EVE Online stats

Yay! More stats from Eve Online! A massive tome with lots of numbers!

Original IPs vs. Established IPs

Slashdot pointed me to an interesting article at Ten Ton Hammer all about storytelling and MMOs, specifically whether using an established IP is better or worse than developing your own. They interviewed a number of gaming companies, and came away with a mixed bag of results. Basically, PR is easier with an established IP, but working within an existing storyline is harder.

Interestingly, 38 Studios has the benefit of a known story teller, which is benefiting them as an established IP would.

Some things I felt related to the fact that gameplay still isn't innovative enough - lots of people cited Lord of the Rings as being problematic, and others noted that in several established IPs the most powerful characters were already established. I thought that focus on the 'epic battle where the big baddie is vanquished' missed other options for great storytelling - Gandalf, for example, may or may not have actually destroyed the Balrog (I can't remember if the book actually says unequivocally that the Balrog was destroyed) - the key was that he managed to walk away, and protect the others. Basically it's the escort quest, only without the silly parts of the escort quest that relate to bad AI.

It's interesting, actually, to think about - the one assumption was that storytelling should be excellent, but the good guys should always win. But some of the best stories (Empire Strikes Back, e.g.) involve the good guys getting their tuckus handed to them.

Jumpgate delay

Ars Technica says that Jumpgate Evolution has been delayed. Hopefully this won't be a major delay. I'm always a little surprised when things have to be taken back and redesigned - it would seem like inveterate gamers (which many of the designers seem to also be) would notice if a game isn't working. But I imagine you get in the zone, and you need someone to say 'but this isn't fun' - which is what I thought focus groups were for. Given that they have been demoing at events, I would have expected someone to pick up on this before now. But at least they're going back and doing it right. Now let's hope there's still cash to burn.

Mission Architect

I'm sure we all knew something like this was coming: Slashdot pointed me to an article in Wired about the abuse of the Mission Architect in City of Heroes. The forums appear to have exploded (a post trying to clarify what was going on had 350 pages of responses).

What should be clear is that manually policing these missions will never work. I don't know what will, honestly - scripts to detect certain behaviour, maybe? In the immortal words of whoever said it first, 'this is why we never have anything nice!'

Free Realms

Oh - the Free Realms NDA apparently dropped, or so Keen says. But honestly, I don't have anything to add to what he said - polish is good, game is light and entertaining. I could see it doing very well - I might even log in periodically for the car racing and demolition derby stuff. If I don't have to pay.

going meta

Mmmm. Tasty blog conversations. Cuppycake leads us off with a post on bloggers who actually work in the gaming industry, and whether their words are worth the (e-)paper they're written on. Lum follows up with a post on categories of gaming bloggers (and a nice list of people you should read), Scott Hartsman continues his thoughts (started over at Lum's) on his blog, Mobhunter weighs in, as does Nerfbat, and WorldIV, and Tobold responds to his location on Lum's list.

*spoiler alert*

No conclusions are reached. But there's some interesting stuff put forward. Which is mostly why I read (and blog).

It could be the next big thing, based on some very old things...

You know, I was reading an article on Massively about Black Prophecy, and towards the bottom of the article they have a video of the gameplay (and let me note in passing how much I like YouTube's HD stream!). As I watched the gameplay, with its view out the front of your spaceship, I thought 'this is the most boring idea ever - who would want to do this for any period of time?' And then I remembered Privateer, which I absolutely loved, and which this game reminds me an awful lot of. Trade, space battles, and levelling - what else could you want? So I'm going to have to wait and see what this game ends up looking like - if it is, in fact, carebear Eve, it might do very well for itself. And if it's as good as Wing Commander (God I loved Wing Commander!) it might even be a great game!

Stargate Worlds is still being developed!

In a recent interview with Gateworld, one of my favorite sites in the universe, Stargate executive producer Brad Wright said that the game was toast - "They had an opportunity and they got our support, and they obviously had significant funding, and it didn’t happen." The developers have come back saying "we're all fine here, now", noting "the lights here are still on and the development team is working hard every day to get this game built. Team members are in the office seven days a week to deliver Stargate Worlds. [...] unfortunately we had not recently updated [Brad Wright] on our progress or the impact from the current global economic crisis, and he was not fully aware of the continuing progress on our game." So in theory things are still moving forward. I think we'll just have to wait and see - I know I wouldn't want to be in a funding crunch right now, given the economy.

whups

Marketing FAIL. Apparently EA sent out brass knuckles with their press kit for the new Godfather game. It turns out that possession of brass knuckles is illegal most places. And shipping them is illegal too. Whups!

Number 200 is a funny!

So first, the post I was going to write - Kill Ten Rats recently had a post which made me laugh out loud, making the (real life) daily grind into an MMO daily grind. I won't give away the punch line, but it's really quite wonderful.

Now the post I'm going to write - as it turns out, this is post number 200 for the blog.

As you may have noted, I've been posting less. It seems a lot of gaming blogs have been shutting down, which isn't that surprising, since once you lose interest in your MMO of choice it can be hard to keep going. Creative Destruction, if you will.

I myself have been lurking, of late, just keeping aware of developments, and waiting for the next big game. I will probably be trying Warhammer in the next week or so, and I may have lots of free time this summer to do some gaming, although whichever game I choose will have to be better than TF2 (not better dollar for dollar, because it's simply not possible to beat TF2 in the value department, at least in my book - I only paid ten bucks for it). I may try Eve, or perhaps something new.

It's a shame I have no interest in City of Heroes/Villains. Their new Mission Architect stuff sounds amazing, and is really the best way to generate story lines. Of course, one wonders how far off the open source MMO is, with this development, but I still haven't heard anything but rumblings and lamentations that games should be open sourced when they die.

Anyway, to sum up, this blog isn't going anywhere. It may be quiet from time to time, but I'm always around, waiting....