is StarCraft 2 not Worlds of StarCraft. Maybe in a while.
: Zubon
Month: May 2007
.
Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.Oh, Hello Again Officer…
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.
Screw Google! And stay out of my games!
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?
Brad McQuaid Responds
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
5 Things About Planning
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.
Start of Darkness
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
Da Most Int’restin Sellin’ Place in the Woild
For last night’s adventure, I decided to take a trip the the university and then the black market. As my little Mastermind was but 7th, this was an interesting trip. Still, I survived and made it to CoV’s auction house, which should really be called cBay (with the good guy version called hBay, of course). Silly copyright restrictions.
Continue reading Da Most Int’restin Sellin’ Place in the Woild
Ex-Sigil Interview
I don’t normally post just a link to another site, but I think this ex-Sigil employee interview at F13 is too important not to send people to it.
Some highlights:
Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November… ONE.
Ex-Sigil: Well, worst of all.. at the end of Sigil, Brad wasn’t even there to look us in the eye and apologize.
– Ethic
Hey Youse Guys
After taking Zubon up on his offer for the trial run on CoH/CoV and reactivating my old account there, I decided I would give the dark side a try. With only 10 days to play with, and my limited play time, I probably should have waited for my upcoming mini vacation, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.
After going through assorted hurdles to log in (i.e. I forgot my password and login), I created my first Villian. I was disappointed but not entirely surprised to see they mostly sounded similar to the archetypes on the Hero side. However, I saw one that interested me, that was different from anything I’d played in CoH before – the Mastermind. After ensuring I had my pinky finger properly placed at the edge of my mouth, I began playing with the still-unmatched character creation screens.
Gamer’s Day
My family took my Mom out for dinner on Mother’s Day. My Mom, my wife and our kids, my brother, my older sister and her kids and my younger sister with her son all gathered to celebrate motherhood in the best way possible – eating food and not making Mom cook or do dishes afterwards.
We met at a nice steakhouse and the meal was fantastic. The conversation was pleasant and typical. Until the nerd-fest broke loose.