I am sucker for school/coming of age movies (comedic or dramatic). Many of these are pretty lame, but something about seeing losers struggle (as I certainly did) and eventually succeed is fun to watch. No doubt, the plots are pretty formulaic and predictable. Choose from the geek-turn-cool-gets-girl plot, the ugly-duckling-girl-becomes-women-wins-hunk plot, the lots-of-guys-get-drunk-party-with-chics plot, or some derivation thereof. They are all the same.

Case in point: Old School. I watched the DVD recently. It is not going to win any Oscars, but it is an enjoyable/funny school genred movie. (Hehehe, that Will Ferrell just cracks me up). Anyway, point being that despite its predictable plot and the fact that it follows pretty much all of the genre conventions does not take away from my enjoyment of the movie (ironically, in some ways, it is the fact that it follows these conventions that lends to its enjoyment).

On the gaming front, I recently started playing Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. It is very much a Diablo clone, however refined and evolved. I must say that I am enjoying it very much. It has been a while since I’ve played a Diablo-style game and BG:DA follows all the conventions and feels very familiar, comfortable and intuitive to play (ie, no need to read the manual, play the tutorial of even check GameFAQs for tips).

This leads me to point to a recent IGDA article on the evolution of game genres with a comparison to biology. It is long, but worth the read. One point it makes is that following genre conventions with only minor innovations along the way is usually a good approach (also, that the best time to really innovate is after mass extinction (ie, death of 2D when PS1 came into being)).

Also along the old school front, it is worthy to note that the concept of emulation and preservation of games it going to be a big issue (for academics, for IP law, for players, publishers, developers, etc). Check out this debate on the rights and wrongs of ROMs, as well as this thorough article on piracy (which touches on emulation, ROMs, IP issues, etc).

Finally, I just reread the classic Gamasutra article on Formal Abstract Design Tools by Doug Church. It is a new school look at game design from an old school developer…