'A Disturbing Gift For Fans Of Adventure Games.'
By Dr. Eleanor Vance | Published on January 01, 0001
Anger can destroy you. It can make a bad situation worse. But last fall, Agustín Cordes and a group of other people took their anger, their hurt and their frustration and did something with it: they teamed up to make a video game. The video game they made is called Serena. It just came out, and it’s free on PC.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); Ostensibly, Serena is an adventure game about a man in a log cabin who is struggling to remember his missing wife. The real story is that Serena is the game that Cordes and a far-flung group of fellow adventure game creators and fans created together—in just a handful of weeks—in order to deal with upheaval in the adventure game community. That a scene of people had been hoping for a revival of a once-glorious gaming genre thanks to a slew of successful adventure game Kickstarters, including the one that made this whole Kickstarter thing a big deal. They began to fear that in-fighting might mar that comeback. The drama centered on the entrepreneur Paul Trowe, a long-time adventure game fan himself whose Replay Games helped bring the Leisure Suit Larry back after a successful half-million-dollar 2012 Kickstarter and who has supported other adventure game comebacks. Trowe is far from the most genteel online raconteur and angered many adventure game fans when, Cordes and others say, he began to criticize others in the scene, airing grievances about a Kickstarter here or a former business partner there. Call him a troll, rude or maybe simply a concerned adventure game fan and gamemaker with a blunt way of expressing his qualms about various upstart adventure game revivals; he hurt feelings in a scene of gamers abuzz with the optimism of a comeback. His style of online sparring climaxed in November when, in an exchange on Twitter, Trowe identified Serena Nelson, a former Larry volunteer who had been critical of Trowe, as being transsexual. She acknowledged that this hadn’t been a secret to everyone but was still furious, as were many friends and peers who considered it an outing. Later, Trowe publicly apologized to Nelson, expressing regret. (Trowe declined to comment for this article.) The damage had been done. Nelson, through her advocacy for numerous adventure game Kickstarters, had come to be known as the “Hero of the Adventure Game Revival Movement.” For Cordes and others, Trowe’s words and the debate around them were painful. Cordes: “My reasoning was ‘OK, let’s do something together to counterbalance such awfulness.'” Cordes says he was a bystander to all of this. It upset him. “I saw many people hurt by Trowe and [sensed] a general feeling of discomfort in the adventure game community,” he told me over e-mail. “The genre was enjoying a much-needed revival, with successful Kickstarters, lots of excitement, positive feelings, and yet Trowe was somehow ruining all that with his vitriol and bullying.” Cordes said it wasn’t personal. “I never had dealings with Trowe, I haven’t been wronged by him in any way,” he said. “I just really felt that something had to be done. My reasoning was ‘OK, let’s do something together to counterbalance such awfulness.'” The “something” that Cordes decided to do was to make Serena, the game. And, yes, the game is named after Serena Nelson. Serena (the game) doesn’t feature Serena Nelson or Paul Trowe or go into any of what happened u31 เครดิตฟรี 188 last year. Players won’t be aware of any of last year’s drama. They’ll simply get to play what is intended to be a positive reaction to a negative situation. That response is an adventure game that lasts about an hour and helps Cordes himself get back into the adventure-game making. Like adventure games themselves, Cordes had been keeping a low profile for a while, priming himself for a comeback. His previous adventure game was a well-received horror adventure called Scratches. It came out in 2006. Four years later, he announced Asylum, a game he and his team at Senscape aren’t quite done with yet. (They will be done this year, he maintains.) Asylum uses a new game engine called Dagon that Cordes wanted to release to everyone, open source. Cordes also wanted to eventually release a tutorial for the engine in the form of a short game. He figured he’d get to that eventually, after finishing Asylum. He had a rough idea about what it would be: an Edgar-Allen-Poe-style short story of a game. He had a name for it: Helena. “I needed a name that evoked mystery and haunting memories,” he recalled. He had these ideas, but he was going to wait. Asylum, first. Then came last fall’s drama. And then came an idea. Cordes decided that the best thing to do to cheer the community up would be to rally people in the adventure gaming scene to do something positive. He invited them to work with him on Helena, to put that game on the front burner. He decided to change the game’s u31 เข้าสู่ระบบ name. Helena became Serena “Not only is ‘Serena’ a much better name,” Cordes said, “But it also represents a lot: a nod to the real Serena, a wonderful friend and staunch supporter of adventure games, who in turn has brought many fans of the adventure genre together.” Mandel: “Agustín’s ‘Serena’ project was, to my mind, simply the greatest gesture any game designer could make towards a fan.” On December 2, Cordes crafted a design document for the Serena game. He started reaching out to people who had stuck up for Serena Nelson. Cordes is based in Argentina, but he aimed to make this game a global effort. “I created a Dropbox folder, a private forum, and began inviting people to work on the game,” he said. “At first we were four people, basically the writers, and all very close friends with Serena. Little by little, someone else was brought on board: someone who would do programming,
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