Sometimes, my wife sends me wonderful things. Click ‘more’ to see one such thing.
Page 57 of 136
One of the things that is key is to understand — really and truly understand — the environment that you’re working in. You know, if you live in the YouTube age, don’t give major speeches in front of a blue screen. That sort of thing.
This article is a good example of this: in football, if an average rushing play gains about 4 yards, but the average passing play earns 6 yards, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should see more passing? Currently, according to the Author, quarterbacks pass only 54% of the time. Shouldn’t that be higher? Continue reading
A version of this article appeared in the August 2008 issue of Game Developer magazine.
Darker! Deeper! More serious! These were the marching orders given to the Shadowbane writing team. The world of Aerynth was a brutal world, appropriate for our PvP-oriented gameplay, with a backstory of politics and treachery spanning centuries. And to be honest, even as a developer I would be hard-pressed to remember the names of any of the major NPCs. What I do remember is that we had a combat ability called ‘Hammer Time’.
Beyond the Leisure Suit Larry series, there is no substantial comedy genre in video games – at least not like in film or TV. And there are good reasons for that – funny his hard, especially in a genre where you don’t control the rhythm of the narrative. Still, you don’t have to be in it just for the yukks in order to add moments of levity to your otherwise serious games and virtual worlds. The proof that it works can be found in our megahits – how many times did World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and Grand Theft Auto make you laugh? These aren’t explicitly comedies, but all games with hardcore audiences that used comedy with surgical precision to enhance the experience. Continue reading
This is all we were talking about at work today:
Our new Recruit-A-Friend program has added features that reward you even more for bringing your friends into Azeroth™. Recruit-A-Friend and earn:
- An exclusive ZHEVRA in-game mount* when your friend pays for 60 days of subscription time.
- 30 Days of FREE** WoW gametime when your friend pays for 30 days of subscription time.
- You and your friend will earn triple the experience when grouped together.
- For every two levels of experience your friend earns, they can grant one level of experience to any one ofyour characters of lower level.
- You and your friend will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world.
Ever spend a couple hours trying to cancel some sort of service, and say to yourself, “There oughta be a law”? Well, if you’re a politician, you can do something about it.
The Illinois House and Senate have just passed a new bill requiring subscription-based Internet gaming service providers online on how to cancel. Apparently this all came about after one alderman had a tough time canceling his son’s Final Fantasy XI account and took it up with the House. The full text of HB4178 can be read here, but it’s not made clear if virtual worlds are included in “games.” My guess would probably be yes, though.
The Today Show hosts play Rock Band.
In other rock band news, I hunger.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t played Conan since I discovered my female barbarian was nerfed by her own damage animations. That being said, I find articles like this one a little obfuscating. Oh noes! Funcom is down to half its value! Sky! Falling!
Looking at the longer view, we see that Funcom is… exactly where they were before they launched Conan. Which is to say, the launch of Conan probably overinflated their value.
Also note that in both graphs, the graph starts at 15, instead of 0. The net result is that a casual graph reader would think they lost 80% of their value from their peak, when instead they’re down half.
Should Funcom be doing better? Probably. But it’s not nearly as gloomy as the original article suggests.
The internet is all abuzz that Brutal Legend has been dropped by Activision. Given that Brutal Legend combines the brilliance of Tim Schafer and the Jack Blackiness of Jack Black, this makes baby Jesus cry.
Dear people who control the game industry’s money: do something about this.
Last night, my guild finally managed to take down Illidan Stormrage, the end boss of the Black Temple. It was an enormous amount of work to get there. I think I joined the guild about this time last year, and back then we were taking babysteps into Serpentshrine Cavern, struggling with Lurker.
According to WoWJutsu, 5.18% of all U.S. raiding guilds have gotten down Illidan, which amounts to roughly 4000 of ‘em. (That being said, with our fresh kill, we rank in the low 2000s). Split the difference, and assume that each guild has about 35 raiding members (probably low), and you’d guess that about 100K people have popped Illidan. A small fraternity, but actually not as small as I expected. Continue reading
Sorry I haven’t been around lately, we’ve been hard at work to get an internal demo done, and it’s been leaving me just crispy enough to not feel like posting much of anything.
As a reward for your patience, here is a video of Rush failing at Tom Sawyer in Rock Band.
Recent Comments