Category: General

My pal Ben from ars’ Opposable Thumbs got to go to PAX, and I didn’t. I’ll just let that insult sink in for a minute.

…

Good? Good. Wronged as I was, I still would like to point to their pretty good coverage of the event. In particular, to draw your attention to Wil Wheaton’s keynote, which was trés cool, and almost required listening if you’re an old ricketty gamer like me. If you have time to spare, give it a spin.

All this courtesy, of course, of the good folks at PA and Op.Th. . Thanks guys. Thanks for not taking me. ;)

One question…

How many of you have played games on a console but not on your PC? Alternatively, how many of you play games on your PC but haven’t bothered to buy a console, or have one collecting dust somewhere?

I’ll comment more after I see what the responses are like.

End part one….

(hot damn, I so love sensationalist titles)

I look at many of the upcoming titles, and what do I see?

Age of Conan: Mostly PvP
Warhammer Online: Mostly PvP
Pirates of the Burning Sea: Mostly PvP
GW:EN / GW2: Mostly PvP

And so on. What the hell, people? Have we given up on PvE? Have we collectively accepted that there’s no way around WoW’s raid-centric PvE (almost universally maligned, yet at the same time almost universally played), so we don’t bother anymore? What’s a progress-minded soloist PvEr to do? Do I have to write a manifesto? Would it have readers, or would they all be busy killing each other?

Do I have to start letterbombing some offices? No! I can’t! That would be PvP! Aaaaargh!

Stealing, Thieving, Pickpocketing, Robbing, Breaking and Entering… Should this sort of stuff be allowed in our MMORPGs? There is certainly a nice adrenaline rush to the process of robbing someone blind and getting away with it, but what about the victim? I had a car stolen once and I felt completely violated and helpless. For me though, it wasn’t that my car was stolen, it was that I didn’t know who did it and I couldn’t DO anything about it. All of my anger and venting was towards a ghost.

Anyway…does having these skills and abilities in a MMORPG make it better? If you remove the thieving bits from the classical rogue archetype, is sneaking, backstabbing, and picklock enough? Do they HAVE to be able to steal? I’m not asking about how to implement this, or rules and restrictions to keep things fair or not, but rather what do you think about having it as part of the game to start with?

Stealing, pickpocketing, corpse looting, robbing player homes…you get the idea.

Give me your arguments for or against and any personal anecdotes. Try to look at things from the other point of view as well. Some things are a necessary evil…and others are not at all.

To me, at least, but I suppose it’s also very good news to a few other crazy gamers like me out there.

Apparently, Mafia II is being made. By the same guys, even. Which is pretty much the gaming equivalent of Scorsese waking up one day and saying “Hey, you know what? I think ‘Goodfellas’ needs a part two”. The first one was a superb game, with incredibly yummy storytelling and ambiance. So if you haven’t played it, you can pick it up on the cheap nowadays and it’ll end up right up there in your list of best gaming dollars spent.

I’m a grown gamer, one that handles screenshots with a lot of care, but I’ll be damned if they don’t look good.

If I am not playing City of Heroes, what have I been playing? A variety of games that each provide a few hours of entertainment. They are not necessarily bad games, just small ones. They might have a neat mechanic, a good idea, or interesting graphics.

The downside of them is usually the pricing issue. A free demo provides about an hour of entertainment, or you can buy all three hours of entertainment for $20. Given the competition, that is not a great pricing model. You can, of course, trade with your friends after you have had your fill.

So let’s flip through some games.

Continue reading Three-Sentence Game Reviews

If you haven’t played DEFCON yet, you probably should. Can’t go wrong with a 60 megs demo and it’s tons of fun. Well, if you’re into genocide it’s fun (and who isn’t?). It’s from Introversion, the kind folks that made the also quite delicious Uplink a few years back.

If you like it, send them a few bucks. Support basement programming, save the whales, all that.

Someone was explaining that his new “$5k lol” computer had “duel video cards and cpu.” Comment in global chat: “someone who can’t spell dual properly doesn’t deserve a friggen $5000 PC.”

Response: “hah it was actually spelled properly just not in the right context”
Also: “since when did mmo become grammer class”

The discussion went downhill from there. Being an MMO, people were more irritated with the grammar police than the mostly literate.

: Zubon

This article:  

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15114 

seems to point out what a lot of us at Kill Ten Rats have known for years, but it’s an interesting read. It would seem psychologists are finally realizing that these MMO games are social activities and, in some cases, can cause a person to become better at social interactions.  This is not to say that it holds true for every gamer.  Certainly there are plenty of MMO players who it seems will never learn how to behave around others. What I find most interesting are the romantic facts.   The study found that 1 in 10 MMO players develop physical relationships with those they have met in the game world.  I’d be interested in seeing how that compares to the success rate on matchmaking websites.