Yeah, still working on the column. I know it’s late. Sorry! It’s… complicated. Almost done, though.

Anyway. You know what I’d like to see? A utility that will allow a person to track… game evolution pathways, I suppose. It will accept data from a few input fields, and store it in a database. This could easily be online. The primary input would be a game’s title, the second set of inputs would be other games that were inspirations for that game; the third set would be games that the primary game helped to inspire. So on a linear path (which this wouldn’t necessarily trace), you’d get something like Pong -> Breakout -> Space Invaders -> Etcetera.

The utilty would have a few other facets; one would graphically illustrate a web of all games and links stored in the database. Simple illustration — just spheres with text connected by green and blue arrows, say. Another would trace the most popular “hubs” — your Pac-Men, your Ultimas. Maybe the latter would be somewhat incorporated into the former, showing more popular hubs larger or in a different color. Perhaps there could be a spectrum of hot to cold.

I’m sure this wouldn’t take more than twenty-five minutes for someone who knew a bit of the proper scripting. I, however, don’t, offhand!