Xoduz

I Would Play It If…

Saw the following meme/game thingy at MMO Gamers and thought I’d jump on the band wagon since I have nothing else to write about at the moment. The goal, according to Bio Break (where this little game originated), is to finish the following statement with a simple response, substituting different games into the sentence:

“I would play [TITLE OF MMORPG] if…”

Here are mine, listed in random order:

I would play World of Warcraft if it didn’t require as much time as it does to keep up with my always-raiding friends
I would play Ultima Online if I travelled through time back to 1998, or 1999, or 2000, or 2001, or 2002. And maybe 2003.
I would play Eve Online if it were more like Elite, and if you could fly seamlessly between space and individual planets
I would play the Wheel of Time MMO if it actually gets made and released, no matter the quality of the game itself. I am a WoT fanboy, after all.
I would play City of Heroes/Villains if I could only come up with a decent design for a superhero/arch-villain
I would play EverQuest 2 if I hadn’t already played a trial version of it, during which I found out that I hated the visual style of the game
I would play Runescape if I was 12, or if no other MMO existed
I would play Warhammer Online if it didn’t look and feel like a slightly twisted version of World of Warcraft (yes, I see the irony there…)
I would play Lineage 2 if not for nightmares of horrible, horrible GRRIIINDIIIiing
I would play Lord of the Rings Online if I ever should feel like having a mug of ale in The Prancing Pony
I would play Darkfall if I hadn’t already had my fill of getting ganked by random PKers ten years ago – and if it was actually for sale

In other news, round 2 of our (mine and Babak‘s) little blogging contest starts on the 17th/18th of May and will as usual last for one month. We use this as a method to “force” ourselves to put on our blogging hats more often, and hopefully it will lead to a whole bunch of new blog posts from the both of us.

My approach to game design

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?

On the 1st of March, Danc (aka 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?

Continue reading “My approach to game design”

World Builder – the movie

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.

You should watch the entire thing; not only is it a quality production from start to finish, with an innovative approach to how world-building can happen in the (hopefully near) future, it also tells a surprisingly good and emotion-stirring story despite only lasting for 9 minutes and 15 seconds.

(
(World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.)

It was created by digital effects artist Bruce Branit, who co-created one of the first short films (405) to get distributed widely on the Internet back in 2000 and has since had a finger (or ten) in visual effects everywhere from movies like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Sin city and Serenity to TV-series like Moonlight, Lost and Pushing Daisies. Watch a reel of his work here.

One to watch, most definitely!

About the Laws of Online World Design – Part I

This is the first installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about Raph Koster’s 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 I of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:
Design Rules

This is the first installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about Raph Koster‘s 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 I of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:

Design Rules

Continue reading “About the Laws of Online World Design – Part I”

I’ve been challenged to a duel!

Last Friday I apparently agreed to enter into a “blogging-duel” with a co-worker of mine, Babak Kaveh. This duel only has one rule: Whoever posts the most words related to game-design or game-development over the course of a single month (the deadline is at 14:35 pm on the 20th of March) will win a free pizza from the losing part. I’m not sure what was going through my head when I agreed to this, but in my defense it sounded like a good idea at the time. Despite the fact that I don’t even like pizza all that well (yes, color me crazy, but it’s true).

Anyhow, it’s now been two days since this thing started, and not only have I not posted anything yet, but it also seems that I’m already behind by over 5 500 words (rough estimate). Or 10 pages in Word at font size 12, if you prefer.

In an attempt to alleviate this word-deficiency I’ll be taking on Raph Koster‘s Laws of Online World Design, going through them one by one (skipping as few as I can get away with), covering them from every angle I can come up with.

Continue reading “I’ve been challenged to a duel!”

IFMCA award for AoC composer

Another reward in the cabinet for the excellent music composer Knut Avenstroup Hagen: The IFMCA have just announced it’s 2008 winners for scoring excellence, and Knut was given the award of ” Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media” for his music score for Age of Conan. Congratulations, Knut! =)

Another award in the cabinet for the excellent music composer Knut Avenstroup Hagen: The IFMCA have just announced it’s 2008 winners for scoring excellence, and Knut was given the award of “ Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media” for his music score for Age of Conan. Congratulations, Knut! =)

For those of you who’ve never heard about Knut nor actually listened to the music score in Age of Conan before, be sure to visit his homepage which features both music samples from the game as well as links to various interviews and articles concerning the amazing work he did on it.

In other news, we finally hit the Age of Conan Live-servers with the long awaited “patch 1.04” two days ago, after having worked on it since late October? last year. There have been several smaller updates since then, of course, but this newest patch is the largest we’ve done so far to the game, and it introduces a lot of new cool stuff, like three new dungeons, another raid-instance, PvP updates, and a ton of other stuff. Be sure to check out the full patch notes.

I’m glad we’ve finally been able to push all the great new content of this patch out the door, so we can all start focusing on the next patch!

No Keyboard Detected

I’ve now replaced the temporary blog name (“Xoduz’ Blog”) I had earlier, and I feel that the new name reflects accurately what both I and this blog are all about. At first I considered using the original Guru Meditation-error as banner, but the bright red on black graphics didn’t really fit along with the rest of the blog. After long hours of tweaking, cursing and banging on my keyboard angry-german-kid style, I finally came up with a customized version that I think works nicely.

Why this name for the blog? inquiring minds might ask. Call it a tribute to days long gone, if you will. Or the result of a random search on the Internet for catchy phrases, even (the Random Article-link on Wikipedia can keep me going for ages). Here’s a short list of some of the other names I considered, but ultimately rejected:

Rational Choice Theory
Flabberghastly Ideas
No Keyboard Detected
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Kernel Panic
Ford N Series Tractors
Does Not Compute
404 File Not Found
206 Partial Content
List of rivers of Bulgaria
Approximation algorithm

In the end, Guru Meditation was chosen on the grounds that I’m an old Amiga-user and have always been fond of that particular error, which often popped up for no apparent reason while I was trying to play some random game back in the day. It’s also the 12th greatest error message of all time, according to this article.

Press F1 to continue.

Huzzah – I’m blogging again!

After having taken a nearly two-year long break from blogging (in English, that is), I’ve finally figured it’s time to get my blogging-hat back on and take this website for another spin around the block.

Lots have changed since my previous blogging-period, which lasted from March 2003 until March 2007. For one thing, I moved to Oslo last year (in the end of March). For another, I got a job working as a designer for Funcom, on their MMORPG Age of Conan. Yes, those two points are connected – the main Funcom offices are in Oslo.

I’d also like to pretend that I’ve matured a bit, that I’m older (true) and wiser (still up for debate) now, that I am more prepared for the kind of commitment running a blog actually requires. Of course, this could just be me lying to myself in an attempt to justify re-opening the blog (and a much improved version of it, thanks to WordPress and various plug-ins for it!), and in reality I will end up updating it as in-frequently as I did with my previous blog – but I’m hoping that won’t be the case.

As with the previous incarnation of the website, this one will also be host to some of my drawings, works of light literature and possibly even some of my photos. New this time around will be a heavier focus on computer games, both when it comes to playing them and when it comes to actually designing them. To this end, I might also put up tidbits of game design-knowledge that I (hopefully) manage to pick up, both from my own experiences and from what I can learn by crawling across the multitude of designer/developer blogs that exist out there.

Wish me luck, I’ll probably need it.