where?

I was wondering if 38 Studios had any new developments (I'm quite excited about anything involving a writer like Salvatore), so I cruised on over to their site to see what was up. Looks like they've hired a UI designer from Blizzard, and some other details like that, but nothing really big. I also had a look at their jobs board, and while reading a posting noticed this little tidbit:

Based in Maynard, Massachusetts, the studio is a fun, energetic place to work, where the company mantra, "How cool would it be if . . . ?" infuses the team with a commitment to passion, integrity, and innovation.

Where they heck is Maynard, MA? Sadly, it's not as 'in the middle of nowhere' as I had hoped - looks like it a suburb of a suburb of Boston. Why had I hoped it was in the middle of nowhere, you ask? Because I'd like to imagine someday I might live near an MMO that I could work for. But since I make it a point to never live near big cities, and I've yet to have enough cash to live in a big city (Paris excepted, amusingly), I need to wait for an MMO to be headquartered somewhere rural. I've a sneaky suspicion I'll be waiting a while....

glad I'm not

I suddenly realized, while reading the latest Age of Conan newsletter, that I'm really glad I'm not a game designer. I mean, I love speculating about the next big thing, and coming up with cool concepts, and all that, but to actually have my professional reputation be tied to the success or failure of one of my ideas? That would be (for a significant percentage of MMOs) really depressing. I mean, even if I made what I considered a great product, odds are it would go down in flames. And that would break your heart, I imagine. At least the first time - I'm sure after a few projects go down you just move on.

Since I already mentioned the new Conan newsletter, I should mention that they have apparently added a swanky new dungeon, and upgraded their PvP. My personal favourite, though, is the zombie pets - if I'm going to have a game with minions, I darned well better be able to have undead minions!

MMO Economics redux

Wow - Tobold just pointed me to a blog called the WoW Economist. This guy likes numbers even more than me. And that's going a ways. It isn't as interesting to me as secondary work using the data this guy is generating would be, but it certainly is good data.

Economics in WoW, and the other levelling games, is interesting - I remember this with Pirates of the Burning Sea especially, where as people levelled up the markets evolved. Of course, PotBS wanted to have a completely player driven economy, whereas WoW has a much more command-and-control economy, where, for example, items can have value one day, and be valueless the next (because they can no longer be traded). Economics on sharded games are also interesting, because what's rare on one server may not be on another.

I think, in part, that's what makes Eve Online so exciting - having an economy where every player has access to the market makes for a much more interesting economic game (and part of most MMOs is the economic game - the auction house in WoW wouldn't always be packed if this weren't the case - people buying low and selling high - hopefully to better effect than the real world of late). Even with a giant bug in their economy, Eve has had a tremendously interesting economic game.

randomly

This posting of animations of the 'Bush shoe throwing incident' on boing-boing, with WoW graphics (and Maliki marked as 'AFK') made me smile a lot. The Matrix one, while not MMO related, is also quite amusing.

probably a bad sign...

Oh dear. Kill Ten Rats has pointed out that Ten Ton Hammer is running a pledge drive for workers at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, so they'll have cash for Christmas. I'm pretty sure that bodes ill for dev work on Stargate Worlds....

Atari buys Cryptic

Whoa - didn't see this coming - Massively is reporting that Atari has apparently purchased Cryptic Studios.

Of course, Cryptic is responsible for the new Star Trek MMO (having acquired it themselves from elsewhere), and Champions Online, which I probably ought to look into - I've seen the name often enough, but haven't followed up. I'll do that now (why not?)

Oh right - it's the superhero MMO. Well, another superhero MMO, though this one is made more interesting by the possibility that it will be available on consoles as well as PCs. Not really my thing, but certainly people do play the genre, so we'll see what happens.

Stargate problems?

Massively is reporting that the makers of Stargate Worlds may be experiencing a cash flow issue (well, from the way I read the comments from Cheyenne Mountain, they definitely -are- having a problem). This news appears to have come out when a website, days-since-cheyenne-mountain-employees-have-been-paid.com was put up. I think you can probably figure out the subject matter of the website....