The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
There is an unsubstantiated rumor that Steven Spielberg is considering making a World of Warcraft movie. And by unsubstantiated, I mean completely so. All the same, we must consider the possibility that Mr. Spielberg is being coy.
Now I was thinking: Mr. Spielberg probably isn’t a hardcore MMO-head. How about we help him out, and suggest some key plot points that must be in a WoW film for it to be true to the original franchise?
I thought this was pretty funny, and scarily close to accurate in some situations.
I’ll be at GDC most of this week. Until then, here’s an article I’ve been working on in my (very) spare time. I welcome new categories and better examples.
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Over on F13, they’ve been having a discussion about bad movies, spawned primarily from the (then upcoming) vampfight between Underworld: Evolution and Bloodrayne. The fight has devolved quickly, due largely in my mind to people disagreeing about what ‘bad’ is. I mean, come on, some people are trying to say that ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and ‘the Patriot’ are the worst movies ever. How you can even say that in a multiverse where ‘Battlefield Earth’ exists boggles my mind.
Clearly what is needed are Categories of Bad, to better compartmentalize the various archetypes of bad movies that exist. Inspired by the Sports Guy’s 13 Levels of Losing, maybe this will finally allow people to have an intelligent discussion about bad film. Continue reading
No comment necessary: The Accordion Hero Postmortem.
Previously, I noted that the Chinese variant of American Idol used the term ‘PK’ to describe the process of kicking a player off the show. The fiancee points out that this probably won’t happen in the future, as the government is stepping in to end the use of such slang when addressing the public in a public forum.
[A] new law taking effect on March 1 that aims to clamp down on the rampant use of internet and media inspired neologisms. The article (in Chinese) that we read this in also states that only standard Chinese should be used in schools and official documents and that no signs for stores and businesses be purely in foreign (non-Chinese) languages. On the surface, this seems like a rather prissy but otherwise innocuous law, but if you keep digging, as Shanghaiist always does, you will discover that “[t]he invention of new words [is] regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.”
Incidentally, it looks like I get to visit China in a couple weeks on business. If you don’t hear from me, assume I said the word ‘LOL’ out loud instead of laughing. Which, come to think of it, probably should be a shooting offense anyway.
From the aforementioned thread of WoWerized fiction:
To farm, or not to farm: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outraged PVE-ers,
Or to take arms against a sea of mobs,
And by kiting end them? To die; to log;
No more; and by logging to say we end
The grinding and the thousand little quests
That leveling is tied to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to log;
To log: perchance to live: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that life offline what dreams may come
When we have logged off this MMORPG coil,
Must give us pause; there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long grinding
If that’s too much culture… click more for the long one
Here’s their game: take your favorite movie, and update it with WoW references. Gems include:
I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire all his shots in his ammo bag?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Flawless Arcanite Rifle, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Also:
“I say we Hearthstone out, then AoE the entire instance from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Honorable mention
I am Inigo Montoya. You ganked my alt. Prepare to die!
From The Onion
“After weeks of fighting for every pixel of ground and seeing 180 degrees of carnage in every direction, you start to wonder if it’s really worth it,” said 23-year-old Avers, who has been decorated 1,327 times since 1995, when he began fighting on his Sega Genesis. “I’ve already given my life several dozen times in this endless, senseless war game.”
Avers added: “Some nights, it’s all I can do to ‘continue.’”
I only check the Onion once a month or so, so I was surprised to see they’ve added a sports section. I only mention this because the article “The Undertaker Forced to Manage Eddie Guerrero’s Funeral” made me laugh out loud.
By way of explanation, I should point out that I once dated a wrestling fan long enough to gain a passing knowledge of the ’sport’. In fact, my brother still resents being trapped into watching Pay Per Views at my place.
At some point, my dearly beloved fiancee got addicted to procedural crime shows like CSI, and as a result, I watch a lot of them too. The only one that’s really actually good is CSI:Original Vegas Flava – during the rest of them, I tend to play Magic: Online or otherwise surf around for blogworthy material.
In the last couple of years, a veritable subgenre of the crime procedural has arisen, where Killer Gamers are the culprits! Virtually all of the shows have done one, and virtually all of them show no awareness for gamers, gaming or the game industry. SVU had kids reenacting Grand Theft Auto scenes. Criminal Intent had people programming bots to play a game to provide them an alibi. CSI: New York had possibly the best one, involving an overworked game designer going nuts and killing someone in an episode that looked to be inspired more by ea_spouse than Jack Thompson. Even Killer Instinct, a show so bad it will be lucky to hit 10 episodes, has already managed to sneak a gaming episode in. Continue reading
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