"SSI founder Joel Billings, veteran wargame designer Gary Grigsby, and frequent Grigsby collaborator Keith Brors have created 2by3. The company's name is a reference to World War II games done by three guys and it is, coincidentally one of the worst names to grace a developer since Big Huge Games. Of course, we here at Quarter to Three have plenty of room to talk...

"We're particularly pleased to see that the Pacific Theatre of WWII is the topic of two of their three announced games. We'd love to see a remake of Grigsby's early War in the Pacific titles."

Comments? What games would you like to see them do?

One comment I saw about this was "if they're still talking about hexes, they're in trouble." I don't necessarily agree, but I do find it a bit disappointing that a company staffed by "industry veterans" could only think of making a WWII strategic game based on a division-level, 10-miles-per-hex scale. This is going to be micromanagement central and almost unplayable. Where oh where have all the *designers* gone? Programmers seem to be everywhere.

I certainly understand your reservations about same ol'-same ol', but I'd love an updated strategic level Pacific wargame, even if it offered nothing new.

Besides, last time Mr. Grigsby tried thinking out of the box, we ended up with that wretched Battle of Britain wargame.

Jeez, now I'm jonesing for some SSG Carriers at War...

-Tom, reformed wargamer having a relapse

Good point about the designers. I'm glad that industry veterans of this caliber get the chance to do their own thing and make their fans happy but I doubt I'll be interested in any of their products. Looks like they'll just make the same games they've made for the past 15 years.

Now I don't ask for technical features with no purpose but haven't we seen a *slight* increase in computing power and I/O capabilities over the decades? Porting boardgames to the computer was once the big goal, but it has been possible and realised for a long time now.

Time to move on and do something better! Where's the Road to Moscow game that actually gets released? Today's systems *can* do playable division-level simulations of WW2 -- but not if you stick to ancient boardgame design paradigms such as counters and hexes.

I'm no idea how the 2by3 games will turn out (ugh...no pun intended), but I'm kinda happy just to see SSI live on (in spirit, at least).

After I reviewed PGIII:Scorched Earth, one of the artists wrote me saying the company was pretty much gone. That's too bad for one of the pioneers of PC gaming. Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Roadwar 2000, and even Veil of Darkness are among my favorites.

"After I reviewed PGIII:Scorched Earth, one of the artists wrote me saying the company was pretty much gone."

Serious wargaming may have left the building, but I'm glad to see SSI doing "old school" titles like Silent Service II and Harpoon 4. Fortunately, they still have producers like Rick Martinez and Carl Norman who know that kind of stuff.

-Tom

Silent Service II? Didn't that come out in like '92? A Microprose game?

I feel for the lack of developers out there. When Richard Garriott was involved in Ultima 9 he said (paraphrasing from an interview shortly before the game was released) that game designs and designers were a dime a dozen, and that programmers were what was important. U9, of course, was aptly released at Thanksgiving, along with all the other turkeys of the season, but looking at most other games, I find they follow the same idea. I'd personally love a game with a deep, involved, maybe crazed plot that played out throughout the game and offered twists all throughout the game. I'd especially like it if the game wasn't an adventure game (no offense, but the puzzles give me headaches). More developers! Better stories! And don't give me any of that "story vs. better graphics" drek. All you really need is one or two good designers to keep a game focused and balanced. How much would that add to the costs of all the programmers, artists, testers, etc. that already go into a game? As for the game itself, no matter how much plot you put in, most of the game is still going to be graphics anyway. Plot doesn't slow down graphics, it enhances them.

Sorry. I'm rambling.

"I'd personally love a game with a deep, involved, maybe crazed plot that played out throughout the game and offered twists all throughout the game. I'd especially like it if the game wasn't an adventure game (no offense, but the puzzles give me headaches)."

Have you played No One Lives Forever yet? It has all of this.

I was thinking of buying it but I only have a TNT ,so I thought about waiting until I got myself a GeForce or something.

The reason I haven't so far is because I normally prefer "calmer" games like Zeus, Wargames etc.


Marcus

"Silent Service II? Didn't that come out in like '92? A Microprose game?"

Umm, do I maybe mean Silent Hunter II? I'm not sure. At any rate, I mean the one that isn't out yet. I can't be bothered to remember the names of games that aren't even out yet. :)

-Tom

Supertanker, thanks for the tip. I've been hearing good things about No One Lives Forever.

Tom-You managed to remember "Daikatana" before it was delivered...I know, I'm just busting your chops, sorry. By the way-I love Shoot Club! Great column! Especially since CNET seems to be going part-time with their news section, thereby depriving me of my GameSpin jones.

"Especially since CNET seems to be going part-time with their news section, thereby depriving me of my GameSpin jones."

I imagine c|net is just bouncing back from some sort of half-time holiday schedule. AFAIK, you should be getting GameSpin once a week when the holidays are finally over. In this US, I think this happens sometime around February.

Shoot Club, however, waits for no one and nothing. We even have Shoot Club during Ramadan. If there's an earthquake and Los Angeles is knocked back into the Stone Age, we'll still have Shoot Club even if we're just playing Pong on an Intellivision. They had those in the Stone Age, didn't they?

-Tom

About Gamespin, I submitted one this past Friday, but no one ever got back to me. Subsequently I saw that my editor was at CES, so I guess that explains that. It would have been nice if he had set up an email autoreply, though.

And yes, they were at half-staff through most of the holidays.

"And yes, they were at half-staff through most of the holidays."


Man, me too. There were so many relatives around that my wife and I could not find much time together, and everything else was so hectic that we never were...oh, err, umm, nevermind, I think you meant something else.

"There were so many relatives around that my wife and I could not find much time together, and everything else was so hectic that we never were...oh, err, umm, nevermind, I think you meant something else."

Yikes! We're going to lose our ESRB "Teen" rating!

I think you blew the "teen" rating the minute Tom told us what everyone had renamed themselves as in Quake III Arena when you made them play that instead of UT in Shoot Club...

Say, what do they think about games like AOE2? Is it too slow for them?

AOE2 was one of the first RTSes we tried at Shoot Club. They really liked it, although it took them a while to actually attack each other -- most of them were just having fun building stuff and cranking out armies.

It was known for a while as "the castle game". Any RTS we tried thereafter was "it's another game like the castle game".

-Tom