Archive for September, 2007
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
Audaces Fortuna Juvat
Ever know that a game is coming out, and it makes you slightly insane that you can’t play it until it actually comes out? I have been waiting for this game for what feels like ages. It is going to rock my entire world for at least a month or two, and I’ll spend mindless hours drooling over its incredible gameplay night after night. They said “late September”, and it is late September by god, but no new news has been forthcoming.
Whoa there. Did you think I was talking about Halo 3? Ugh, heavens no. Halo is one of those games I haven’t played, and I don’t think I’m going to bother. I’ve got enough gamer credentials that I don’t need to be a console-twit to keep up to snuff in the twitch-festival shoot ‘em ups. I learned all the FPS I’ll ever need from Unreal Tournament, unless the genre has changed radically from avatar-style respawn pong with a thin veneer of story.
Friday, September 21st, 2007
Koster’s Hardware Store
I’d been curious what the heck the super-elite mystery project Areaeaeae (pronounced with a qawwali wisp at the end, think an Islamic call-to-prayer) had been working on for some time was. It’s Raph, so I figured it would likely be like all other creations of his make - undeniably fragile, realized, intricate and beautiful.
On Tuesday, Metaplace was announced. People are still trying to figure out what the heck it is. At first glance, it looks to be like an infinitely extensible game engine capable of MMO support. Reading over the lime green gif-happy announcement site reminds me a bit of a song by Weird Al Yankovic about a hardware store that promises everything under the sun, made infamous through a ytmnd.
♪ They’ve got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters
Trash compactors, juice extractor, shower rods and water meters
Walkie-talkies, copper wires safety goggles, radial tires
BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers
Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters
Paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters
Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables
Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles
Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication
Metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation
Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors
Tire guages, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors
Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers
Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers
Soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers
Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers ♪
I guess the question that remains to be asked is - has Raph Koster pilfered the artificial intelligence mechanics of Wil Wright’s upcoming “Spore” and figured out how to procedurally add new features to a web-friendly game engine? Will this WOPR-like creation seize control of the internet itself and gain a sea-green sentience within a month of release? When the human race has been subjugated by an engine that succeeds where Torque has failed and we are all puppets of the machine - will we dream in binary?
Is this the cottage-industry style revolution the game industry needs to finally break free of the hegemony of mega-publishers? Or will it generate a parade of mediocre B-list games writhing in their own legal issues as a result of crowd-sourcing and open sourcification? Either way, watching from the cheap seats will be fun.
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
1st Amendment Tazered
This actually really upset me quite a bit when I first saw it. Firstly, this is a student. In a University. Universities are where actual revolutions tend to start. Secondly, this feels like a type of tipping point. This is one of those oracular signs that you get when a democracy starts to fail on a myriad number of levels. It reminds me almost of when that fingerman shot the little girl in the movie “V for Vendetta”.
I don’t know if folks are going to quite grasp the symbolism behind this incident, or exactly what it means on the scale of our nation’s well-being. This is indicative of a society content with base animosity against free speech. Five police officers holding down and tazering a university student for passionately asking the questions that many wouldn’t dare? Disturbing and iconic. Not to overreact, but this is people getting on a train that no one knows where its going. This is a picture of a man standing in front of a tank in a public square. What this means is that we are headed to a very bad, very difficult to get out of place, or that we are already there.
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
FASA Studio Is Dead
According to a publically released statement earlier today by Mitch Gitelman, FASA Studio is closing its doors.
Generally, that’s what happens when you take a beloved franchise like Shadowrun and rape it beyond recognition. Over the years since Shadowrun the FPS was announced, I’ve tried to drum up a proper analogy of what exactly they did. My comparisons, like Halo Chess, Legend of Zelda Damacy, and Contra Academy don’t do justice to how truly off the mark FASA was with Shadowrun. Harry Potter, the Space Simulator. Tetris Tycoon. I can’t even approach it with words in terms of what a screaching travesty Shadowrun was.
While I would be content to both piss and/or tapdance on the grave of FASA, it really makes me very sad that in all likelihood, the majority of the folks responsible for its demise and the ravaging of the license will be retained by Microsoft Game Studios. Mitch especially, with his unique style of approaching gamers like they don’t know what a good game constitutes. Here’s a tip for your next disaster- try listening to gamers first.
I’m a silver-lining kinda guy though. Hopefully one day in the not-too-distant future, Nick or whoever happens to oversee the Shadowrun license will let my old team and I, or someone even more deserving, have a solid crack at it. And expectations are already set so low by the crapfest that was the FPS, that even a mediocre showing of the REAL Shadowrun would be a stunning accomplishment.
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
Long Lie The Syndicate
There seem to be a handful of folks who believe the clever fabrications set forth in the recently released book “Legend: The Syndicate - A History of Online Gaming’s Premier Guild”. I don’t blame them, it is, as I expected, a very delicately told story and there is no reason to doubt it. Ah, but I was there at the birth and rebirth of their guild, and I shared a virtual world with this organization. Grab yourself a comfy quilt and sit a spell! Let ol’ Grampa Grey tell you a thing ‘er two about the internet’s “premier gaming guild”.
First off, some background. The Syndicate originated on the Atlantic server of Ultima Online. One of the few guilds to survive the many changes all the way to UO:Renaissance, The Syndicate, or [LLTS] as it is abbreviated in-game boasted that it had the most players of any UO guild. Well, let me bust that one wide open real quick-like. In Ultima Online, there is a technique known as “stone-stacking”. Stone-stacking is when the guild leader of a particular guild forces each guild member to guild every last one of their alts in order to present inflated numbers. This LLTS did as a matter of course. In Ultima Online, that means for each one recruit, a total of five would be counted towards the guild total. The result? Big honkin’ numbers displayed very publically.
Mass recruitment efforts by The Syndicate were, in essence, not much more than a standardized cattle-call. If you could read the books littered near the moongates or city banks, you could get into the guild. This was not the selective acquisition of friends over time as it is with many guilds. This was a mass co-opting of population ignorant of the guild’s history and practices. And housing these reclusive newbs, unwittingly joining a guild with what had to be the highest churn rate ever, the Syndicate headquarters - a massive castle on a barren island that was placed using a well-known housing exploit.
The history of LLTS profiting from exploits is too long to relay properly. I would have to write a book.
Dragons, the leader of the guild, was at one point banned. He was forcibly removed from the game, stripped of all his volunteer program powers and banished from gameplay. This was for unknown reasons, but my sources (and my old logs) tell me it was an abuse of special powers granted to volunteers. The server, for the most part, cheered the loss of the scheming guildmaster of The Syndicate. For some reason, unbeknownst to much of the public, he was allowed back. Speculation was that he threatened to withdraw his entire guild and the powers that be at OSI balked, but reconsidered when they looked at their own skewed numbers for the guild. 500 guild members? Could he surely have that many? Could he convince them to go elsewhere? To borrow a quote from the movie Casino, “Why take a chance?”
Dragons returned very, very quietly. If you were privy to him or those he spoke with, the whole kerfuffle was just a silly mix-up. Tsk, OSI and their trigger-friendly GMs! Let’s laugh about the whole thing! If you tell a lie long enough, eventually folks will begin to believe it. The lie that The Syndicate was the biggest guild on the server was actually strong enough, coupled with a fantastic public relations effort, to net them their own sponsorship. Most guilds shrugged at the blatant commercialization of a player guild.
Over time, players eventually started heading off into different games, and The Syndicate did its best to keep up. Shadowbane was on the horizon, and Everquest also held its appeal. Chapters opened up in both games with similar recruitment styles, as mechanics allowed.
Much of The Syndicate story is fanciful and revisionist history at its best. Dragons is still capable of weaving wonderful tales and spinning better than any PR person I know of, short of the folks over at Second Life. Yes, his guild is big. But there are bigger, better guilds out there. Guilds with less checkered histories and less drama. Guilds with less of an agenda to push. LLTS left much of Atlantic (the real Atlantic not the fluffy buttercake Atlantic they describe in their writings) with a bad taste in its mouth. Simply the survival of and the numerical value of a guild doesn’t denote its merit. Some of the greatest guilds I’ve ever had the pleasure of belonging to have been small and familial, not to say that guild size is a detriment. The Lost Order of Akalabeth, for instance, showed the way to maintaining guild size while keeping its integrity and surviving the ages.
So, if you read the book, please take it with a grain of salt. And maybe a bottle of vodka.
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
Kingdom Building
I’ve noticed that there is kind’ve a sad lack in good strategy games out right now. It has actually been driving me up the walls a bit as I’ve caught the itch to do some kingdom building lately. My gaming habits tend to come in cycles, probably a lot like everyone elses. I do MMO, then Strategy, then RPG, rinse, repeat.
Now at this point, I’m sure you’ll say, but Grey! There’s such and such out right now, why haven’t you tried it? Well, chances are, I have. Let me take you down a list of my recently played.
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
Smell the Ego
A self-named blog on a self-named domain! *gasp* Self-named blogs drip with ego, I know. Like I totally need any more of that. But in a sea of Raph Kosters and Grimwells, I thought, what the hey! At least I’m not setting precedence! Hah!
So, in essence, this will be a slightly more personal blog, industry-style, than my previous writings at OverModerated. I’d like to keep the haughty indignance of random academia and the studious insights on Community Management to the clean halls of the hallowed (but infrequently used) OverModerated blog. Of course, that saves this particular section of the web for other shenanigans. Namely - my random thoughts on the latest news and developments in the industry. As a caveat, the views expressed in this blog are mine, and mine alone and hopefully won’t get me fired. Free speech is all the vogue this fall, so this blog is Rated R, so “cock” and “fuck” are open-season, but most likely will only be seen used in an expressive-intellectual Penny Arcade / Boondock Saints sort’ve way.
Expect to see random thought processes (excluding work-related ones) arrive soundly here. If you are here about work, catch me on the boards instead. Anything deep (as-if!) I might say about Community Management or SWG will be kept over at OverModerated. So, ’nuff said, on with the bloggitation!