Month: March 2007 (Page 2 of 2)

Behind Second Life’s Infrastructure

March 12, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Information Week has an utterly fascinating article about the tech behind the Second Life experience. Of particular note, the machinery runs on 2000 CPUs. The article claims that it’s capable of 100K users at once, but the article talks about how the system is already showing signs of stress at its current peak (which the article reports as having a record of 36K users recently).

When residents buy a whole island, they get dedicated use of an entire Intel- or AMD-based server, with pricing based on the processor, memory, and storage of that server.

GDC Talk: 2007 (How to Write Great Game Design Documents)

March 9, 2007 / Damion Schubert

310 people. Not bad for the very last talk of the conference. Surprisingly few were friends of mine humoring me (and where were you guys anyway?) And shockingly few people got up and left halfway through it!

I proposed the talk in desperate hopes of finally getting a GDC speech. After four years of proposing MMO-specific talks, I wanted to do something else — but all I’ve ever designed is MMOs. What could I do a talk on that wasn’t that?

The talk went well, even though the guy handling my AV couldn’t seem to get the bottom half of my powerpoint presentation to show up. For those who wanted to see my slides in all their glory, I’ve put them up here.

Edit: I cleaned up some typos, and made the powerpoint presentation do a better job of speaking for itself (i.e. without me standing in front of it). Those who want to download it and use it may feel free to do so, so long as I remain attributed.

Original comments thread is here.

Sony’s Home? (I Don’t Get It)

March 7, 2007 / Damion Schubert

I confess not being nearly as impressed by Sony’s Home initiative as the others in the audience. One gets the sense that they were inspired by Second Life, but instead added something much more like the Sims – effectively adding a casual gamer’s front end to a hardcore game console.

One of the charms of the Second Life experience is the ultimate customizability of the place. What I saw was limited in a typically Sonyesque fashion. As Phil Harrison crowed about thousands of potential visual appearances, he hit a random button that would move his cheekbones two pixels up, narrow his chin a teensy bit and darken the skin color a hue. Sure, furries aren’t for everyone, but Second Life’s infinite customizability (or even Sim’s more limited possibilities) leave it in the dust. Continue reading

Crashing the Second Life Party

March 7, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Spent my evening at the Second Life party. I felt vaguely guilty about it. I even went up and shook Wagner James Au’s hand, although I don’t think he fully remembered who I was. This might have been the drinks, though – they were, by all reports, mixed very strongly. I personally have made an oath to not give any speeches or roundtables while hungover. Nothing impedes a roundtable like the guy running it wishing everyone would shut up. Continue reading

Lessons from GDC

March 5, 2007 / Damion Schubert

From a GDC slide, on a presentation about how to build the first five minutes in the game:

“Your game needs 6 things:

3 HOLY SHITs!
2 OH MY GODs!
1 NO FUCKING WAY!”

Speech by Dan Arey, although he gave credit for the slide to someone whose name I didn’t catch.

GDC 2007

March 5, 2007 / Damion Schubert

I’m currently sitting in a tutorial at GDC. I love it here.

I’ve always been surprised that many of my coworkers and colleagues don’t like GDC. Some see being sent there almost as a sentence. To me, it’s mandatory – it’s my annual battery recharge. Every talk, I either (a) learn something or (b) end up feeling smart because I already knew that. Either is a nice feeling. Continue reading

The Old Gods Walk Among You

March 2, 2007 / Damion Schubert

I spent some time tonight exploring World of Warcraft’s new Armory service, which allows you to look at other people’s characters and stats. Rather than post snarky comments about privacy or who did what first, I thought I’d take a more fun journey through the data, and see how many Meridian 59 fanbois I could find.

The names of the Meridian gods are the most famous names I’ve ever made. And they’re pretty original, which is mostly a testament to the fact I was still a young designer, and thought things like dual-vowels and improbable letter combinations were cool (hell, my own character’s name was Zjiria). So i figured it’d be pretty easy to see how many people were still pining for the Streets of Tos. Continue reading

Sexy Sprites

March 1, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Feeling insecure about your real life appearance? Well, click on over to Sexy Sprites, and you can feel insecure about your avatar’s appearance as well!

Interesting side note: If you’re playing MMOs for the hotsexxy women, maybe Second Life isn’t actually the game for you –the top 10 rated women are all in Guild Wars.

On the other hand, if you want to impress the women, head on over to Second Life and get a piercing or a tribal tattoo. Also, own a business – the top two vote-getters are described as CEOs and business owners.

As an aside, the top vote getting female is averaging an 8.5, whereas the men top out at six and a half. Meaning that either women are a lot pickier, or the voters are all men who haven’t found the ‘female only’ pulldown.

Orcs! In! Space!

March 1, 2007 / Damion Schubert

This morning, the news is that yet another MMO company has started in Austin, and it will be working on the Warhammer 40K license. Vigil Studios was founded by the guy who developed Exarch for NCSoft – a game that never shipped but provided the codebase for another NCSoft property. The game is being published by THQ – a company that just last year poo-poohed the idea that anyone could compete with WoW. Since then, they hired Kelly Flock, formerly of Sony. Interviews with Kelly are here and here.

“We realized this is one of those few properties that has a high level of interest from the hardcore gaming community, which could be a great launching point to turning it into a great mainstream mass-market MMO.”

It takes a great deal of finesse to pull it off, but I actually love the idea of 40K in space. I think that most futuristic MMOs have a real problem finding resonance with their fanbase, and while everyone scoffs at elves and orcs, leveraging them is one shortcut that helps you get there.