{"id":727,"date":"2011-08-16T13:36:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhing.com\/?p=727"},"modified":"2011-08-16T13:36:06","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:36:06","slug":"swordquest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhing.com\/chaotic-tortoise\/2011\/08\/swordquest\/","title":{"rendered":"Swordquest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Games can and should entertain. \u00a0They can be\u00a0frivolous\u00a0or deep. \u00a0They can be artistic or\u00a0irreverent. \u00a0 They can be funny or they can be grim dark and serious. \u00a0Sometimes, a game can inspire. \u00a0Swordquest is one of those inspirational games.<\/p>\n

First of all, a quick confession. \u00a0I have never played the Swordquest series, but being inspired by this series isn’t quite as simple as just the games themselves, but their whole construction, what approach they took and the wider context of their release.<\/p>\n

Swordquest was a series released for the Atari 2600 in the early 80s when video gaming was still finding its feet and developers were still experimenting with what they could do. \u00a0Just about everything that came out for the Atari were highly abstract due to the limited technical prowess of the console and when looked at today appear almost like impressionist art. \u00a0In fact, a lot of indie developers today are enraptured by the impact of pixel art that stems from playing games on machines like the Atari. \u00a0The Swordquest series is no exception to these trends on the machine but represents something greater and shows a potential for games that has yet to be realised again.<\/p>\n

Swordquest was a competition. \u00a0It was a game where players would ultimately be fighting against each other to win real world treasures made of actual precious metals and gems and the fighting would take the form of a series of punishing puzzles and lateral thinking exercises. \u00a0This is nothing short of exceptional.<\/p>\n

Taking the form of adventure\/puzzle\/action hybrid games, the series was split into four games: Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld and Airworld. \u00a0A contest was to be held for each game with the entrants being\u00a0determined\u00a0by who could submit a series of clues to Atari, found through a combination of playing the game and using the DC comic book that it came with to uncover words. \u00a0Players that deciphered the codes in the game then played a specially designed version of the game at Atari headquarters to compete for real world treasures including a philospher’s stone made of white jade, a platinum chalice and the final prize of a full sized jewel encrusted sword.<\/p>\n

Sadly, surrounding the video game crash that was kicked into gear by the spectacular failure of ET that wasn’t really resolved until Nintendo released the NES in the States, Swordquest never reached its conclusion, with Waterworld only being on limited release and Airworld appropriately enough becoming vaporware. \u00a0The final two treasures and the sword were never awarded as the contests never took place, but all of the items existed, and someone somewhere has them, ready to bury them and baffle the archaeologists of the future.<\/p>\n

The games would throw clues to you that referred to panels and pages of the comic book but to give you a hint on what the puzzles were like in the actual games, the developers gave each game a specific theme. \u00a0The key to solving Earthwold for example was that the puzzles were based around the signs of the zodiac (the real world treasure prize for Earthworld also was decorated with the twelve birth stones which I thought was a nice touch), Fireworld was based around the Tree of Life, Waterworld the seven centres of Chakra and Airworld was going to be based around the I Ching, an ancient classical Chinese text. \u00a0The finals for Earthworld and Fireworld were well attended with Earthworld seeing 12 players make it through to the contest and Fireworld ended with more than they planned meaning they had to hold a tie breaker to reduce the number down to 50.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t just a series of games, this was a monumental event with an\u00a0enormous\u00a0marketing budget, not to mention the fact that the prizes in total came to around $125,000. \u00a0The idea of it fascinates me. \u00a0On the one hand, I cannot see why this has not been attempted since on any scale. \u00a0Admittedly the contest was called off, but that was due to external factors rather than the popularity of the series itself and it just seems like such an excellent way to engage your playerbase and whip up interest in a title or even a company. \u00a0If the modern day hype-machine goes mad for new screenshots, imagine how crazy it would go over the possibility to win a jewel encrusted sword.<\/p>\n

Some studios have managed to hold fairly engaging ARGs, with Valve’s shenanigans around the announcement of Portal 2 springing to mind. \u00a0It seems that with something like the internet, the potential for creative designers to hold events like this has never been greater. \u00a0If Swordquest managed it despite the limitations of the Atari consoles and the technology of the 1980s, then surely somebody can do something similar with the current wonders of technology that we have at our finger tips.<\/p>\n

I love seeing new ideas tested out in gaming and I love seeing what creative developers can bring to the table. \u00a0If you talk about games engaging people on this level in a social context today, most people will probably assume you’re talking about the facebook non-games<\/a> that I talked about last week, and not something as all encompassing as this.<\/p>\n

People are also quite happy with this kind of interaction with the producers of content. \u00a0Outside of gaming we have more interactive game shows on TV or reality TV shows that require engagement from their audience on some level, so maybe it’s time for games to try something similar. \u00a0I’m not a fan of this sort of interactive TV as most of the time it devolves into a beg-fest for premium telephone money, but their success shows it can be done. \u00a0Swordquest was without a doubt ahead of its time, but now we might just be living in a time where this sort of thing could work.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s at this point however that I reflect that I myself probably wouldn’t be interested. \u00a0I would happily look from the sidelines and gawp in wonder at the participants performing just mental acrobatics in exactly the same way I would watch someone working a cryptic crossword, punctuated by frequent outbursts of “but why would your brain take you there and WHY IS THAT THE RIGHT ANSWER?” but I probably wouldn’t get involved myself. \u00a0To me, this makes it clear why this sort of thing probably wouldn’t work. \u00a0To be justifiable, it would need to engage with large numbers of people and if someone like myself of average-ish intelligence and a passion for these interesting ideas wouldn’t be bothered, there are lot of people around that similar mindset who also won’t be bothered and a lot more people who just couldn’t care less, meaning financially, it would probably not be viable to run.<\/p>\n

It’s a sad fact that games have to have a chance at making money to be made these days, but it’s the side effect of gaming now being a business instead of merely a curious hobby for digital pioneers and it’s a sad fact that we probably won’t see anything like Swordquest ever again. \u00a0I sorely want to be proven wrong on this one, just because the world needs more quirky excitement like this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Additional Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a full and detailed commentary on Swordquest, this Angry Video Game Nerd Episode<\/a>\u00a0which is where I heard about the series in the first place is very good (but maybe skip through the opening credits – the episode is pretty clean, but the intro can be a bit caustic to the ears if you’re not expecting it).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Games can and should entertain. \u00a0They can be\u00a0frivolous\u00a0or deep. \u00a0They can be artistic or\u00a0irreverent. \u00a0 They can be funny or they can be grim dark and serious. \u00a0Sometimes, a game can inspire. \u00a0Swordquest is one of those inspirational games. First of all, a quick confession. \u00a0I have never played the Swordquest series, but being inspired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[134,18,135,133],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer_games","tag-atari","tag-games","tag-gomputer-games","tag-swordquest"],"yoast_head":"\nSwordquest - Chaotic Tortoise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.davidhing.com\/chaotic-tortoise\/2011\/08\/swordquest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Swordquest - Chaotic Tortoise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Games can and should entertain. \u00a0They can be\u00a0frivolous\u00a0or deep. \u00a0They can be artistic or\u00a0irreverent. \u00a0 They can be funny or they can be grim dark and serious. \u00a0Sometimes, a game can inspire. \u00a0Swordquest is one of those inspirational games. 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