Why I am hyped for Solium Infernum

Any Twitter followers will be aware that I am looking forward to a indie turn based, card based, hex based strategy game called Solium Infernum. I am looking forward to it for a number of different reasons, but this quote from a live blog at Quarter to Three by Ben Stones pretty much epitomises it:

"SI isn't ... a game about making loose pacts to not attack one another. It's a game in which the players are all beholden to a set of strict political rules that govern their interactions, and each tries to twist the rules to their favor without actually breaking them. It's a give and take sort of deal where there are very granular consequences for everything that you choose to do.

For example, one diplomatic action you can choose to do is spend a number of your Prestige points to insult one of your opponents in front of the Conclave. If you do this, the Conclave's rules of conduct take effect and govern how your opponent can react. If they accept the insult, they lose face, and you get your original Prestige investment back, as well as an equal number of Prestige points from the insulted player. The other player can also refuse the insult and force you to lose your Prestige investment at no cost to themselves, but if they do, then they are required to claim Vendetta against you, which means that they have go to war for a certain number of turns. In that time period, they must achieve a certain objective (capture X number of Cantons, capture a certain Place of Power) or they lose Prestige (usually more than they would have lost if they had just accepted the insult).

So it's more of a back and forth, action and reaction sort of diplomacy, governed by rules. In that respect, it's not at all like Diplomacy."

I cannot wait, I will definitely be writing something about it when it comes out.

The perception of games and why it needs to change

Hello, just a quick post. I just posted on my sister blog, Botworks, a article on the public perception of games and why I think it needs to change. It is a topic that means a lot to me and I would really appreciate you guys to have a read and let me know what you think.

(Normal posting to return soon hopefully with a review of Forza 3, which I am still digging)