Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Month: July 2005 (Page 2 of 4)

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda

July 23, 2005 /

I drove down to help out a local summer camp for kids called GameCamp on Friday. It was actually my second stint helping the guys out. It was fun. The event was held in San Marcos, 30 minutes south of here, and involved a couple dozen kids who ranged from 13 to 18. Both trips resulted in sightings of a plethora of wonderfully snarkalicious geek-0riented T-shirts. Continue reading

Update on ABC News

July 22, 2005 /

So, I tivo’d the ABC News snippet about GTA that I was pinged about yesterday. It was fairer than I thought it would be, and I have to give Jake Tapper, the reporter, props for actually pursuing and presenting the industry’s point of view, albeit somewhat shallowly. Still, watching it reminded me of why I don’t watch news on TV anymore — 2 minutes on a story just isn’t enough time to go into depth on any topic. While that’s passable for ABC News, who has 30 minutes to present all of a day’s news, it’s somewhat shocking to me that 24 hour news services like CNN and FoxNews don’t do a better job. But I digress.

At one point, the story cut to a mom playing a game, who mentioned that she was now worried that all games a kid bought had hidden Easter Egg content. They then cut to an interview with Jacques Servin, the programmer who was fired from Maxis for an easter egg involving dancing ‘beefcake’ in SimCopter. He alleged that evil, child-corrupting easter eggs are ‘everywhere’. Funny, the only example other than GTA anyone could come up was his own easter egg, with could be shown, uncensored, on ABC News. Pixellated beefcake in 1996 graphics isn’t going to tittilate anyone. Put another way, we have two data points 10 years apart. Let’s keep some perspective. Continue reading

People Are Too In Love with the Giant MMO

July 21, 2005 /

Here’s a snippet from a recent preview of Irth Online.

Irth online is a new fantasy based MMO, created by Magic Hat Software, that is currently in beta. Irth consists of a large 3,800 square kilometers of land. Considering the size of the land they have built in a portal system for faster travel from one area of the map to another. You can also travel via horseback or by swimming, although the portal system will likely be your fastest means of travel from one town to the next.

Continue reading

Clouds in my Hot Coffee

July 21, 2005 /

So the ESRB has officially pwn3d Rockstar. ABC News pinged me this morning to ask me some questions about the Hot Coffee circus sideshow (I wonder what they googled to find me). So far, on the blog I’ve been avoiding much more than being snarky on the whole Hot Coffee thing, but I noticed that most other devs have wanted to retreat from saying anything more concrete than ‘this whole situation makes me sad.” So I thought I’d actually post some opinions on the topic. You know, for posterity. Continue reading

Grey Shards

July 20, 2005 /

The White Wolf thread spawned an interesting discussion, once you cut through the mindless flamewar, about Grey Shards. A Grey Shard is a server emulator for an MMO, with those for Ultima Online being the most common. The debate is, put simply, between “Grey shards are the spawn of Satan” and “Information wants to be free, yo.” As usual, the ‘yo’ crowd are the ones not trying to make money off the product.

Jaycen points out (quite correctly in my mind) that there is a clear parallel between White Wolf’s recent antics and how Ultima Online’s actions and direction nudges players who disagree with those directions to play on Grey Shards. What other choice do you have if you think Elves in UO are an abomination? Continue reading

The Guild Wars Business Model

July 20, 2005 /

For those of us quibbling about price structures, Robert Garriott helpfully supplies us with the answer to what a game with Guild Wars’ billing model needs to do to be successful.

“We have to sell at least five times more copies than a subscriber-based online game in order to get to about the same level of profitability,” says Garriott, matter of factly.

At least. Noted: the article doesn’t mention whether or not they succeeded, although (as some have noted here) at the very least their sales in America have been very good.

Other Good Stuff Out There

July 18, 2005 /

There’s a handful of nice pieces that have been posted lately in the blogosphere.

Jamie Fristrom talks about how much fun it is to websling in his Spider-Man 2 – and wonders whether rewarding the activity more would be good or bad for the game.

Game Girl Advance has an article comparing media depictions of women who game with Lipstick Lesbians – invariably sexy, sassy, and beautiful. An interesting read, although I note that almost everyone on TV is sexy, sassy and beautiful. Am I supposed to think that men on TV who play games, such as Snoop Dogg, are supposed to represent me?

Aggro Me has Shakespeare as told in EQII.

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