Pleroma

Pleroma

Richard Moss | @MossRC@social.mossrc.me

Author of *Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the Internet* and *The Secret History of Mac Gaming*, as well as two upcoming books — one on the creation of #AgeOfEmpires and the other about the history of football (soccer) games.

Writer/director on TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, an upcoming five-part docuseries about horror games. Producer/co-writer on FPSDOC, a 4.5-hour documentary film celebrating the first-person shooter genre (with an emphasis on the 90s/early-2000s golden age) that's guided by the developers themselves.

Creates The Life & Times of Video Games and Ludiphilia podcasts.

He/him.

rich@mossrc.me
@MossRC on Twitter and @mossrc.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Posts mainly about #gamedev and #indiegames histories and stories, #retrogaming/#retrogames, #retrocomputing, #classicmac, #shareware, #tombraider, and #videogamehistory.

Richard Moss MossRC

And I'm touched by the lovely praise in Time Extension's review of A Tale of Two Halves.

"If you're a fan of footy video games and yearn for the good old days when each week seemed to see the release of a new interactive take on the sport, then you'll absolutely love this; Moss' accessible, knowledgeable but often amusing prose is a joy to read, and brings to life one of the most exciting periods in video game history – an era we're unlikely to ever see again."

https://www.timeextension.com/reviews/a-tale-of-two-halves-the-history-of-football-video-games

Richard Moss MossRC

Design Week interviewed me about my new book and some of the design insights I've picked up while writing it. https://www.designweek.co.uk/the-greatest-and-strangest-football-video-games/

Richard Moss MossRC

It's publication day for a dream project of mine: A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games, a 628-page book about the many many attempts to distil the beautiful game (association football) into digital interactive entertainment.

A Tale of Two Halves explores 30+ years of football games in all their forms—even platformers like Soccer Kid and GO! GO! Beckham—with a season-by-season breakdown of the genre's history, lots of insight, and plenty of fun stuff like PES player shirts and pixel illustrations. And 13 in-depth interviews, too.

It comes in two flavours: a standard edition, with shoelace bookmark ribbons for a touch of whimsy, and a "Captain's Edition" that adds in a heavy-duty slipcase and swanky fabric armband emblazoned "Captain." Both are available directly from Bitmap.

https://www.bitmapbooks.com/pages/search-results-page?q=tale%20of%20two%20halves

(Or if you're in Australia, you'll save loads on shipping by going to Pixel Crib: https://www.pixelcrib.com.au/search?options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=tale+of+two+halves)

Richard Moss MossRC
Bitmap Books boss Sam Dyer and I talked to Premortem Games for an article about our new book A Tale of Two Halves: https://premortem.games/2024/10/16/a-deep-dive-into-the-beautiful-video-game-in-a-game-of-two-halves-by-bitmap-books/

Richard Moss MossRC
First review of my new book comes from no other than the vaunted Edge magazine, which calls it a “breezy yet encyclopaedic history of football games”.
A review of A Tale of Two Halves in Edge magazine. Full text: Bitmap Books gives 110 per cent to this breezy yet encyclopaedic history of football games. A heartfelt foreword by Clive Tyidesley (for years the voice of FIFA) kicks us off, before an overview of the earliest crude simulations, then a season-by-season guide starting from 1981. Even ardent fans will struggle to find gaps here, with inclusions right down to curios from the likes of East Germany, and it's all cheerily wrapped in pixel art and end-of-season awards. That the authors stop their annual review at 2010 is no sign of flagging energy, either. Rather, it underlines EA's Manchester City-like dominance since, and the loss of variety incurred along the way.

Richard Moss MossRC
If you are a journo, podcaster, YouTuber, blogger, or streamer who would like to talk to me about my new Bitmap-published book A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games, out later this month, hit me up. Email is rich@mossrc.me

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

in 25+ years of retro gaming and interacting with sierra fans, i've never once seen someone mention Hoyle's Book of Games

despite its small stature, it was one of the most financially lucrative sierra titles, and spawned an entire series of games.

what makes it special is that opponents are (for the most part) characters from sierra titles, each playing in a style expressive of the character's personality. graham and rosella are friendly and not overly competitive, larry is silly and aggressive with his cards.

the dog? the dog is a real shithead.

A screenshot of Hoyle's Book of Games for DOS. A game of cribbage was just won by a bulldog, who smugly smiles, sticking its tongue out. It scored 16 points on its last hand.

Richard Moss MossRC
@gentarkin That’s a very visual and graphic explanation. I don’t know if I can be bothered to open it up to find out, given that I’d been thinking of replacing it anyway.

Richard Moss MossRC
My decade-old secondary desktop computer monitor faded to black and then after a power cycle made an ear-shattering white noise scream. After another power cycle it crackled for a while and then was back to normal.

Presumably I’m meant to conclude it’s possessed…or dying. I’m pretty amazed that it lasted this long, given I bought around 2012 as some cheap crappy thing with a dodgy power adapter from Kogan (Aussie Amazon-alike online retailer known for selling unreliable Chinese rebrands).

Richard Moss MossRC
Good to see some research looking at attitudes to and preferences for COVID mitigation among people with existing health conditions, which is nearly half the population in Australia. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hex.70025

Having said that, though, I wonder if either the study is non-representative or a large percentage of people with comorbidities avoid leaving the house. Why? Because I’m often the only person wearing a mask when I’m out in public, no matter the venue. (And for me the risk of COVID exposure is less a concern than asthma and allergy triggers.)

Richard Moss MossRC
@rk @vga256 It does, yes, although the Fish Disks get more attention in the book than Aminet.

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

thanks to @MossRC’s exceptional book Shareware Heroes, TIL that TUCOWS stood for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software.

Its earliest incarnation began in 1991 when founder Scott Swedorski, then a recent college graduate, took a job at a library consortium as a system administrator for an initiative called FALCON (Flint Area Library Cooperative Online Network). 'At the time people started hearing more and more about getting online, he recalls, 'but there was no simple way to do it unless you wanted to use something like AOL or Prodigy.' Swedorski wanted to help library patrons navigate what the online world had to offer, and so he came up with a simple one-page document. 'It highlighted some applications with instructions on how to install and use them,' he says. But quickly the document expanded to two pages, then three, then four, and so on, and in his spare time Swedorski decided to teach himself HTML and turn it into a website. He called it The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software - referencing its focus on Windows networking software. Fans called it UCOWS or TUCOWS for short (in September 1995 it would officially become TUCOWS after the purchase of a tucows.com domain name).

Richard Moss MossRC
Here’s an infographic I found at the time, to help with my presentation.
Flappy Bird by the numbers chart from App Annie. It shows that the game’s meteoric rise to fame mostly happened in January 2014, as only 517 of its 108k reviews came before then. The game debuted in May 2013.

Richard Moss MossRC
This news that Flappy Bird is coming back reminds me of a bit of personal trivia: I did a four-week intensive data journalism course in early 2014 during my Masters and for one of the assignments I examined the numbers behind the Flappy Bird phenomenon around the world. It was immensely popular, very very suddenly.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242791/flappy-bird-relaunch-2025-new-game-modes

Richard Moss MossRC
I just realised that the difference between the upper threshold of “compact” and the lower bounds of “big” in smartphone marketing these days is about half an inch in screen size.

Richard Moss MossRC
@matt_diamond Thank you! The shoelaces were the publisher's idea — it's been a labour of love for them, too.

Between us we've put so many fun Easter eggs and loving touches in there, so I hope it finds a big audience but even if it doesn't I'll at least be able to say I had a blast making it.

Richard Moss MossRC
Got my author copy of the special “Captain’s Edition” of my new book, A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games. Available to buy in October from https://www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/all-books/products/a-tale-of-two-halves-captains-edition

(There's also a cheaper regular edition coming out in October: https://www.bitmapbooks.com/products/a-tale-of-two-halves)
Book cover with a captain’s armband around it A photo of a spread from the book, showing text and screenshots about Sensible World of Soccer. Also visible: shoelace bookmark ribbons. A photo of a section opener spread from the book, this one being for games released in 2007 and 2008 A photo of the section opener for “The Relegation Zone”

Richard Moss MossRC
@darkcisum Probably I could, but it gets complicated pretty quickly and most sales come from the US and UK (and Australia, since that’s where I live) regardless. I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble right now.

Richard Moss MossRC
@darkcisum That’s all under the control of my publisher, Unbound – at least for now. I’m not aware of them having any plans or deals for wider distribution, so your options are import a physical copy, buy the ebook (Unbound offer direct purchase if it’s not listed in your preferred ebook store), or use a VPN to get the audiobook.

(Eventually I’ll get full ownership/publishing rights, as I did on Secret History of Mac Gaming, and then it’ll be my call, but that could potentially be years away, depending on sales.)

Richard Moss MossRC
Let’s unpack why fans are angry this idea keeps coming up in interviews about how Tomb Raider is evolving:

1) 7 out of 11 mainline TR games had a female writer on staff, including the first four. It’s sexist to insinuate men can’t write soft characters, in any case.
2) The classic TR games were made at a time when female empowerment meant “girl power”: strength, resilience, tenacity, self-assurance, all while looking great (see Buffy, Xena, Spice Girls, Dana Scully, etc). Different era, different vibe, but that never gets acknowledged in these interviews.
3) Lara always showed compassion and empathy when she came across someone innocent/hurt (which wasn’t often), and she had a vulnerable side in TR4, so it’s not fair to just blanket statement her as “cold”.
4) Lara may cry and hug and show vulnerability and do other “feminine” things now, but she’s still a mass murderer. Why hasn’t that aspect of her character been revised, too?

That stuff notwithstanding, the full interview makes for an interesting read: https://www.ign.com/articles/tomb-raider-the-legend-of-lara-croft-showrunner-tasha-huo-says-fandom-has-led-the-way
Quote from an IGN interview about the upcoming Tomb Raider anime: TH: Yeah, I think it was fun to be able to have one scene where she does an incredible feat of strength or agility or what have you — the Lara thing — and then another scene where she's hugging a friend and is emotional with them. I think that's something we definitely wanted to explore in terms of Lara's womanhood. Because historically she's been written by men, so she has been kind of this cold figure, and I know she's not like that. So that was the exciting part to see sort of behind the veil of how she is in her everyday life.

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