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| 2008-05-01 |
State of the MMO: Industry Luminaries On The Genre, Its Future |
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| The MMO industry has grown from a two-horse race at the turn of the century to one of the largest segments of the gaming industry and perhaps the last true foothold games have on the PC. Yet, during this same period, there have been innumerable failures, and many questions remain wide open. Can MMOs truly be global? Is the subscription model in decline? To what extent should developers innovate or evolve gameplay? What role should established IP play? Have these games gotten too expensive to make?
To answer these questions, we spoke to cross section of people from around the industry to get a handle on the true "State of the MMO". We spoke to SOE President John Smedley, ZeniMax Online Studios General Manager Matt Firor, Themis Group CEO Alexander Macris, GamerDNA.com Director of Community Sanya Weathers, EVE Online Game Designer Chantel Zuurmond, IGN PC Executive Editor Steve Butts and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett to get their thoughts on all these issues and much more.
Read the full article here |
| 2008-04-14 |
MMOGology: Gamerz is speshul |
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Gamers have always taken a degree of flack about their hobby of choice. Some people call gaming a waste of time (whereas watching TV is completely productive), some people bash it as anti-social escapism (whereas reading a book is akin to attending a gala), some people deride it for its focus on violent content (whereas Hollywood blockbusters, boxing, and the nightly news are G-rated and chock full of joy), and some people despise it for its potentially addictive properties (cigarettes are a far safer alternative). I could go on. As a result, gamers are often seen as grumpy, antisocial slackers. But of all the labels associated with gamers one of the latest is just plain retarded - literally.
At a recent British Psychological Society convention it was announced that, "hard core gamers can mirror certain aspects of Asperger’s Syndrome." For those of you who don’t know, Asperger’s Syndrome is a psychiatric disorder on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum of psychiatric disorders. Asperger’s is typically characterized by impairments in social interactions and repetitive behavior patterns. Dr. Charlton, one of the researchers on the study states that, "Our research supports the idea that people who are heavily involved in game playing may be nearer to autistic spectrum disorders than people who have no interest in gaming."
Read the full article here |
| 2008-04-09 |
Short Circuiting Social Stereotypes with MMOs |
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| People categorize each other based on visual attributes like age, gender, hair and clothing style, and skin color. We also use political, religious, and social ideologies, musical, cinema, and leisure time preferences, and socio-economic class differences to divide ourselves up into different groups. The tendency to categorize and divide has more to do with the basic functioning of the human information processing system than bias or narrow mindedness on people’s parts, and it is useful in allowing us to function effectively in the complex, dynamic, and often dangerious environment we call the real world. However, it does have it’s drawbacks. It’s long been known that people have a marked tendency to identify themselves with a group, identify people who are not members of their group as members of an out-group, and assign negative characteristics to the out-group. Moreover, we tend to spend most of our time with people who are like us. In other words, we hang out with people who look and think like we do and tend to think about people who are not like us in negative terms.
Read the full article here |
| 2008-04-06 |
Player files lawsuit seeking to ban "real money trading" |
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The case is thought to be the first of its kind - a lawsuit filed by a player seeking to ban "real money trading" within a virtual world. Hernandez wants a judge to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit, another potential first when it comes to lawsuits involving online role-playing games.
The legal fight is being closely watched by the fledgling field of "virtual law" and passionate World of Warcraft players.
"The real significance of this case is, ‘What are the rights of the [virtual world] community members when they go online?’" said C. Richard Newsome, Hernandez’s attorney.
Devout World of Warcraft players argue that people who buy gold are akin to baseball players who take steroids. Gold should be earned by each player by doing such things as completing quests and slaying monsters, not with a checkbook or credit card, they argue.
Attorneys for IGE U.S. have argued in court papers that Hernandez and other players have no standing to sue because they have no ownership or property rights within World of Warcraft. Hernandez’s lawsuit fails to show how he suffered actual damages, according to legal filings by IGE U.S.
In addition, IGE U.S. is no longer involved in the virtual gold business, said Miami attorney James M. Miller, who is representing the company. He declined to elaborate further.
"The stakes are high and our intention is to address [the lawsuit] in court," Miller said.
In addition to the lawsuit, the Florida Attorney General’s Office has opened a consumer protection investigation into IGE U.S. The state sent a subpoena to the company in December, demanding documents detailing "the sale of World of Warcraft gold to consumers in the state of Florida." IGE U.S. is fighting the subpoena.
Read the full story here |
| 2008-04-03 |
Upcoming MMO movies (and why they'll suck) |
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Dorothy Parker once said "The only ’ism’ Hollywood believes in is plagiarism." While not technically plagiarism, the practice of mining popular properties of other media is a time-honored mainstay of Hollywood’s. Why invent a new franchise when you can adapt one that already exists? Well, if we’re talking about translating videogames to cinema, there are at least 3 reasons against that we can think of right away: Street Fighter: The Movie, Double Dragon, and Doom. Oh, and the entire body of work of Uwe Boll.
With such a history of failure, why does Hollywood keep banking on videogames as good sources of material? Because it’s always desperate for the next big hit, and adaptation is seen as being easier than originality, even though by now it’s apparent that it’s not quite as simple as it seems. An even better question is: why exactly don’t these translations work? What is it about games that makes for poor films? Let’s see if we can answer this question and assess the potential success/failure of some upcoming MMO movies.
Read the full article here |
| 2008-04-02 |
Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach |
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| Most multiplayer games and platforms already have some successful social features. Friends lists, guilds/clans, and party systems are all examples of useful social design. I think everyone can agree that those social features definitely increase the fun of playing multiplayer.
But those features are not enough; they are really only valuable if you already have friends online. If the multiplayer games are going to be welcoming to new players, we need social features that affect newbie who may not (yet) have friends.
A useful feature that doesn't require friends is the swear words filter for text chat. Even well-moderated text chat channels get nasty. But when the swear word filter changes words deemed "offensive" ("asshole!") into something less offensive ("*%@^!"), the reaction to the swearing drops dramatically, because this change makes the swearer look... well, silly.
Amusing, like a cartoon character, rather than aggravating. I'll bet some newbs don’t even realize that the swear word filter exists until they type some choice words themselves and see their own chat "sanitized".
Read the full article here
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| 2008-03-30 |
Care in the Community |
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| "I know it comes up all the time," explains Kerstein, "but there’s that tendency to think of MMO players as people with no social skills, that they’re isolated and have no real-life contacts: that’s bollocks. These people have social lives, although not all of them of course," he laughs, "As I said MMO players are a diverse group, but most players have real lives too. Through the game, players often make real-life friends, I mean, I’ve become friends with people all across Europe. We shouldn’t forget that MMOs have this huge social aspect, it’s not like everybody playing is a nerd sitting in a cellar, never seeing the light of day."
Read the full article here |
| 2008-04-02 |
The Great EULA Debate |
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| This weekend at the Indie MMO Game Designer Conference, Erin Hoffman brought this discussion to the roundtable. Hoffman ? a writer and game designer from philomathgames.com ? is one of the leading forces behind Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds, an essay collection concerning player rights in virtual space and online games. Working in conjunction with Erik Bethke’s BetterEULA project (www.bettereula.com), Hoffman hopes to make the EULA more substantial and helpful to both developers and players.
The roundtable started with a definition of basic terms: what do you find in your average EULA? Cutting through the legal jargon, your EULA contains basic concepts such as “We can ban you if you don’t listen to rules.” “We own your characters, accounts, and character possessions ? you are just borrowing them.” “You can cancel your subscription at any time, but no refunds after bans/cancellations.”
From the above, we started our conversations on the concept of player ownership, and several attendees ? including our moderator, Hoffman ? felt that EULA statements about character and account ownership are downright offensive and contradictory.
Read the full article here
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| 2008-03-25 |
New Vista Service Pack Boosts Gaming Performance |
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| Windows Vista users who apply the just-released Service Pack 1 patch should receive a general increase in gaming performance, according to several benchmarking websites.
Technology site ExtremeTech is showing up to a 46 frame-per-second increase in Crysis low-quality performance after applying the patch, with similarly large 20 FPS gains recorded in World in Conflict.
The advantage of Service Pack 1 was of a smaller magnitude under high quality settings, with only modest 2-5 FPS boosts recorded on average. The performance increase has also shown to be inconsistent across varying games--some benefiting little by the patch--as well as when comparing systems with Nvidia and ATI video cards.
Read the full article here |
| 2008-03-25 |
Gamer Interrupted: Are you a Funsucker? |
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| The problem here is a difference in opinion of what fun is. We play MMOs to have fun (and relieve stress and escape), but when we are playing with a massive number of other players, the many views of what fun is can and do clash. So the question is, should we care about other people’s fun when we are having our own? In my opinion, your "right" to have fun, in-game or out, ends as soon as you start infringing on someone else’s fun. But this rule can’t be strictly applied because some people’s fun may not fit into the scope of the game... or reality. I’ve tried to come up with some basic guidelines as to when we should worry about someone else’s fun and when it’s OK not to without being a Funsucker.
Read the full article here |
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