Posted in Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Dec 16th, 2009
Instant matter-disintegration-and-reintegration Teleportation: The ability to instantly transfer matter from one location to another without actually ever moving in the space between those two locations. Scientists have been chasing this dream for decades, and Science-Fiction writers and/or movie directors have been using it as a plot-device and/or a generic method of transportation for even longer. [...]
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Note #0: It’s been a while since I posted anything at all on this blog. Just to let you know, I haven’t completely given up on it just yet, I have just been busy(TM) with other stuff. In April 2000 a revolutionary methodology for reviewing video-games saw the light of day at the Old Man [...]
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Posted in Design, Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Jul 18th, 2009
This is the third installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about The Laws of Online World Design, as explained in this introductory post. I will start at the top of the list, and work my way down until I’ve poked and prodded every law in the list, not skipping any unless I [...]
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Posted in Blog, Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Jul 15th, 2009
Two articles that popped up on MMORPG.com in recent days both touched on the same subject – roleplay servers in MMOs. The first one, by Dana Massey, denounce roleplay servers as unenforceable, virtually identical to regular servers and generally a major pain in the ass for those who have to moderate them. Sanya Weathers wrote [...]
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Posted in Blog, Design, Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Jun 17th, 2009
This is the second installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about The Laws of Online World Design, as explained in this introductory post. I will start at the top of the list, and work my way down until I’ve poked and prodded every law in the list, not skipping any unless I really feel like it. In this, Part II of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:
Modes of expression
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Posted in Design, Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Mar 14th, 2009
On the 1st of March, Danc (Daniel Cook) posted a very interesting entry in his Lost Garden-blog about game design styles. He lists a number of different styles he has observed in game designers, then describes his own definitions of what each style consists of and what shortcomings/limitations it may have.
The styles he listed:
Copycat: make a game like another game that is interesting.
Experience: Make a distinct moment of game play that looks and feels interesting.
Narrative: Make a story that is interesting
World: Make a place or world that is interesting
Systems: Make systems and objects that are interesting.
Player Skills: Make verbs for the player that are interesting.
He ends his article with a couple of questions, one of which I’ll tackle here:
What style of game designer are you? Do you fit into one of these approaches?
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Posted in Blog, Virtual Worlds on Mar 3rd, 2009
Woah. I just finished watching World Builder, a short film about a man building a realistic-looking virtual world using holographic tools from inside a “holodeck” of sorts.
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