Older posts from 2009
Wordle and 30 Years of GamesJul 01, 2009 |
no comments Popularity: 
|
Here’s a superficial analysis on game titles. I have used Wordle to generate a word cloud from lists of recurring phrases in game titles.
What the word clouds show are very generic words like “space” or “super”, the number two (a game series is more likely to be two than three games long) and multiple word phrases which usually are popular game series, or games with many expansion packs. It is interesting that the generic words tend to be the same across 30 years — all generations of gamers seem to prefer dragons. Another point of interest is that a phrase from a 1980s game title is much less likely an established brand as it most likely is in the 1990s. Also, in the 1990s is became common that a game title has the release year attached to it, since EA et al started to churn out minor updates to their sports games as brand new releases.
Probably my most favorite video games are thrustlike games — games that relate to Thrust similarly how Rogue relates to roguelikes. Here are some of the games I consider the best examples of this genre. 
It only occured to me yesterday that there’s a clear benefit in that I bought a new LCD screen a while ago. I leaned on the screen and realized the screen of course rotates 90 degrees flipping the vertical and horizontal axes. For me, realizing that old feature was a revelation: it allows playing vertically scrolling shmups properly.
Subscribe