The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
Raph links to a great article about Second Life, which comes to the conclusion that Second Life is a Ponzi scheme, or something similar.
No, SecondLife is a classic pyramid scheme. Or, more of an Amway-like pyramid: partially legitimate, partially ponzi. Sure, there are plenty of legitimate SecondLife customers who just like to go there to get their kicks, spend a couple dollars, and be on their way.
Another great little flash game. Go check it out.
Flash Element TD: Finally, someone has made a Flash game which captures my favorite part of Age of Empires: mazes of hot tower death.
With all the hubbub over Super Columbine Massacre, I thought maybe I should play it. Tragically, it’s a lousy game. And by that, I mean in terms of actually having any clue what you’re supposed to do at any given time. My own personal theory is that the guy who runs the Slamdance contest quit in disgust when he couldn’t figure out how to open his duffel bags and get his guns, resulting in him being caught by the hall monitors over and over again. Apparently, you’re supposed to know to go to the top of the hill to watch the bombs get set off. My attempt to do so resulted in, well, nothing happening. Continue reading
In a move that was, in their own terms, inevitable, Linden Labs announced that Second Life would make their client open source. Van Hemlock offers the first salvo of opinion.
The timing is interesting. Second Life has recently dealt with all manners of abuse, including billing security issues, stability issues, copybot, grey goo, and other degenerative attacks on the system. Releasing the source code will make it easier for attackers to find vulnerabilities, at least in the short term. Continue reading
Buried in the comments on Yet Another Second Life Post on Raph’s blog, Raph says the following:
I am glad you think of me as enlightened.
We will be announcing our startup in the next couple of days, and when we do, believe it or not, I hope you’re among those who are interested.
In the midst of a Second Life article that picks on the Linden boys for glibly announcing they’ve reached 2 million accounts (including the mysterious fact that they’ve gotten 1 million new accounts in the last 2 months, but still seem to average 14K players a night), Van Hemlock makes the following observation:
Residents Logged in in the Last 60 Days: 809,960
(From http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php)Accounts signed up in the last 58 Days: 1,000,000
Add two days’s worth (34,482, from above): 1,034,482 signups in 60 days
Soooo:
1,034,482 – 809,960 = 224,522
I might be getting confused with definitions here, but doesn’t that mean 224,522 people have made a Second Life account, but have never used it to log in even once, not even to have a look for an hour and get bored? How does that work? It gets worse if you take into account that many of the 809,960 logins are existing residents who had signed up prior to the one million mark, and are still logging in. That can’t be right – more than 12.5% of all SL Residents have NEVER logged in EVER?
Yeah, that’s about right. ALL MMOs get this – it’s one of the more mysterious things about the industry. I’ve seen one standard MMO quote that roughly 10% of the people who buy boxes for their game never log in, and another 5% create an account but never log into a game – the percentages vary from game to game, but are never insubstantial. In a pay-for subscription model, the latter group would be considered by cynics to be ‘the perfect customers’.
Linden Labs’ 12% makes sense when you consider that its a free trial. There’s no financial incentive to play. Probably a bunch of people got distracted between the time they created their account, and the time they downloaded the game. Perhaps they even got distracted by a story about how their credit card information isn’t safe.
Multiverse has announced that they’ve managed to snag the rights to the Firefly license. Oooooh, shiny, even if it’s more niche than us fanboys want to admit. However, here’s the interesting part of the article, to me:
Bringing those environments and character types to life as an online game will be a challenge: Multiverse is not a game developer, but rather a platform provider whose product is still in beta. Instead of making the game itself, the company will hire a development team that will craft the virtual galaxy using Multiverse tools.
See, now THIS is what a clear, visually distinct art style looks like. I love it.
With Vanguard’s launch imminent, and with heavy pressure from the 800-lb gorilla launching two weeks before it, Brad McQuaid felt it was time to have a ‘come to Jesus’ talk with the fans.
The interesting subtext is Brad laying it all out – the game isn’t going to be nearly as hardcore as they seem to want it. Key notes that Brad makes: the game WILL have a minimap. The game WON’T mandate endless camping. The game WILL have quests, so you won’t be forced to endlessly grind. Believe it or not, they had to defend these positions on the boards. I guess there are fans of anything, even tedious inventory management. Continue reading
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