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ION Update

May 15, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Writing from ION during the lunch keynote. Overall, it’s a good conference, very small and informal, with a lot more people that I know personally, and a very solid focus on online and MMO issues. I’ll definitely have to consider coming back next year, if work allows.

I was on a panel with Scott, Erik and Bridget. Notes can be found here. Unfortunately, no shouting matches erupted, so it wasn’t as good as a panel can be. Erik and I will have to work with that, maybe next year one of us will hit the other over the head with a folding chair or something.

I’ll put up my slides later this week.

“An Empty Virtual Space Feels A Lot Lonelier than a Webpage”

April 14, 2008 / Damion Schubert

This post is the best thing Raph’s posted quite some time. Of course, it helps that his thoughts mirror a lot of my thoughts on online worlds, especially the new meme of ‘everyone can open their own virtual world’. The fact that Raph is aware of this problem gives me a lot of hope for what they’re working on.

Chasing after and bending the rules towards casual players for an MMO ignores an obvious issue – an online community is ultimately as interesting and compelling as its members. Casual players will not give a place its own personality. Consider, if you will, how interesting Cheers would have been without Norm, Cliff and Frasier.

Once you start building a game design based on the idea that interesting social ties MIGHT occur inside a space, the designer is basically depending on serendipity to occur. This is, as one might imagine, a pretty scary basis for a business model. As such, we start putting in game mechanics designed to make the game stickier (collecting minigames), have tactical interest (PvP), take longer (levelling curves and raiding games), and forcing more positive social interactions (multiplayer-required content). Serendipity is still the fulcrum that determines whether a game (or even a server/shard of a game) lives or dies, it’s the designers job to make that landscape as fertile as possible.

Blizzard to Canucks: No Looking Over Your Neighbor’s Shoulder

April 3, 2008 / Damion Schubert

My Canadian coworkers got a kick out of this: our gaming neighbors to the north do not have to pay an entry fee to enter Blizzard’s arena tournament. However, they do have to sharpen their number two pencils.

Canadian residents are not required to pay an Entry Fee in order to enter. Instead, Canadian residents may enter by submitting a 250 word typewritten essay comparing the video gaming culture in Canada to the video gaming culture in the United States on 8 ½ x 11 inch paper and mailing their essay to Essay Entry for The North American Blizzard Entertainment Arena Tournament, P.O Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623. Essay entries must be received no later than March 31, 2008 in order to be eligible. Essay entrants represent and warrant that the essay is their original work and does not infringe the rights of any third party. By entering, essay entrants hereby grant, without further consideration, all right, title and interest in and to their essay to Sponsor.

Also, it is not an acceptable excuse that your sled dog ate your homework. I kid! I kid! Anyway, it’s nice to see a new growth industry for gold farmers.

Claus Speaks, Gets Misty-Eyed About Shadowbane

April 3, 2008 / Damion Schubert

I almost missed it because he refuses to get a working RSS feed, but not long ago, Claus Grovdal, producer-designer of Darkfall, poked his head out of his hole, saw his shadow, declared two more months of crunch, and scurried back into his rabbit hole.

But before he did, he boldly asked the question, “Why Shadowbane didn’t make billions”, and then went on to say, and I quote:

Shadowbane was a great concept and a great game, and the only reason it wasn’t a massive success, was buggy and outdated technology… If Shadowbane had released without all the client crashes, with a better server solution and with a graphical engine that could compete with other games released at the time, it would have been a HUGE hit.

My Call of Duty 4 Experience

March 28, 2008 / Damion Schubert

So far, it has some of the most spectacular scripted events I’ve ever seen in a video game, visually.

That being said, so far the actual gameplay seems to consist of not quite killing anyone before my squadmates do, followed by being blown up by unavoidable grenades.

The Opposite of RMT

March 21, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Magic: the Gathering has had, over the years, a debate over the use of what they call proxy cards, or the use of stand-in cards to represent more expensive, harder to find cards. Often times, these proxy cards are little more than writing the words ‘Black Lotus’ over a worthless land card, but in today’s day of low-cost color printers, many players attempt to make more ‘perfect’ ones, by downloading the art and pasting it to the back of a cheap common. Continue reading

Dear Burnout: Paradise Team…

March 20, 2008 / Damion Schubert

The whole GTA-like open city thing…. did it ever occur to you that someone might want to run the same race twice in a row?

Please, find the designer/producer that foisted this horrible decision on an otherwise great game, and bop him on the back of the head once for me. Kthx…

That Libertarian RMT Argument

March 19, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Here.

“When you criminalize free trade, only…criminals engage in free trade. That’s why you see the thuggish behaviour you do. Legalize the trade, as some games and worlds have, and you have harnessed legitimate and normal human activity, and then can more easily identify and prosecute the criminals, i.e. those who use fraud, spamming.” Continue reading

Arcane Election Rules

March 11, 2008 / Damion Schubert

My experience with the Texas Primary was not unlike Scott’s, only we were attempting to fit about 500 people into a 35-man classroom on a college campus. We ended up forming two lines, going down the hall each way, each supporting a different candidate. Somehow, I was drafted into actually playing traffic cop for these two lines. Fortunately, I had the foresight to put the Obama line down the long hall.

My coworker, who is from France, is completely baffled and befuddled by stories such as these, especially when you get to the part where Obama lost the primary but (probably) won the caucus in Texas. Continue reading

The Longest, Geekiest Quiz I’ve Taken In a While

March 10, 2008 / Damion Schubert

From this quiz:

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Sorcerer (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-11
Constitution-10
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-18
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Zen Of Design