Looks Like MO Has Been Busy

I'm not so sure what I'd do in a lego virtual world. Probably since I don't really care much for virtual worlds and much prefer games but this one stll intrigues me. Proabably all that time as a kid sorting colored blocks. Hey MO! Where's the beta invite?

INCOMING!

Sweet bombing run from WWIIOL (as if you needed me to tell you where it was from). This is what it's all about. I'm really hoping that some changes to victory conditions and adding enemy planes to the map will make this one of the coolest things ever.

Manhunt 2 FTW!

i love a good controversy don't you? Those folks at Rockstar sure do. What a set of brass cojones those fellas are sportin'. After all that press about Adult Only and Banned in the UK they respond with "It brings a unique, formerly unheard of cinematic quality to interactive entertainment, and is also a fine piece of art."

Brilliant. I hope those ratings twits don't get with congress and decide he's right. Next thing you know school field trips will be canceled when the press coins the term "MoMA Manhunt" cause that Bosch dude is definitely into some AO stuff!

Probably the same guys who gave Grind House the dreaded R rating. Probably terrorists to boot.

Fine Art

News Flash! Escapist magazine Doesn't All Suck!

Ok so the head lines a little over the top but honestly, I can rarely read all the way through the fluff pieces that fill up the latest trendy industry web-zine blog-thingie. That's probably as much to do with the gawds awful layout that they use to give it that whole 'zine-thingie. Yuck.

Anyway, today they talk about gold farming:

Then there's the question of the game designers' intent. Having worked with designers, I know they hate farmers more than a lot of players do, because the farmers are finding and exploiting design weaknesses in products they've worked on for years. Some people would say, "Hey, tough luck. If your design is weak, it's your own fault."

Well, Darius pretty much nailed that one. He goes on to add:

Others would take the stance that people who agree to play a game are entering in an implicit contract to not only play by the rules, but to play reasonably within the designer's intent.

These "others" are the same ones who believe that there is some sort of code of conduct among the player community and not following this unwritten code constitutes cheating. Most of these codes come into play in PvP and VW's where game rules are largely up to the player. You can see where that all leads. Yeah, when someone else isn't playing the way you want them to play that's cheating... uh huh. Let's invite 7 million kids over to the house this weekend and tell them not to get into any trouble while we go to the movies. Here's a thought for an AGC talk: "If you don't want people doing RMT in your game, design it out of the economy."

I really can't get designers or players who have an issue with the concept that my best friend Kevin wants to give me some gold because I need to buy a mount and since I play a hell of a lot less than he does so he's got the scratch among his 7 alts.

Does it really make any difference if the above scenario is altered to a worse case and I don't know Kevin and his name isn't Kevin and I used my lunch money so he could buy lunch and pay his light bill? "Others" might think so.

Toto Talks Mortars on the Vlog

Scientists to Create Plant to Absorb CO2

French scientists have announced a cunning plan to create a plant that can capture CO2 emmissions and in a rare sign of European cooperation have decided to sell the French technology to the Germans, as reported by none other than Chinese news source Yahoo!

Cornered Rat Software lead physics producer "rickb" was quoted as saying, "Wow a plant that absorbs CO2! Now if they could only get it to convert it to something useful, like say oxygen."

Link

Note to Self: Read This

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are some of the most complicated software systems under development today, often requiring dozens of developers, hundreds of artists, and truly massive infrastructures. This article is the first in a series of articles that will shine a light on the systems, storage, and networks needed to run an MMOG. It provides an introduction to MMOGs and demonstrates one approach to sizing a game's infrastructure. Learn how to figure out how much infrastructure you might need, as well as how to operate an MMOG...

Link

The ReDistricting Game

Really great game that delves into voting districts and how you can manipulate the map to achieve a desired outcome. Great little title for a serious game.

The ReDistricting Game

Note to Self: Read This

Second Earth

The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth.

Technology Review: Second Earth

The (Naval) Love Patch

So we've been talking in beta a lot about what to add to the naval love patch this fall. Apparently this is all we've come up with. Thanks Chris for the "Player produced argument for naval play."

Our friend and funder, SirBruce used to keep up with all of the player populations in the MMO space. Sometimes it's tough to wrangle the "active subscribers paying you money" from the "registerd on a web page once and might have even loggeed in at least once" camps. Looks like MMOGData has sprung up to fill the void. I've never had a lot of faith in these things though ours was always pretty right on. Probably because SirB was a partner in this crime. Nevertheless, when Raph tells you that MySpace is a bigger MMO than WoW, you'll know where to check the facts... Actually, I'd trust Raph over a pie chart but hey, what the hell do I know anyway.

Ramp on the Vlog

Happy Birthday WWIIOL!

Yeah I'm a week late. Like you're up late at night watching for me blogz to grace the tubes. Whatever. Posting this largely to remind folks that 6 years in the MMO business is actually quite an achievement. The ones that didn't make it seem to outweigh the ones that did, which is honestly a complete turn around from when we started. Back then it was UA, EQ, AC, and well...us. DAoC and AO come in there at some point but I think that was post our miserable launch.

Well what do ya know. We're still here and despite not becoming the raving success our pre-launch would have led one to believe we're still kicking with almost the exact same number of customers. And when I say customers, I mean that in a bottom up kinda way, or tp rephrase, the people who dig what we do enough to give us money and allow us to do it. No mean feat let me tell you.

A heart felt thanks to you all.

WWIIOL: Battleground Europe Free Special Event
By news@mmosite.com
WWII Online: Battleground Europe will be holding a special event to celebrate the six-year
anniversary. they will give out a 7 day free trial.
MMOsite Gaming News - http://www.mmosite.com

IGN: Battleground Europe Free Special Event

June 8, 2007 - Matrix Games and Playnet are marking the 6th anniversary of the

award-winning MMOG, WWII Online: Battleground Europe ...

Battleground Europe: WWII Online : Battleground Europe: WWII ...
To celebrate its sixth birthday, WWII Online: Battleground Europe will be holding a
special event simulating battles over bridges during the closing days of ...

PR: WWIIOL: Battleground Europe Free Special Event
Matrix Games and Playnet are marking the 6 th anniversary of the award-winning
MMOG, WWII Online: Battleground Europe with a special historically-based event.
Armchair General - http://www.armchairgeneral.com

WWIIOL: Battleground Europe
By wwiiol_newzguy(pc)
Hi guys, I noticed there was some age old threads about
World War II Online: Battleground Europe. Just in case anyone haven't tried the game,
there is a 7-day free trial starting tomorrow with a special event to celebrate the games ...
PC - http://forums.gameinformer.com/gi/board?board.id=pc

WWIIOL: Battleground Europe
By wwiiol_newzguy(games)
Hi everyone, I'm new to these forums but I didn't find any older threads about
World War II Online or Battleground Europe as it's now known. I just wanted to
let you know that if you're interested trying it out, there is a special 7-day ...
Games - http://lithium.1up.com/zd/board?board.id=games

WWIIOL: Battleground Europe - PC - Game Informer Forums
Game Informer Forums : PC : WWIIOL: Battleground Europe ...
WWIIOL: Battleground Europe. Options, Options. wwiiol_newzguy
Newcomer Posts: 1 ...

Battleground Europe Free Event
By Blue(furn@base6.com (James Furness))
Battleground Europe celebrates the sixth anniversary of the WW2
MMORPG with a special event called BRIDGES. Free seven-day accounts are
available for the event, though confusingly, the game also...
Blue's News - http://www.bluesnews.com

WWII Online: Battleground Europe Free Special Event
Game marks anniversary with free special event.
GamersHell.com - PC News (Most Recent) - http://www.gamershell.com

Makin' games in Tejas

Seems them thar legislators down in Austin want us to make more of them thar video (rhymes with rodeo?) games and moving pictures here in the great state as long as they are all nice and don't portray no violence and have good ole family values. Values like "Don't mess with Texas!" or how about the ole timey favorite "Remember the Alamo!" or the ever popular modern classic "Dallas Cowboys!". Yeah those are a nice set of non-violent family values if I ever heered 'em.

Rodney Gibbs, who makes games I've never played, like porting the Sims to the DS (does porting count as MAKING games? Can you get a grant for that!?) says...

What we do is mass-market mainstream family-friendly stuff. [The incentive program] is helping to overcome that stigma we still suffer from: ‘Oh, games; that’s shooting people.’ That’s just like saying all films are Quentin Tarantino films.

They sure aren't Rodney...only the good ones.

Link

Cool Thing of teh Day

I've never had the chance to go to TED. That seems to be a mistake. I can;t help but think that this technology is somehow tied in with what's coming in Tech5. The idea that your image process should only be about the number of pixels you can draw on the screen, not the number of pixels in the source. So simple. So powerful.

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!1!

Cool Thing of the Day

We like to kick around new ideas at the shop, hey who doesn't? Today we wandered off into the moral dilema that would be creating a game called Battleground Iraq. Ahh the free press. Ahh the uses for modern mil sim training. Ahh the death threats and car bombs.

Still there's a lot of cool technologies that came up with this one. Check out DI Guy for instance. If you think that stuff is cool try Baghdad in a box or maybe some of these outstanding models.

I guess its just a matter of time before someone does this game. The question is do we want to be the ones who do it.

Link