What’s this about a druid epic flight form? That’s hot.
Oh, and we can all learn to fly at level 14 over in City of Heroes. And everyone can get jet pack starting at level 6. But I’m sure your game is very nice, too. :)
: Zubon
Archive for May, 2007 Page 2 of 4
Over the coming week, I will be deleting some blogs that had no posts for the last month or two. If that includes you, hey, nothing personal.
: Zubon
is StarCraft 2 not Worlds of StarCraft. Maybe in a while.
: Zubon
Last night’s CoV adventure was plagued with system issues and hiccups, to the point that I was apologizing for monopolizing the GM’s time in my petitions. It was as I saw the floating police lights appear in front of me for the third time that night that I realized how very far we’ve come in the customer satisfaction arena.
ITwire.com reports that Google recently filed a patent for monitoring player character behaviors in MMORPGs to build user profiles which are then used to target in-game advertising to players.
I used to think that the people over at Google were pretty smart. Apparently, they are dumber than a noob begging for gold. Oh wait, we should show that guy advertisements for credit card offers.
One would think that Google staffers would at least run a quick search on what a MMORPG actually is. They are supposed to have the world’s most powerful search engine, right?
I recently linked to an interview with an ex-Sigil employee and it is only fair to link to the follow up interview with Brad McQuaid posted over at F13.
Here is a brief highlight:
Brad McQuaid: I’m really sorry it went down that way. The way that it did. I can promise you that I and everybody in upper management did everything they possibly could to avoid this happening. Sigil was everything to us. It was our dream. Starting our own company. Providing a great working environment. You know, we worked months and months - as great as SOE is, and it was great working with them as a partner - as some people said “Brad, why did you sell out to..” We didn’t. We had hoped that Vanguard would be more of a success. It turned out we all worked very hard. Did the best we could. I thank everyone for pouring their hearts and souls into the game. I think it’s a great game. I think it has huge potential. When I’ve talked and made posts about the future of Vanguard and talked about Vanguard next year - I do believe that it was planned and architected to be an amazing game. We hoped to do it as our own company. It didn’t work out that way. I’m sorry.
- Ethic
Being tagged for five reasons why I blog reminded me that I was tagged for five things you don’t know about me, before my flashdrive ate my post. Rather than rewrite that, I am going to tell you about what I do for a living and the perspective it gives me on game development.
I am firmly of the belief that many gaming projects fail or are executed badly not because of any problem in design but because of poor processes. Some really creative and dedicated people do excellent and inspired work, but they have no interest in the various meta skills that keep organizations functioning and keep things organized over a multi-year project. It still works for some small teams, but coordinating operations is a separate skill set from game development, just as coding is a separate skill set from graphic design. Even people who can do it all do not have the time to do it all themselves, and it shows in games that have brilliant features but poor overall coherence or ones that consistently fail to fulfill promises or meet deadlines.
Again returning to our comics section, Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness has been released. Or it should have been; I had to delay my trip to the comic shop today, which means I will not be able to check for a week or so. Anyway, if you have a copy, please tell us all whether it is worth buying. :)
: Zubon