I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Blizzard’s RealID system, and have seen many of the opinions against the upcoming change to WoW’s forums.

I think the move is lousy too, for most of the same reasons others have stated. I think ultimately the change is dangerous, both to the customers and to the health of the community. And I say this as someone whose “real ID” has been a matter of public record for a number of years now.

But there’s another aspect to this I’d like to talk about which I haven’t seen discussed so far.

My instinct is that this change will peel away yet another layer of the magic of MMOs: that of being able to pretend you’re someone else. Sure, anonymity can empower jerks to act like even bigger jerks, but the illusion of the avatar also does great things. It allows disabled gamers to ignore their physical limitations; it allows the meek to act with confidence; it allows the person with an average job and an average life to become a legend.

The danger of connecting MMOs too closely with real life is that it takes away the game’s function as a vehicle of escape, perhaps even limiting the potential of the game to inspire the imagination. That’s a heavy price to pay for cutting down on forum spam.

Of course the message boards are technically separate from the game itself, but they represent a big part of the MMO experience for a sizable number of players. That connection is being impacted by the RealID change, which means yet another aspect of the classic MMO experience is being lost–if you’re a WoW player, at least.

Now, let me pontificate to MMO developers for a minute.

From personal experience, I know that keeping a gaming forum as useful and troll-free as possible is a huge pain in the ass. Guess what? It’s also the price you pay for coming to the dance. I don’t care how big your community is or how many posts you have to moderate–hire the freaking staff to do the job right. I understand the motive of wanting to create a cleaner environment for your posters, but don’t take the positive experience away from the good folks in the name of shutting up the asshats.

There is a certain charm in the forum hero known only by a clever handle. The MMOs of tomorrow need to hold onto all the charm they can, not let it slip away–regardless of the motive.

I spent the entire weekend angry that the new Clash of the Titans was so horrible. This was one of the seminal films of my youth, a tale that had nurtured my love for heroic fantasy, and it was utterly ruined by an almost unwatchable farce of a remake.

Monday at work I must have vented my frustration a half-dozen times. At one point, I even proclaimed that I would have been happy if only the film makers had reshot the original script and added updated special effects.

After fuming for a while, I realized I hadn’t seen the original film in many years. So over lunch I fired up Netflix and bounded over to my instant queue, where I had the old Clash of the Titans waiting for me.

By the time I was 30 minutes in, I realized how utterly wrong I had been. If the original script were shot today, moviegoers would laugh themselves out of the theater. It was bad. Really bad.

So why did I have such fond memories of this film from when I was a kid? While I’d like to think my tastes in film are more discerning now than when I was a boy, it couldn’t just be the ignorance of youth. Because despite the movie’s terrible dialogue and overwrought acting, I had one thing right: the movie told a really good story.

What I’d done was internalize the myth. I’d taken what was great and resonant about the story and hung onto it, discarding all the nonsense that sticks out like a sore thumb when watching the film today.

We do the same thing with so many aspects of life, including MMOs. Many of us look back on our days in Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, and other early online games through the haze of selective memory. We internalize the myths that matter: the long camps that netted a coveted item, the fight to survive a Mistmoore train, your raid wiping and recovering in the wee hours of the morning. These tales are as vivid and vital today as they were when first experienced, and serve as the foundation for countless reminiscences with old friends.

But when I go back to EverQuest to check out the latest expansion or run through a familiar area, the game is virtually unplayable to me. The interface feels archaic, a huge impediment that actually gets in the way of my fun. Yet despite many evolutions over the years, it’s largely the exact same interface I spent countless hours interacting with.

Interfaces aren’t memorable. Dialogue and quests fade away.  The myths we internalize are rooted in the heroics of social interaction and the drama of emotional investment. If you can make a game–or movie, or book, or comic–with an experience that genuinely moves the audience, you can make something memorable. Because by doing so, you will have touched he myths that lie at the heart of all of us.

Today I, as well as a throng of coworkers, descended upon the first incarnation of PAX East. Though there wasn’t an official 38 Studios presence (no booth or big announcements this year–sorry!), our execs were nice enough to give the team the day off to attend opening day of the festivities.

First off, it’s great to have a major fan-centric gaming event in Boston. The fact that the show sold out for all three days is a testament to how many rabid gamers we have on this side of the country. No question that a show like this was long overdue.

The organizers certainly seemed to have learned a lot from the original PAX in terms of keeping things running smoothly. Though the entrance was a massive choke point (more about this later), once inside things ran like clockwork. It was fast and easy to pick up my badge, and grabbing goodie bags and program guides was a snap. Most of the lower level is a maze-like queue that winds its way toward the second floor, but despite a crowd the line was flowing briskly.

There are some weak points I hope improve next time around:

• Need a better facility – The Hynes Convention Center is not a great venue. The entryway was a massive bottleneck compared to more modern facilities. The cement floors and drab walls gave off a prison vibe. It just wasn’t a pleasant place (although easy access to a decent food court is a plus).
• Industry support felt tentative – The expo floor wasn’t exactly brimming with exciting booths. Local studio Turbine had a nice area, and a few others (like Realtime Worlds, who showed off APB) did as well. But overall it felt like many big-name publishers had little more than a token presence.

Perhaps the show’s proximity to E3 precluded many companies from committing resources, or maybe they just wanted to see how the first year of the show went. Either way, I hope there is more of a big-name presence next year–and I hope it takes place in a location that better shows all that Boston has to offer.

Overall the arrival of PAX East is a huge boon to gamers and developers alike. I’m confident the show will be a huge success and will only get better in the years to come.

On Tuesday, March 23, I’ll be speaking at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2010 Conference, taking place in nearby Waltham, MA. The panel is titled “Design for Experience?!” and if you look at the list of speakers, I am clearly the dumbest guy in the room. I can only assume they had some quota of locals that needed to be filled.

My contribution has the uncharacteristically academic title “Memorable Experiences in Virtual Worlds.” Don’t worry–I’m not going all Raphtastic on ya. I’m building upon the basic premise of my talk with Owlchick last year at GDC Austin, where we asserted that the player’s stories are more compelling than those made by game designers.

Why does this fit a virtual reality conference? The panel is all about designing user experiences, and I submit that currently the most accessible form of virtual reality is found in massively multiplayer online games. Now I just have to convince the audience of that fact.

I began researching netbooks–small laptops aimed mostly at Web browsing–several months ago. I do a fair bit of traveling, and while I love my current machine, lugging the 17″ beast through airports has never been what I would call a treat. Not to mention the fact that a large notebook is completely useless on a coach airliner. Thus, I used practicality as justification for spending some cash on a truly portable machine.

What follows is a non-scientific recap of what drove my purchase decision and how I ended up with the Alienware M11x. Continue Reading »

The hot industry trend is evangelizing social games. Many took up this habit fairly recently, playing catch-up at shows like DICE last week. The Kosters of the world have been atop their social soapboxes for years.

The aspect I find interesting is that a number of, shall we say, developers of a certain age (such as Richard Garriott) are moving from big-budget studios to the social realm.

In addition to smelling all the dollars in the water, I posit that there is another element at work here. The relative simplicity of web and mobile development is reminiscent in many ways of the first big era of console and home computer games. A few guys in a room can build a game from start to finish and make ridiculous money doing so. Old guys like Lord British find themselves back in their comfort zone.

You tend to see these folks in blogs and interviews touting statistics and trends which support their theories, which is only natural; developers tend to write and give presentations that promote their world view. This is why you have to study developer blogs with a watchful eye, because you should assume they will frame facts in a way that supports their assertions.

For example, I tend to write about big-budget MMOs because that’s the kind of game I enjoy working on and playing. I certainly enjoy playing Peggle, but I don’t see myself ever taking a job to design such a game. I’d probably end up making a version of Breakout where each brick spits out a quest when you hit it and you use your paddle to catch falling pieces of epic loot. In other words, I’d sink my career.

I don’t begrudge anyone making or playing social games, though; it’s not my cup of tea, but I see no need to get snotty about it. I think social gaming is performing a valuable service to the industry by pressing a virtual reset button. While big-budget games and giant publishers continue to drive hardware evolution, ubiquitous platforms like Facebook and the iPhone will once again allow lean-and-mean development that proves you don’t need top-end graphics to make a fun game.

Needless to say, the more developers that jump on this trend, the more garbage consumers will be served. And, inevitably, social game development will balloon out of control and become just as muddy and expensive as the current generation of console games.

But that’s okay–a new industry reset button will come along soon enough. Game design is, ultimately, about pattern recognition.

Truer words have never been spoken.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and assert that setting a realistic scope is one of the most difficult challenges an MMO producer will face.”

Lum understates his point. He shouldn’t.

Scope is a balancing act. When making an MMO that seeks to evolve the genre in some way (assuming you want to do that, of course), you need to figure out how much of the New & Sexy you really need. But more than that, you need to question your assumptions about The Must Haves to be sure you’re not wasting time building expensive features just because that silly Warcraft game added them four years in.

How do you do this? You have to be brutally honest with yourself about the core vision of your game. This core vision is not a 10,000 page document–I’ve seen much-vaunted 10,000 page design documents, and they’re utter jokes. You need a list of four or five bullet points that describe the foundation of what your game is, and you use those four or five things as razors to evaluate every feature you consider putting into your game.

If a feature can’t stand up to your razors, you change it or cut it. It doesn’t matter if the feature in question is your greatest stroke of genius ever, or the most perfect example of design or art or code or music anyone has ever experienced. If it doesn’t advance the core vision of your game, it needs to change or go away.

Check out the director’s commentary on deleted scenes of your favorite DVD and you’re likely to hear how a certain scene was the director’s absolute favorite thing he ever shot, but ultimately he realized that it worked against the film and had to go. It’s painful to murder your darlings, but discipline is necessary in any art form.

Scott is right about something else, too: Nobody is ever going to give a developer an award for thoughtful scoping. But if you have the force of will to trim your game down to the purest core of what it can be, and you have the resources to polish that core so that it is excellent and fun, you will succeed and become very rich in the process.

Many of my favorite bands didn’t release new records this year, so I’d have to say I was a bit disappointed with 2009 overall. Still, there were plenty of gems worth purchasing.

It’s also interesting how many live albums showed up on my list. I enjoy live albums when bands add something new to the performance over the studio versions, so you can assume that any live discs that made my list have that element in common.

Without further ado, please enjoy my favorites from the past year. Let me know what you think, and please suggest anything you think I might enjoy. Continue Reading »

Yesterday one of my web email accounts was compromised and someone sent a mass email to my contact list saying that I had been mugged in London and was deprived of all my cash and credit cards, and that if someone couldn’t wire me cash I would be thrown out of my hotel and forced to sleep on the street.

I learned of this scam because Curt called me in the morning and asked “Are you at the hotel now?” To which I replied, “Huh?” And after a good laugh and a chat with our IT gurus (shout outs to Brandon, Jeff, and Dave), we discovered the source of the problem and I had the account frozen.

So, if you got an email from me yesterday asking for money, you can ignore it. If I ever do find myself in such a predicament, you can rest assured that the plea for help will have much better grammar than the fake did. Even in the most dire of need, one should make time for proper spelling and punctuation.

I must say it was heartwarming to see how many people contacted me to make sure I was okay. I even got calls from some fansite folks I got to know in the EQ2 days, which was really cool. Some days I think I will end up despised and alone like old Mr. Scrooge, but it’s nice to know that I haven’t reached that point yet.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and avoided getting mugged overseas!

It’s a widely known fact that Blizzard invented the achievement-based fantasy MMO, and one of WoW’s producers has given an interview to PC Zone magazine explaining why copying this unique blueprint is a bad idea.

When World of Warcraft sprang wholecloth from the minds of Blizzard back in 2004, there simply had been nothing like the game at any point in history. Anyone daring to trod down this same path is doomed to failure!

Okay, I get the point that some companies are indeed specifically trying to make knock-offs of WoW, and agree that such a strategy in and of itself is flawed. However, to imply that WoW represents originality is ludicrous. The game launched as an evolution on an existing title–the main innovation being a dedication to polished and fun gameplay. It has certainly moved in its own direction over the ensuing five years, but let’s not forget that it started as an upgrade to the EverQuest experience.

Despite what some naysayers claim, the achievement-based Diku MMO is a popular style of game with many directions it can grow. While games that don’t venture far from the established core are likely doomed to mediocrity, those that innovate key aspects of the experience have huge potential for success. As ever, it comes down to execution.