The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
This guy claims to be an ex-Arena.net employee, and he’s decided to burn some bridges to the ground. Among his unusual assertions:
1) Some enterprising lower level employees of Arena.net has forged an ‘unofficial’ partnership with gold farming organizations (’GFCs’), who they feel are providing a valuable service to the goldbuying public. This partnership is, shall we say, not a corporate mandate. Continue reading
It’s long been acknowledged that one of the cornerstones of WoW’s success has been relatively girlfriend/wife friendly gameplay. Unlike many MMOs in the past, WoW has an inviting art style and a happy-go-lucky feel to the game that gamers aren’t ashamed to nudge their geek-loving girlfriends into giving it a good college try.
Compare this to Conan, where according to this old movie, you start as a sex slave (youtube link- fast forward to 1:15 or so). Developer quote:
“If you’re a male, you start rowing, and if you’re a female, you’re chained to the back performing other services… regardless, you have to do work.”
The only confirmation I could find was in this interview from 2006:
The male characters are attached to the oars, and the female characters are chained to the wall, slightly removed from the males, as their duties fall less under the category of propulsion than, shall we say, “crew recreation.”
Conan is gunning hard for the ‘M’ rating, and trying to do everything they can to embrace it. That being said, the initial proposition is an odd one, that really highlights the difference between passive and interactive media. In, say, Thelma and Louise, the audience is asked to root for women who were recently abused for sexual purposes. In this game design, you’re asked to become one.
Does anyone in a recent beta know if this design element exists in Conan as it sits now? Is it clearly apparent what’s going on? If so, it will be very interesting to see if they ship with that feature, and what effect it has on the wifeometer.
There exists now in WoW a bug so insidious, so horrifying, that hundreds are threatening to quit, due largely to feelings of emasculation. Long threads debate whether the bug is a bug at all, and whether or not this is an insidious stealth nerf of the highest order, further cementing the notion that Blizzard hates the Horde.
I am, of course, referring to the great shoulderpocalypse. Continue reading
In order to enter some raid-level dungeons in World of Warcraft, you are required to be ‘attuned’ to those dungeons (usually signified by a key added to your keychain). Attunements are a carryover from EQ, and Blizzard has shown remarkable self-awareness about the complexity of the attunement process, even poking fun at their actual attunement process on April Fool’s Day.
A couple of months ago, World of Warcraft removed Attunements from its highest level dungeons. The removal of attunements from these dungeons beg the question – is Attunement just too hardcore for the larger audience that is now playing MMOs, thanks to WoW? Or do they still offer positive value? Continue reading
Scott went and did the Jane Goodall thing, only where he was going, the apes all have detachable (and upgradeable — for a price) penii. Well worth a read – and it’s a much more positive writeup than you might expect.
In related news, the LA Times is talking about how marketers are pulling out of Second Life, and how it turns out that the entire concept of commercialization is a huge turn-off to the technolibertarian base that makes up the core of SL’s community. Gee, no one saw that coming.
Try to find all the cutesey in-jokes in this article: Woman Arrested for WoW Love Affair.
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.
Linden Labs has filed their paperwork in their court case which has the potential to be a landmark in the virtual world domain. Matt’s got a good writeup, as does Prokofy Neva. I heartily recommend taking the time to read the writeups, and contribute discussion on Matt’s blog whose following details of the case much closer than I am, but I think the whole case has deep ramifications for anyone trying to protect their environment from troublesome elements.
According to WoW, the art for the ‘Scourge’ race will be redone in the Chinese version of the game. El articulo:
The9 (Nasdaq: NCTY) changed the looks of the Scourge race in its licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) on June 26, reports Southern Metropolitan News. Scourge are an undead race that in previous versions showed part flesh and part skeleton. The9 modified the look to show no skeleton, and changed scourge corpses from bones to tombs. The9 claimed that it made the change because the original look of the Scourge race was too scary and thus unlikely to pass new Chinese censorship review.
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