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.

Happy Thanksgiving! I have a tremendous amount to be thankful for–a healthy family, a job I love, and great friends to cherish.

Soon I’ll be posting my year-end music roundup, and may even have a thing or two to say about game design sometime. Have a happy holiday, everyone.

The inaugural GameX Industry Summit last weekend was a great time. Naturally there were a few hiccups–being the first time the show was held–but the content of the event was terrific.

A few of my favorite bits were the Saturday afternoon keynote by Chris Foster of Harmonix, a post mortem on cinematics work by Coray Seifert of Kaos Studios, and a talk on the motivations behind acquiring virtual goods by Bernard Yee of CaféMom.com.

Needless to say, the best talk was the panel I was on, moderated by Alexander Macris of  Themis Group and featuring Damon Alberts of  Burst Online Entertainment and Lee Hammock of Fallen Earth. In all seriousness, our varied backgrounds made for a very diverse panel. The similarities in our answers were as interesting as the different perspectives each of us brought to the table. Alexander did a great job moderating and taking input from the audience. The crowd was really engaged and asking some great questions.

I enjoy shows that include a mix of industry and fans, and this summit had a nice balance. I got to meet some cool industry types but also got to hang out with some students and others who’d like to get into the industry. Hopefully I had some worthwhile advice for a few of them.

I was also surprised by how much activity there was on the expo floor. There were some honest-to-goodness game show booths there for titles like Dante’s Inferno, as well as online celebrities such as several members of the Guild. There were a lot of people who came just to hang out and play games, which is always neat to see.

The facility and surrounding area were a bit on the dismal side (no places that sold a real cheesesteak close by), so hopefully if the show is a success they can move to a better spot next year. But even as if it stays in the same location, I recommend the event highly. With PAX East debuting next year, the east coast is gaining ground as a major center of gaming.

Friday I head down to Philadelphia to attend the GameX Industry Summit. I’ll be on a panel Saturday at 4pm titled “Beyond Raids and Ganks: Exploring Next-Gen MMOs in a non WoW-Killer Context.”

What will I be talking about? How to build a WoW killer, of course!

Okay, not really. Here is the panel description:

The MMO is here to stay! Having said that, there is an industry push to introduce new paradigms that take the genre beyond the status quo. In what ways can we create MMOs that innovate within the genre, create new player experiences, and develop deeper, more impacting stories, narrations, and character development? This panel brings together developers working on three new MMOs that are pushing boundaries and innovating beyond established concepts. The panelists will discuss the strengths of the MMO format and then break into how they view the MMO developing, through player experiences, new “success” metrics, hybridization of genres, targeted gameplay approaches and developments in story and character.

Dang. Hopefully they invited me along to lighten things up with my razor-sharp wit.

Anyway, it should be a fun time and I look forward to meeting my fellow panelists. I won’t know many folks there, so if you happen to be attending please flag me down and say hello. I’m usually in a much better mood than I appear, so don’t be afraid!

There has been a recent round of blog posts suggesting that current MMOs have lost something, that they aren’t living up to their potential, are in desperate need of a revolution, and that power-mad developers are trying to lock players on a limited path. Of course, these assertions aren’t anything new–posters on entrenched message boards like FoH have been saying the same thing for years.

Certainly there is room for entirely new styles of massively multiplayer online games to be developed. We need this kind of development to happen. But the fact is that the Diku MMO is here to stay, if for no other reason that it’s a popular style of game that millions of people around the world have proven willing to pay money for. So look, just stop whining that the genre is exhausted and out of ideas, because it doesn’t matter–even if there are jaded gamers who have had enough of the format and should just move on already, there are millions of new players waiting to take their places.

Rather than abandoning hope for the Diku MMO–which is about as likely to disappear from the gaming landscape as the FPS–we should look for ways to address its shortcomings.

The problem isn’t that there are a lot of quests in these games; it’s that the quests are often boring, non-heroic, and the only legitimate path of advancement. Worse still, quests in some current titles actually penalize socialization because updates don’t apply to the whole group. And nobody enjoys ganking a named creature in the wild only to reach a quest hub and receive a mission to kill that very same beastie.

These are solvable problems. Let’s not do away with the game content Achievers love; let’s stop penalizing Explorers and Socializers instead. By being thoughtful about our methods of delivering achievement, we should actually feed exploration and socialization. Reward people for encountering mysteries in the wild. Create settings that foster a variety of adventuring outside the linear quest line.

Another topic that comes up a lot is how current MMOs have removed all sense of danger and risk. Again, this is a problem we can solve without going in a completely ridiculous and reckless direction. Simply walking outside the borders of your home town needn’t mean that everything your character has ever earned is on the line (don’t worry–those of you who enjoy that sort of thing will always have niche PvP games to play for however many months of lifespan those titles have). Punitive death penalties may please the hardcore, but they are one of the primary reasons players leave a game.

Instead, find other stakes with real consequences that players can fight for. Make them overcome huge obstacles with a real chance of loss–but loss that makes them feel like they really tried and want to do better next time, not a loss that makes them feel stupid or unskilled.

Look, a lot of this comes down to content, and making content is expensive–believe me, I know. But MMO makers are just going to have to bite the bullet on this one. If you read between the lines and pay attention to what the developers of tomorrow’s MMOs are telling you, several companies are working on addressing these challenges in their own ways (such as BioWare, Trion, and, yes, 38 Studios). There is no universal solution, but developers are trying new things.

While some teams will focus on taking the MMO into bold new directions, others will try to build upon what has proven to work and make it even better. This genre has room for both revolution and evolution, and in fact needs both paths to thrive. Pushing boundaries is healthy, but throwing out the baby with the bathwater would ultimately undermine the considerable progress MMOs have made since the late 1990s.