Best played diversely

There's folks who play MMORPGs with a single-minded focus and dedication to rival a mercenary.

I'm not one of them.

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Violence and Video Games (again)

A guildmate of mine dug up last year's Game Revolution article about the corrolation, or lack thereof, between youth violence and video games. I'm reminded of the recent discussion over at Lum's place about the conventional wisdom of addiction and video games. And, of course, various states around the country pushing agendas that purportedly protect our youth from themselves.

The hysteria is reaching epidemic proportions, but I wonder if it can be stopped at all.

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Leaks

This week seems to have been the official start of the Blizzard Alpha Test event, according to a few places. It took all of a few picoseconds before the entirety of the Alpha was leaked to the web.

Personally, this pisses me off enough for me to use the word "pisses" in a sentence. Doesn't anyone read and respect an NDA for an event to which they were a hand-picked invitee?

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I have seen a future future

Lum recently posted a report from the Leipzig Gaming Conference panel discussion on the 'Future of MMOs'.

On the one hand, I'm getting worried that I'm getting to the point where I've been around long enough to be seeing new people learn old lessons.

On the other, it was interesting to hear their take on my favorite topic. I think some of the talk was a bit single-minded though, particularly the focus on hardcore gamers.

Continue reading I have seen a future future…

Rose-colored glasses

It's funny how people can romanticize game systems they either never played, or remember many years later with a perspective skewed by time.

But it's also fun to see how the community in which they don their rose-colored glasses rises up to, err, remind them of what was.

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Temporal ignorance, elitism

Two recent posts got me thinking about temporal ignorance and elitism in video gaming. That there is a lot of this that goes on in the real world is auspicious, but I'm going to focus on this industry, and my favorite genre within it.

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From the mouths of babes…

While discussing the viability of Genesis, some have wondered about whether the guy behind the concept has actually not ever played an MMORPG as he has claimed. To some, having played these games is a rite of passage to designing them.

I don't agree.

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Requiem for a has-been gamer

In this thread over at Grimwell, we've been discussing the most recent features announced for the World of Warcraft expansion.

But we then veered into what features target what types of players, and I realized, fully, where I am at as a gamer.

I'm just not equipped to take these games too seriously anymore. Not the way they define "serious" at least.

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When to Innovate

In a recent thread over at F13, we've started discussing what to do with players who either are done with the Raiding endgame of a typical diku-inspired experience, or who just want more options than that. As part of this discussion, we've been talking about innovation in game play experiences and what features matter to the most players.

One of my favorite topics came up within this discussion. The question is: do you launch a game with a broad array of innovative features to try and capture a wide variety of players, or do you launch the game for an established audience and scale into the new variety of players by integrating innovation (or at least, broader) features later?

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How much Immersion, Part 2

Well, I've answered my own question:

Just how much immersion do I want?

Less than I can have.

Continue reading How much Immersion, Part 2…