Three Moves Ahead

Having not seen each other in weeks, Tom and Bruce giggle like schoolgirls reunited after summer break before getting into their usual sparring. Troy just tries to keep people on topic – futilely. The putative topic: How do you design a game that makes the management of a government as interesting as the issues of war and peace? There’s a side trip into questions about abstraction and the problem of irrelevant detail.

This week, Troy, Julian and Rob talk about the limitations and possibilities of story telling in strategy games. Can you have an authorial perspective in a system driven genre? Is the RTS campaign story irrevocably broken? Is there anything on the horizon that might give us hope?

And stay tuned to the end where I ask for feedback for our anniversary show.

This week, Troy and Tom welcome Lara Crigger, Jenn Cutter and

Tiffany Martin to the show to talk about the gender gap in strategy

gaming. Well, that’s where it starts. It turns into an almost 90 minute

discussion of the place of women in gaming, their portrayal in games,

the importance of peer groups, more Brutal Legend and the coming demographic shift.

So less strategy wonkery than usual, but you guys can deal for a week, right?

Tiffany Martin’s blog

Tiffany’s thoughts on classes in Borderlands

Lara Crigger on her changing gaming habits

Hire Lara Crigger

Jenn Cutter’s Open Alpha

Jenn Plugs Flash of Steel and TMA and says nice things about me

Rhapsody

Tabula Rasa

Pure Pwnage

Battle for Wesnoth

Troy, Tom and Rob look at the big 4 RTSes coming out this year (Command & Conquer 4, Starcraft 2, Supreme Commander 2 and RUSE)

as well as the return of Norb Timpko, the future of Facebook games, the

battle between Victorian Age games. And Tom makes Troy sing.

Apologies for the sound issues. It was a bad connection that we tried to fix a couple of times without much success.

Greed Corp

Scourge of War: Gettysburg

Sid Meier talks to Julian Murdoch

Paradox buys AGEod

Vainglory of Nations

Victoria Developer’s Diaries

Troy, Tom and Rob Zacny talk about Europa Universalis 3, the new Heir to the Throne expansion and how the series rewards different play styles. Has the new expansion compromised the importance of stability? How does the new system change our favorite nations' development? Can Tom keep all the changes in every expansion straight? (Spoiler: No, he cannot.)

Tom and Troy spend the hour looking back at 2009, including insight

into how to make a Best of the Year list, why Tom finally joined

Facebook and the state of the genre in the last year. Dawn of

Discovery, Brutal Legend, Heir to the Throne, UniWar, and even Evony.

Bruce is also there, in body if not spirit, but he finds time to complain about why Uniwar is the worst game ever.

Tom Chick’s RTS Round Up at Crispy Gamer

Tom’s Top Ten Games at Fidgit

The Flash of Steel Year End Summary

HPS Squad Battles at NWS Online Store

A subtle shifting of the guard as Julian Murdoch is back after hiatus, but Troy Goodfellow is off for a week, leaving Julian at the mercy of the far more stable Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk.

The topic is religion: does it work in a strategy game as a mechanic? Has anyone done it better than Civ IV? Bruce argues for Dominions and random boardgames about the reformation nobody's ever heard of. Tom revisits the Sims and Europa Universalis, and Julian goes off-topic and spoils all of Assassins Creed 2 (You've been warned.)

This week, Tom Chick makes the case that strategy gamers need to have a

console to truly appreciate the range of games out there. He calls

Bruce and Troy “dinosaurs” for clinging bitterly to a fading gaming

platform, even though it is at the moment best suited to the deep games

that all three love. What is the present condition of strategy gaming

in the console arena? Are independent strategy game designers making a

mistake by focusing on the PC?

Rob Zacny comes to

the plate as a pinch hitter, but we still manage to get three original

panelists together for a long discussion about strategy games gone

wrong. Ascendancy, MOO3, Road to Moscow, and other favorites.Road to Moscow preview at IGN

Bruce’s Review of Squad Leader

Tom’s review of Axis and Allies

Troy’s Diplomacy Review

Rob’s love of the old Total War games

Troy’s review of SupCom for the 360

Chris Remo’s Top 5 PC Games of 2009

Jim Rossignol on ArmA

Tom’s Review of Empire: Total War

Our first ever guest, Vic Davis, returns for an episode that will not be lost to the ether. Solium Infernum

gets invited to a love in as Tom, Troy and Bruce try to explain why it

is one of the best games of the year. We can an inside look at game

design, how an game about unbalancing your opponents stays balanced and

what Vic has up his sleeve for the expansion.Ameritrash Games

Cryptic Comet

Quarter to Three Games Forum – Full of AARs

Penny Arcade’s Tycho loves Solium Infernum and links to Tom’s Fidgit diaries so I don’t have to