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).

Zoiks!

Wow - I've just read the Darkfall launch blog war epic flame saga (Wilhelm has a nice summary). I think I've been hit with an intelligence debuff that may take weeks to wear off.

/firmhandshake

Cruising around the internets, I ran across Killed in a Smiling Accident's Guide to MMO Etiquette, Chapter 1, which made me laugh more than a little:

Seeing a stranger (enemy faction in a PvP game)

You may attack them, but you should wait for them to despatch any mob they are fighting first[...] If they are climbing a cliff, you should lower a rope, and offer them a chance to rest before engaging in combat, after checking whether they have six fingers on one hand.

The whole thing is definitely worth a read.

gaming blogs

Tobold reminds us that if you call your blog '[your name] loves [some game]' and then you quit [some game], your blog won't be good for much thereafter. Consider this a Public Service Announcement.

Free stuff, quid pro quos, et cetera

Eating Bees made an interesting post this week, detailing the rights and responsibilities, as she sees it, of game reporters / bloggers who come to events and get free stuff. Geek Critique offered up a reporter's response to her post, and she has now responded, as well as expanding on the original themes.

There's so much meat in the discussion these two are having. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, like when I used to roll with the serious blog academics. The initial post raises all the points about ethics that you might expect, and unfortunately probably doesn't help the bloggers who claim to be uninfluenced despite having received something for free (I'm thinking of Tobold here, e.g., and you should totally read his posts on the topic if you haven't), simply by creating the impression that there's a quid pro quo. The response, happily, addresses that.

I haven't given a lot of thought to the idea of community managers, because I've never worked in gaming (I don't know that I could - I have a very negative view of gaming companies' treatment of their employees, which may or may not be accurate), and I'm not a very serious gamer. But I think now I have a better idea of where they live in the whole circus that is this particular variant of the entertainment industry. And that is another reason why the posts are so darned interesting.

OK - I'm out of blather - get to reading their posts, already!

PAX

You know, I still can't wrap my head around the whole Penny Arcade Expo thing. The Penny Arcade phenomenon was crazy enough, but now the Expo is huge. Crazy big. I try to imagine what went through those guys' heads the day they realized they had become the gaming industry. I'm sure it's in the blog somewhere, but I'm not quite curious enough to wander through six years of posts a few at a time....

favourite gaming blog?

Massively has a post up asking what everyone's favourite mmo blog is. I assume people will post some new ones, so head on over and see what they've got.

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

Probably not as a reaction to Darren's 'Dear Massively' post, Massively (the blog that stole my name, except they had probably been planning it longer, but I still got to press first, and anyway it's kind of a lame name and I really ought to come up with something better for this blog, and they really ought to come up with something better for theirs, except not the same thing as I come up with (again)) is moving second life content off the front page. Hooray.

the century mark

Well, after six months I've made it to post one hundred. I'd been thinking of all the various things I wanted to do with this post, as my personal blog doesn't tell me when I'm reaching a milestone (not to mention I'd be at like ten thousand with that one), so this is the first opportunity I've had to celebrate a nice round number of posts.

But, as often happens when you overthink something, I ended up just putting it off. So I'll just write what comes into my head.

I had originally thought I would post more on the 'big idea' stuff - economics in games, other types of games, etc. I've had a few of those, for example my post on a romance novel MMO, and following some of the stuff Castronova's been doing, but I also got caught up in playing with the new games. Once I realized how easy it is to get in to betas, I started doing them a lot. Of course, like fight club, you can't mention them until after the fact.

But since the new games tend to be an awful lot like the old games, this has meant that I talk about the same old same old more than I would like. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to big ideas in the coming months, although with all the new games coming out I'm sure there will be lots of other things to think about too.

Anyhow, we'll just keep on keepin' on, and see where we end up. Thanks for stopping by.

random news

Random events: WAR has been delayed until at least April, for more polish (not 'more DoTs!'). Also today, the Weblogs Inc people launched a new massive gaming news site called... Massively. I guess they couldn't come up with a good name either. Oh well - it gets the point across.