A new old-school text-based online game in the works
The article in the Roanoke Times seems innocuous enough: Tech trio seeks market for new game. But hey, open it up and read and you'll find two things:
- These guys from Virginia Tech have created a NEW text-based online game (remember Zork?) in the middle of a graphics-whoring gaming society.
- Michael Ringenbach is a friend of mine from college who won the title "Geek of the Year" at the 2001 Geek Party.
Are these guys crazy? Perhaps. But I think it's pretty gutsy (and geeky cool) to move forward (and yet somehow backwards) with a text game. Then again, maybe not... the popularity of texting among teens (God, I sound old) is soaring and most phones could handles this kind of gaming on a mobile level... and it would make sense that if people became addicted to the story, it wouldn't matter if there were no mind-siezuring graphics like World of Warcraft.
I just got another email from Mike saying that the game is definitely not yet ready to be released, so you can't play it for a while. The website isn't quite ready, either. So hopefully he'll let me know when those are ready so that I can pass them along to the readers of this blog (and maybe the website, if I ever update it....). Speaking of WoW and his in trueness to gaming and geekhood, Mike also wrote this:
On the more geeky side of things, I'm working on my third 70 for World of Warcraft, with 2 other retired 60+ on a different server.
Best of luck to you and your geeky buds, Mike.
