Category: General

I have a theory about game industry execs…most of them are pretty dumb. Sure, I’ve met a lot of really smart guys that “get it” and are just totally awesome. There are a few that I look up to and I try to follow their example in business, design, etc. But there are so many idiots out there that have either gotten their position by dumb luck, the ideas and work of others, or simply being in the right place at the right time, that the joke about the stereotype is actually pretty right on the mark in a lot of cases.

This is pretty self-evident in the industry. How many times have you seen a press release that has left you scratching your head and thinking “wtf?”. This usually happens when someone cancels a project or title that everyone is just dying for, or some stupid concept is greenlighted and given an outrageous budget, and the list goes on.

But I digress, lets talk about Nancy Drew for a moment, and then on to EA.
Continue reading Nancy Drew more popular than WoW; EA doesn’t know what a PC is

Via Jonas Lamis at the Singularity Institute blog, Adam Sarner issues some predictions on life going virtual and how your personal online agent will help you interact with a virtual world.

If you are not familiar with the idea of what he calls a “persona bot,” think of it as a virtual mini-you. You tell it what sort of filters to apply to the world, and it finds things that you want to see. You already have much of that functionality in parts: spam filters get rid of e-mail you do not want, ad blockers remove ads you do not want, feeds bring you blog messages you do want, Amazon recommends other books or movies you might like, Google Alerts runs searches for you automatically. There are dozens of competing sites that want to help you find the next thing that might interest you based on your current preferences. Combine all that into one virtual agent who gives you an info dump when you check in; if it makes mistakes, tell it what to do differently.

This sort of thing reminds me that everyone needs to read Permutation City, and I need to read more Greg Egan generally. If you have other citations to contemplations of our virtual future, comments are open.

: Zubon

My workplace is planning to make the jump to “new media,” which is to say “online.” Buying banner ads on a few major commercial sites was a big step for them, and suddenly I have managers trying to figure out what Second Life is. They want to engage in participatory networks and have user interaction, although they are shaky on the vocabulary there.

I have been considering how to express “time to cock” in government-speak without saying, “cock.” My manager should know that we will be creating a tool by which ten-year-old boys can send each other crickets saying profane things, both aloud and in text. My current plan is just to go with it. To heck with all restraint, this will be the most often that penises have been discussed (on-topic) in a meeting. I will go in-depth on Second Life, including defining furries, Gor, pony slaves, “attachments,” “cyber rape porn,” and that copyright lawsuit about a sex table with many functions. In today’s meeting, I described how it can be used as a teleconference site, but I should give them an accurate picture. The majority of time and space in Second Life have been devoted to gambling and pornography, and they have been getting rid of gambling.

Or do you have a better idea?

: Zubon

I just had to share this message I got on myspace this evening. It totally made my day!

———————————-
From: ******
Date: Oct 11, 2007 6:20 PM

I have been playing MMOG for 10 years (since EQ beta). MMO Evolution is a very insightful piece of work.

I am finishing a graduate research paper and your work helped enormously.

Thanks again,
******

———————————-

How cool is that? Graduate research paper! I asked him to send me a copy when he was done. I admit, I’m curious to see what he wrote and how exactly my book was useful to him.

Speaking of which, I need new shoes. Go buy a copy from amazon or send me a donation for the PDF version.

I stated before that lolcattery is a sign that this is the best time in history to be alive. Teh Holiez Bibul is a sign that perhaps history has come too far, and these are the end times. That is a thin line to cross.

: Zubon

Hat tip to Language Log. I am debating whether this is a new frontier in “bringing the word to them” or an ally of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I am waiting for the schism, as competing translations have spoke of “Invisible Man” and “Ceiling Cat.” lolheresy?

Ok, I’m curious…what MMO has the best crafting system ever? What do you like or dislike about the various systems out there? Tell me what you think from gathering resources and components to selling (or using) the final product of your hard work!

I’ve been in a few discussions lately and the responses have been all over the board…What do you guys think? What would you do differently? What really annoys the hell out of you?

If you’re (still) unfamiliar with the uncanny valley theory, you can get familiar here.

With that out of the way, now you can take a look at Trusim and see the stuff they got going over there. Very, very neat. As it was pointed out to me while discussing it elsewhere, this is not very much new tech, but rather a very good amalgamation of a few existing techs that are out there now, along with very good tools to get the juice out of those techs.

Still, it’s a little glimpse at the kind of thing we’re gonna be seeing in the years to come in many of our games. Which, yet again every time one of these little leaps comes along, will reopen the whole uncanny valley debate.

Brief thoughts follow.

Continue reading Bridge over uncanny valley