Dungeons & Dollars

To the editor: I just finished reading today’s issue; it’s the usual engrossing and thoughtful material.

I just found it interesting that your articles either introduce me to something that I’ve never had any contact with and make me want to know more about it, or they put a new spin on subjects I’m familiar with and usually follow. Not going wow yet?

Well, the point is, to me, it’s the next step in the evolution of gaming. We’ve had PC Gamer and magazines that tell us what games to buy for a very long time…but now we have a magazine that analyzes games and informs us of issues we should, as intelligent members of the community, know. It’s a step that I think may come into incredible fruition, though I can’t ponder what that fruition may be.

-Sean Li

To the editor: I just wanted to drop you guys a quick word to let you know what a fantastic job I think your doing with the magazine. I’ve been consistently impressed with the content found inside your virtual pages and look forward to downloading a new PDF file every Tuesday.

Which brings me to another point I’d like to make: I absolutely love the formatting of your publication! I know that everyone’s tastes differ, but it struck me as a shame to consistently see some complain about the formatting of your mag – there are surely many of us who enjoy it as it is. In a way, downloading the PDF for me actually makes it feel MORE than just a web page, you know?

Cheers, and here’s to many, many more years of the Escapist!

-Benoit Casey

To the editor: Hi, I recently discovered your magazine and continue to be impressed and inspired by the ideas therein. That much you must hear all the time, though, so that’s not why I’m writing.

I just had to beg, in response to some other recent letters sent your way, that you not change the layout. The world does /not/ need another Slashdot. Any site can have unique writing, but unless there’s something special about the presentation, most people won’t see any reason to stick around.

The pictures don’t tell half the story, but they are the reason I gave The Escapist a second glance.

-KSaigo

To the editor: This is just another rant on how good you guys are… (you probably get a lot of these, but here’s mine anyway)

I play a lot of games, and have been for more than a decade now – which is somewhat of an unusual hobby here in India where gaming is just taking off. Most of the fellow ‘gamers’ I know have started off with Counterstrike, and have no clue about the brilliant classics like Planescape Torment, the Ultima series, Fallout 1 & 2, Castlevania, Street Fighter, Test Drive and, of course, wrecking crew, to name but a few 🙂

Reading your magazine is like a taking in a fresh breath of pure oxygen for me – the opinions are close to mine, the layout is not teenager-friendly with garish colors and type (I work in an Information Agency, and all my designers who’ve spent 7 years studying typography and art love the layout too), the stories are on refreshing topics, and the content is insightful to say the least. Brilliant!

And I know you probably don’t take requests, but it would be great to see an article on the Fallout games – I’m sure there are a lot of fans out there who’d love you for it, and it would be interesting to read your opinion in any case.

Please keep up the good work, and know that you have a person who’s willing to work for you (free of charge) in India in case you want a perspective on the gaming scene here.

-Zubin

To the editor: I enjoy your online mag, but when the fonts are resized by force, it loses it’s formatting. Not a big deal, but one of the things I like about your magazine is that it has a nice format. T’would be nice to have a font size option which makes the font bigger and reformats the sheet.

-Cezanne Farris-Gilbert

To the editor: As one of the people involved with making all those cryptic story messages and all that.. I can only say that you stated almost exactly in your article what our intentions were when we created the games – that is a game that had a story and that we liked to play.

At the time, we told the story via terminals because we simply didn’t have the resources (computer or manpower) to do anything else. I think the success of the terminals was due simply to it’s incredible limitations. We were forced to tell a story in sets of 3 paragraphs..

all the other crazy stuff came from that. Nowadays, games can do anything that can be done in a full length film. Would anyone still read a terminal in a game if it was there?

I enjoyed the article, it certainly brought me back – as for the link between halo and marathon, I can only say that anything more than a causal link would have been rather difficult since there were only a few people on earth who knew the story well enough to keep the tie- ins accurate. Hamish, myself, and maybe a few other people – none of whom worked at Bungie by the time even Myth was in production.

-gk