The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
It turns out he just needed a trip to space to clear his head: Richard Garriott voices his interest in jumping back into the fray:
“After 25 years at Origin, the last thing I wanted to make was yet another medieval fantasy game. Now, after a very interesting break, I’m keen to get back into the fray and work on a new game,” He said to BBC: “Probably medieval fantasy and probably online; there’s something very powerful about getting people together,”
Richard has long wanted to venture into space – it’s been a lifelong dream, and he’s been a major investor for private companies who have been pushing towards reaching that goal. Some may remember his recent jaunt on the “vomit comet”, a trip he enjoyed with Stephen Hawking. He enjoyed the trip so much that he arranged for flights to go up from Austin for AGC, and a handful of developers with cash to burn got to experience it as well.
Richard is finally going to realize his dream. And, this being the Aughts, he’s going to blog about it.
The price tag? Roughly $30 Million Bucks. I only hope that, once I’m rich, I’m equally unafraid to enjoy it.
Buried in the comments on Yet Another Second Life Post on Raph’s blog, Raph says the following:
I am glad you think of me as enlightened.
We will be announcing our startup in the next couple of days, and when we do, believe it or not, I hope you’re among those who are interested.
Good friend of Zen, and one of my favorite people to drink with is Dave Weinstein. He left the glamorous job of making games to go on to… scaring the hell out of people who make them. Here he is on CNN:
“Those of you who are working on massively multiplayer online games, organized crime is already looking at you,” said Dave Weinstein, a Microsoft security development engineer at the company’s Gamefest video game development conference.
Another shout-out goes to the XFire gang, who are reported to be selling out to Viacom for $102 Million. As mentioned previously, one of the XFire head honchos is Chris Kirmse, who was one of the two tech visionaries on Meridian 59.
I had more to say on the subject, but to be honest, Raph beat me to almost exactly what I was going to say.
I’m hoping to get into Guinness. Seems that they no longer need any sort of actual metric, just someone to throw some cash their way to put an ad in their good book. From GameSpot.
Lara Croft has today been awarded a Guinness World Record that recognises her as the “most successful human video game heroine.” The Tomb Raider star won the prize for “transcending the boundaries of video games and becoming a recognisable figure in mainstream society”.
I previously pointed out this Escapist magazine article about EA and Origin. Seems that Greg Costikyan is even more critical of it than I was, saying that no matter what the problems were between EA and Origin, Trip was long gone before the dark days heralding Origin’s decline. Here’s his outsider viewpoint, on of all places, a Heroes of Might and Magic fan site.
Remember what EA stands for? It stands for “Electronic Arts,” and in its early days (e.g., when Trip was its co-founder and still running the joint), it ran ads asking “Can a game make you cry?” and actively promoting artists like Chris Crawford and Dan Bunten as the leading lights and innovators of a new form of digital entertainment. That EA stands for nothing like this today is an indictment of its current management – but not of Trip.
Greg is, once again, more correct and eloquent than I. There is, needless to say, serious history between Trip and the Garriott boys, but truth be told, that history has little to do with the winding decline of Origin Studios. In retrospect, it’s surprising that history was overcome when Origin was ACQUIRED.
There is a surprisingly blunt in-depth analysis in the Escapist about the history and eventual winding death of Origin. Long, too. It starts off with memories of a historical bitchslap.
Richard “Lord British” Garriott even worked an EA reference into Ultima VII (1992). Two high-profile nonplayer characters, Elizabeth and Abraham, perform seemingly helpful tasks for the player – but E. and A. turn out to be murderers in league with the player’s nemesis, the Guardian. The three items that power the Guardian’s evil generators are a cube, a sphere and a tetrahedron – the former EA logo.
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
Jesper Juul (the Ludologist) has some screenshots of Spore up (hurry up and see them before EA Legal has a hissy fit).
Dave Rickey’s commentary on the matter is here, and can be summed up as ‘I’d like some of whatever that gentleman is having’. Continue reading
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