Category: General

Simple guideline: a modest success is better than a grand failure. If you make unreasonable claims, I assume that everything else you say is a lie, and your game will be a parade of delays, disappointments, and broken promises.

Nicodemus hates this guy. Why? Because “CEO” means “you should know better than some idiot on a forum saying, ‘u cant beat wow for with like a billon dollars.'” Spore? Good luck with those expectations. LotRO? Best expansion evar or die. Vanguard? We saw that one. I expected more from Half-Life 2 because the box went on about its being the highest-rated game ever, but it came with the far-more-entertaining Portal.

A successful niche game is a great thing. It knows what it can do, and it does it well. If you want that thing, it is there for you. If not, you are not just getting a bad knockoff of something from Blizzard or Sony. Whatever jokes I may make about Alganon, I respect the David Allen interview that translated to “we’re making a pretty decent DikuMUD/EQ/WoW knockoff that does some stuff differently.” City of Heroes developers humbly remark that they did not know the costume creator would be popular.

Our industry sucks because we accept buggy releases. The PR for our media sucks because we accept unreasonable promotional crap. “Everyone promotes their game that way” is the same thing as “every game ships with bugs.” Some people do a better job, and not everyone spews exaggerations and blatant lies. And some people can live up to the hype.

: Zubon

Hello, everybody. After writing for KTR for a little while last summer, the blogging bug has bit me again, so here I’ve returned!

I thought I’d share this comic I spotted on Digg just now. Go ahead and read it first.

Continue reading Yes, Animal Crossing

Our games are great for providing a false sense of accomplishment. I leveled! I got a badge! We defeated the dragon! It is an accomplishment in some sense, but it does not clean the kitty litter, pay off your mortgage, or provide clean drinking water in Africa. That is fine. It does not need to. We all have our recreation and entertainment, and you just as easily might have been watching a sporting event or cog dancing. I am ecumenical about that.

Part of that sense of accomplishment comes from attachment and achievement. You leveled up. Maybe you said you leveled your warrior, but it is still your warrior. You are connected, you have built something. Even if you are grinding your way along a treadmill, the little number says 56 instead of 54. Advancement! Progress!

Building sand castles is not progress. You get memories, maybe a photograph, and the tide comes in. You have sand again. It might be fun making sand castles, but that fun is more like baking a cake than raising a barn. We know the barn will be gone someday too, but it is less ephemeral.

Is this game The One? Will it last for years rather than months? We build up our characters. We spend hours getting that purple set. We have massive guild drama over loot allocation. And then we move on to the next game. The next The One might be several years away, or maybe you know this next game is just a bagatelle. The flames are barely on the horizon, and already it tastes like ashes.

: Zubon

Paraphrasing a discussion of Second Life and other online fun:
A> So virtual sex is twisted and strange, but virtual killing is good clean fun? This country is messed up.
B> Virtual killing is great because no one really dies. Virtual sex is stupid because no one really gets laid. See the difference?

: Zubon

I am one of 35 people in the world who liked the original ending of Evangelion. I think it takes the internal perspective on the external events shown in the (first hour of the) re-done version. One notable bit in those episodes is that Shinji is given infinite potential, a blank slate. And he rejects it. He needs a line, ground to walk upon, something to give him bearings. Alone in the void, he has nothing meaningful to do.

Many people reject Second Life because there is nothing to do. Wait, that can’t be right, you can do whatever you want, from swordfighting to interior design. There is just no reason to unless you already want to. Second Life does not have quests or monsters or levels to push you in some direction. You make of your universe what you will, in interaction with others doing the same. That is a lot of responsibility to bear, especially if you are looking for simple fun. (Also, the interface kind of sucks.)

A recent book I read was on the problem of evil. A partial answer I recall from a college text was the need for an “Irenaean environment”: without danger, we would not grow. One similar atheistic perspective holds that a being with no threats to itself has no reason to do anything. If there is no goal to potentially fail in your sandbox game, how long until people get bored and wander off?

So we start with a line. You are level one, and you have an experience point bar. Fill that bar and you reach two. You have a direction, and a goal at the end. We even have some new lines for you to follow at the end of that one. Small risks of failure along the way hide the fact that you cannot lose at World of Warcraft. There are things that want to eat you, and people with exclamation points asking if you would kindly do things. Far from a blank slate of imagination, you now have a clear, channeled path.

But I guess you can win now.

: Zubon

From the Wikipedia:

Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American writer and game designer, best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson, and co-founding the company Tactical Studies Rules with Don Kaye in 1974. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of the role-playing game.

On March 4th, the Associated Press confirmed reports of Gygax’s passing that originally were made by Troll Lord Games, a small role playing game company Gygax had been working with. He had been in poor health, suffering multiple strokes and a near-heart attack.

– Ethic