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Posted in Blog, Design, Games, Virtual Worlds on Dec 2nd, 2012
Zubon posted over at Kill Ten Rats about resetting characters (examples given: Torchlight, Kingdom of Loathing) being preferable to resetting worlds (examples given: Torchlight II, Borderlands 1 and 2) when reaching the end of a game. The former entails resetting (or retiring+re-creating) a character to scratch and giving it some boost or other (stats, skill-points, […]
Posted in Blog, Design, Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds on Nov 27th, 2012
Syncaine put up an interesting post about content in MMOs, and how there’s too much focus on one-off (single-player) content as opposed to reusable (multi-player) content. He got that partially right; there is too much focus on one-off content, and on content being intended for single-players in a multi-player environment. Developer-created content is expensive The production […]
Posted in Blog, Games, MMORPG, Rant, Virtual Worlds on Nov 20th, 2012
Reminiscing about Ultima Online in the comment-field in a different post made me all nostalgic, like. And I came to realize that no MMORPG (or MMO, if you prefer) I have played since has struck a chord with me to the same extent as it did. Not just because it was my first MMORPG – […]
Posted in Blog, Design, Virtual Worlds on Nov 18th, 2012
This is the fourth 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 […]
Posted in Blog, Development, Games, Minecraft, World Building on Sep 2nd, 2010
It’s a oft repeated mantra that the days are gone when single-person development teams could succeed in the game development market. These days you’re not going to get anywhere unless you have a budget that numbers in the millions, and enough manpower to build a life-sized replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, with some […]
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. […]
Posted in Games, MMORPG, Virtual Worlds, World Building on Dec 7th, 2009
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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