one’s a safe bet, 
          but it’s even more interesting than it is obvious. Much as you might 
          want to sputter a denial while guzzling Dr. Pepper and mousing through 
          EverQuest, a majority of popular computer games are designed for People 
          With No Lives &trade;.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Forget about unbearably long 
          films like <i>Gettysburg</i>; games like <b>Final Fantasy VII</b> and 
          <b>Baldur’s Gate</b> and <b>Metal Gear Solid</b> have playing times 
          in the twenty to one-hundred hour range. If you’re single, give game 
          playing a high priority, and don’t want to dash home to an empty apartment, 
          then this isn’t an issue. But get an SO, maybe a kid (yee-haw!), or 
          get involved in another time consuming hobby and those blocks of three 
          or four hours are harder to come by. Six months after you buy it, you’re 
          still working on <b>Half-Life</b>.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The old saw is that nobody 
          ever writes a good novel before the age of 30, or even 40. With game 
          designers, it’s the opposite. There are precious few over the age of 
          35, and average level designer is perhaps 10 or 11 years younger than 
          that. How will their tastes change as they get older? Will &quot;fifty 
          hours of linear gameplay&quot; still be a priority? Will there still 
          be a preoccupation with women in leather halter tops? Will the designers 
          at id start to resemble the comic book shopkeeper of <i>The Simpsons</i>? 
          Or will middle aged marketing sensibilities settle in, making the justification 
          for the leather halter tops be &quot;because that’s what’ll be popular 
          with the kiddies.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Regardless, someday we’ll 
          be seeing what kind of designs come from a fifty year old with three 
          and half decades of gaming behind him. Somebody who burned out on <i>Star 
          Trek</i> novels and Dungeons &amp; Dragons fifteen years back. Somebody 
          who wants games that can be played in smaller doses, but aren’t necessarily 
          simplistic. Somebody with over the top surrealist ideas that may turn 
          out to be the Frank Lloyd Wright of game design. Or maybe with the wisdom 
          of age will come the realization that there’s no creative fulfillment 
          in designing games, as Greg Johnson (of <b>Toejam and Earl</b> fame) 
          claimed a few years ago.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">We’ll see.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>- 
          James Hague is a programmer for <a href="http://www.volition-inc.com">Volition</a> 
          by day, and the sole programmer at his shareware company <a href="http://www.dadgum.com">Dadgum 
          Games</a> by night.</i></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">References</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">1. Fateman, Richard J. Reply 
          to an editorial. ACM SIGSAM Bulletin, 25 (March 1973), pp. 9-11.</font></p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Illustration &copy; 1999 Michael Krahulik. This article is &copy; 1999 
        James Hague. All other content is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
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