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

Month: April 2007 (Page 2 of 2)

Held Hostage by the Hardcore

For a brief moment of clarity, Vanguard proposed to do away with Corpse Runs, which has perversely become the defining feature of their game experience to both fans and critics alike.

– You will no longer leave a corpse when you die; instead you will drop an essence.
– You no longer leave items (Soulbound or not) on your essence.
– Essences will return a large amount of experience upon retrieval.
– Your essence will decay after 70 hours.
– Altars will still allow you to summon corpses from before the patch on 3/30/07 (Build 1799), however, you are unable to summon essences.
– The amount of experience lost when you die has been decreased.

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Online Gambling Puts Second Life at a Crossroads

Raph has been following this story for a long time, and he links to an excellent analysis over on PlayNoEvil. Short form: Second Life is no longer accepting ads for virtual casinos in their space (which, of course, traffic LindenBucks, which can be exchanged for real simoleans with relative ease). The official link from Linden Labs is here.

As Raph notes, the comments thread is particularly intriguing, with many people channelling Martin Neimollar to say “First, they came for the ageplayers, and then the casinos…”. The fact that this meme was repeated several times was significant, as it points to players concerned that their way of life is threatened. Continue reading

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