Of course, only time can tell where we will be taken in the future when it comes to interface design. However, it’s interesting to note that we’re gradually making the experience more tactile. While giving users a controller that resembles a gun to play a shooter game doesn’t work very well and feels rather gimmicky, making a realistic landscape that the user can reach out to and touch seems like the natural evolution for strategy games. It shares some of the best characteristics from the origin of strategy games: the board game.

Also check out this sweet trailer for Ubisoft’s upcoming strategy game RUSE, do yourself a service and watch it in HD. As a side note though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such hansom and trim gamers. In fact the guy with the black hair reminded me of actor Gael García Bernal of The Science of Sleep and Y tu mamá también fame.

Cocoia Blog » The future of RTS.

Ars Technica article on Blizzard’s decision to remove LAN play from StarCraft 2

Blizzard was so loved because it was a gamer-friendly company that gave us more than we asked for, and surprised us with things like a free online service and the spawned installs. Now, if you want to hook up a few computers in your basement without an Internet connection, you may not be able to play against each other at all. The LAN party is a dying thing in the world of built-in voice chat and high-speed Internet connections, but it’s not dead yet… especially among those who grew up playing StarCraft.

I doubt many PC Bangs in South Korea are too happy by this.

But it is a shame to see  LAN play go the way of the Dodo, since I imagine it is such an easy technology to implement. I have many found memories of me and my friends scrabbling to get all our computers setup to play StarCraft over LAN – I remember lots of cat5 cable and a lot of shouting about not having the latest update.

It’s funny that even today me and my friends will still have the same problems when we want to play. Wireless routers have made the process less messy, but it should also be a testament to how easy Blizzard made LAN play that last semester a few students were still able to get the game up and running on all the Macs in the Hampshire College computer lab.

Still, LAN play was one of the reasons StarCraft became such a huge hit, and it’s demise will be felt by this old gamer.

The pillars of PC gaming: why StarCraft 2 LAN play matters – Ars Technica.

Look at some software and it’s obvious that the designer had a list of desired features, and they went through trying to find a place to put each one.

The room-cleaning theory « Not The User’s Fault.