Author Archive
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Does Leveling HAVE to be a Treadmill? NO!
This article is in direct response to this thoughtful post over at Wolfshead Online.
“It seems to me that the real problem that is causing the clamor for the removal of leveling is the fact that content in MMO’s is not dynamic”
My favorite line of the whole post.. and this harkens back to a now [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Game Design, MMOG Discussion by Nick
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
Growing Out of an MMO World
Moorgard points out in this post an analogy between growing up and away from Sesame Street to getting bored with and growing away from .
All in all, a masterful revelation if you’ve never considered it before, but herein lies the rub…
Since we’re not talking about the youngest crowd who have commonly known interest in colorful [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in MMOG Discussion by Nick
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Old School Baby!
This post was made while on an airplane trip for work and contains very little editing. You’ve been warned! -Nick
This past week I began playing Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS and found myself realizing that I’ve played through the game literally dozens of times on the SNES, Playstation, GBA, and now on [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Game Design, MMOG Discussion by Nick
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Mario Kart Wii and Unfriendly Friend Codes
Ok, I love Nintendo just as much as the next old-school gamer, but I’m not afraid to give the verbal lashing where it is due. Iwata-san, I’m afraid you’ve made a nasty mistake when you agreed that using shared Friend codes in each individual game were a good idea. I’ve tried to understand the rationale, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Game Design by Nick
Friday, October 12th, 2007
The Power of One Man
I will happily pay full purchase price for any game that makes it to the PSN entirely developed by one person. Not only did Jonathan Mak release a fine quality original game with Everyday Shooter, but he also ported it on his own to the PS3. Of course, there’s a lot more to this story, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Game Design by Nick
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
*Flexes his LUA skill*
Few words really get me as excited about MMOs as the following: OPEN and EXTENSIBLE. Today, the team at Areae announced the long awaited brainchild of Raph Koster and crew, a new virtual world *platform* called Metaplace.
At first glance, you might think, “oh great, is this just another Habbo?”, but consider the possibilities a bit [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Game Design, MMOG Discussion by Nick
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
Team Fortress 2 and Huge Games Too!
Original characters with style and humor, combined with fantastic art direction. If the gameplay is half as fun as watching the preview videos is, then VALVe has another hit on their hands.
This is the latest in a plethora of new titles clearly focusing on raising the bar in regards to character and story. Make every [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Game Design, MMOG Discussion by Nick
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
Good Luck Sanya!
Announced on WarCry and confirmed on the Camelot Herald. After nearly 6 years of hard work for Mythic / EA-Mythic, Sanya Weathers (formerly Sanya Thomas) is moving on. Please join myself and the rest of the MMO community in acknowledging her hard work and successes in MMO community management while wishing her the very best [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in MMOG Discussion by Nick
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
Feel the Music
It’s been a while, since starting my new job sucked away much of my time, and Oblivion recently finishing it off.. Alas, tonight, many months from my last post, I felt the need to offer my two copper. This time my inspiration comes from Coltrane and this post by Moorgard.
Ok.. I have to bite the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Game Design, MMOG Discussion by Nick
Monday, December 18th, 2006
Chewable Content: It’s GOOD For You!
Moorgard made an interesting post today regarding the notion of delivering regular short burst content on a frequent basis such as weekly or bi-weekly as opposed to the currently popular method of having a bunch of static content, then providing overwhelming mounds of additional content in the form of expansion packs. He also touches upon [...]
