Quest to Nowhere

I want to start off by saying that the point of this is not to bash webcomics, or say they are a bad thing, or anything like that. But rather try and address some problems/trends I’ve begun to notice that are detracting from the medium. My hope is that those reading this will get webcomic creators to think about their comics in perhaps a way they haven’t, or possibly find solutions or ideas they can use in their comics to improve them.

The idea for this whole thing was born out of a conversation I had with Asuka (Ruby Thursday,) talking about her comic, and webcomics sort of generally. Mostly it revolved around why certain webcomics are able to succeed and other webcomics fail, especially concerning good webcomics that don’t do well or fail, and bad webcomics that succeed or are popular.

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I was at the Video Game Expo in Philadelphia this past weekend, and met a really cool girl named Molly. She’s a freelance video game writer, and wrote this great article over at NotesOnGameDev.net about narrative in video games and wanted to point people to it.

A Critical look at Team Fortress 2 and the Badwater Basin map.

Introduction:

Team Fortress 2 is an online team based first person shooter, (FPS,) where players battle each other as either members of the RED team or the BLU team, in order to achieve an objective that allows them to win the match. The objective is dependent upon the game mode in which the players are playing in, and what game mode is being played is dependent upon which map, or level, the match is taking place on. Possible game modes include capture the flag (CTF,) control point (CP,) payload (PL,) and arena.

Aside from choosing which mode, map, and team the player wishes to play, the player also has the choice of nine different combat classes to play as. Each class has its own unique abilities, weapons load out, and attributes. Thus no two classes play the same, and in fact each class fills a specific role within the team. Finding the right combination of classes for a given map, at a given moment, is one of the key strategic problems each team has to deal with while playing.

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