The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
Both Sara and Brandon have links and discussions to WoWJutsu, which is simply Crazy Cool with Cream of Awesome Sauce. It tries to create a Guild Ranking system for raid progression based on character loot in the Armory. It’s not perfect – Sara’s post outlines some of the deficiencies of the system – but it’s an extremely impressive use of the limited data that Armory exposes.
Unfortunately, Europe’s not displayed, so we don’t know if misogyny pays off yet.
Check out Goggles, a flight sim where you can bomb locations pulled directly from Google Maps. You can even bomb your own neighborhood, in theory, although I didn’t try due to the fact that the instructions started with ‘how to delete your internet cache’.
Now imagine merging that with Photosynth, with a little help from Streetview.
Pretty soon, bombing your own school won’t be limited to disgruntled emo teens anymore.
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
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.
Warren Ellis has been day-tripping into Second Life, and god bless him, he seems to honestly making an effort to scratch beyond the surface. This doesn’t change him from having to solve some problems unique to Second Life.
I went in-world on Sunday evening to pick up messages and to look for some music to stream while I worked. Materialising on my new land, I immediately noticed two pings on the “minimap” radar screen that’s placed in the top left of the Second Life viewer. There were two people on my land….
The first thing I saw in the blockhouse was the avatar of a naked man strapped face-down over a piece of sexual apparatus that presented his backside. I then realised that the blockhouse had been filled with dungeon toys. A couple of dozen of them. And, sitting on a chair I didn’t recognise, was a dominatrix with long dark hair, idly waving a riding crop.
“Please be quiet,” she said. “We are busy.”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I typed.
“Go away,” typed the slave.
“I not tell you to talk,” the dominatrix tapped out.
I resisted the urge to pull a weapon and blow them off my land like an enraged farmer. Instead, I used the Land tools in the menu. You can select every object on your land that doesn’t belong to you and send it back to the inventories of the owners. Therefore, Slave Bill flopped on to the floor as his wooden sex horse vanished from under him. The Land tools also let you ban individuals from entering your space. If they’re already on your land, it takes a moment; and then they quite satisfyingly fly through the roof and are dumped on the nearest available adjacent parcel.
Newsweek asks the asinine question of the week: will Guitar Hero make fewer people play guitar?
Clearly, Guitar Hero is fun. But by bestowing the rewards of virtuosity to those who haven’t spent years to earn it, is it dumbing down musicianship? If a teenager can easily become a make-believe guitar hero, does that mean he won’t ever bother to master the real thing?
… is that occasionally, a reader will send you something that makes your head explode. And with that introduction, I present the Abortion-Themed d20 pen and paper sourcebook. Continue reading
Probably the best WoW Machinima I’ve seen to date yet.
Last night, Will Wright broke ground – being the first video game designer I can remember who was on late night TV. His appearance, including a rather surreal exchange regarding Spore and Intelligent Design, can be found here.
For all the talk about how video games now earn as much money as Hollywood (a largely bogus stat, btw), it’s always been kind of surprising how those who create them haven’t gotten more rock star treatment. Overall, the appearance was relatively slow going, although near the end, I do believe that Will managed to succeed blowing Stephen Colbert’s mind when talking about the more ambitious aspects of Spore. Continue reading
Speaking of what the kids are all hip about, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Hot Topic at whatever local mall your neighborhood teenagers infest now sells World of Warcraft shirts and hats.
I don’t know what’s a better indicator of success: that, or the WoW-themed porn antics of Whores of Warcraft (not safe for work).
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