Month: May 2005 (Page 2 of 3)

Fixing E3

May 24, 2005 / Damion Schubert

While a lot of people were delighted by their E3 experience, there was a lot of grumbling by people who had been there before. The author of GameDrool is one of those people.

Why am I so cranky about these fan boys? Because they prevent me from actually looking at the games on the show floor, which is not only my job, but also everyone else’s. Do you really want to be pushed and shoved around as you walk from booth to booth by a dude whose sole objective is to get the attention of that young lady throwing out a t-shirt?

Dr. Cat is one of the lesser-known pioneers of the industry. He launched Furcadia, an MMO which went live before UO, and which has been tidily profitable for quite some time. A social game that caters to a unique audience, Furcadia has none of the grind-y elements of today’s EQ clones, and it has offered some unique lessons to those running the game. One of the things the esteemed Doctor said he’s learned from his experience running Furcadia is “Attention is the currency of the future“. As it turns out, that’s not just true for MMOs.

Television has long simply used the Nielson Ratings to determine the popularity of television shows, and set advertising prices. But now, television executives are discovering that not all viewers are created equal, and this discovery has the potential to transform the entertainment industry. Continue reading

Another MMO-Oriented Look at the XBox 360

May 21, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Peter Freese (head of the Core Technology group over at NCSoft, and former coworker of my own) gave his thoughts about the Xbox 360 on the blog with the really long name He takes it on from a completely different angle than my own analysis, focusing on XBox Live and Microsoft’s desire to control the servers. It’s worth a read. Continue reading

The Phantom Fails to Make an Appearance – All Phantomlike

May 21, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I couldn’t make it to E3 this year. Apparently I’m not the only one.

LOS ANGELES (CNN/Money) – Last year’s E3 was the Phantom’s coming out party.

Infinium Labs, the company behind the on-demand video game service, spent millions of dollars for an elaborate booth meant to quiet growing speculation at the time that the service — and the system that powered it — were non-existent.
…
In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Infinium Labs said there’s a good chance it won’t raise enough money to launch its key product in time, putting its existence at risk.

“The company believes, based on past performance, that there is a high likelihood that sufficient capital will not be available … and many or all of these milestones will be missed and the launch date will again shift and/or the company will go out of business,” it said in the April 20 filing with the SEC.
…
But while it hopes to offer at least 10,000 of the Phantom machines by year-end, Infinium acknowledged in the filing that “no firm launch date has been set” for the system. Previously announced launch dates have been missed.

How to Make a Triple AAA Game

May 20, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Slashdot pointed out that one of the talks at E3 discusses how to build a Triple-A title. One of the questions that came up on Slashdot was what, exactly, the definition of AAA was. The short, snarky answer is any game with a ginormous budget that reaps ginormous rewards. World of Warcraft is a AAA title. Katamari Damacy is not.

The real problem with AAA titles is, of course, that they’re essentially giant games of chicken. You can always spend money and time to improve a game, but at what point do you hit diminishing returns? At what point does the content tail wag the gameplay dog? Continue reading

The Grind Claims Another Victim

May 20, 2005 / Damion Schubert

One of my favorite guys in the industry, Jason Booth, has finally updated his blog. Unfortunately, it’s with the news that he’s left the MMO arena. His reason? The grind.

Instead, the MMP industry is boiling the formula down to a very destructive set of lesson for our society. These lessons appear to be:

Achievement is far more important in life than enjoyment, family, friends, etc.

We should all be equal, regardless of our given talents. Time and devotion to achievement is all that matters, skill and smarts are worthless.

Don’t think, just grind.

If you grind harder, you will be “more cool” than others.

The problem is that none of these really lead to a happy or compelling life. Play is supposed to be an enjoyable learning function which helps you to understand some aspect of life, not a time waster, or worse, something which literally drives you to neglect your life.

House: Three Stories

May 18, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I’d just like to go on the record as saying the newest episode of House that was on tonight may have been the finest hour of television I’ve seen in the last five years.

Edit: Episode title is 1:22- Three Stories.

Multi-Billion Dollar Game Of Chicken Update

May 17, 2005 / Damion Schubert

It’s worth noting that the PS3 announced their specs last night. Reading through them, it’s almost as if Sony waited for XBox to release their specs, and then increased all the numbers by one. The big question for MMO devs: will it have a hard drive? The answer: Maybe. Continue reading

Ubi Goes Boldly Where Warren Spector Fears To Tread!

May 17, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I thought the juxtaposition of these two stories on Slashdot was pretty funny.

All mirth aside, the first article’s a pretty good summation of the concerns swirling around next-gen consoles. Here’s Warren Spector’s take on things from the CNet article: Continue reading

XBox 360

May 16, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I won’t be going to E3 this year. Judging from the blogs out there and the tomb-like silence at my own studio, it feels like I’m in a rather exclusive club. All the same, last year’s E3 felt functionally identical to the one before it, so I thought taking a year off would help me appreciate it more next year.

The one thing that I’m sorry I’ll miss is getting a chance to see the XBox 360 in person. I haven’t commented on the XBox 360 yet for the simple reason of not having anything other than rumors with the substance of vapor. Microsoft finally decided to help by putting up a website where you can rotate a model of a XBox 360 controller. Thanks, Microsoft! That clears things up! Continue reading