Videogame Industry
« Previous EntriesPassage
Sunday, November 30th, 2008I read about Jason Rohrer’s game Passage in the latest issue of Esquire and headed over to his site to check it out. The premise is like lots of other arcade games: move around the map and collect as much treasure as you can in five minutes. However, Passage is actually a metaphor for life [...]
Understand Your Customer
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008The recent announcement that Tabula Rasa is shutting down has me thinking about the success rates of mainstream MMOGs. Why do certain MMOGs fail where others succeed? I don’t think it’s as simple as “the market is saturated” or “no one can compete against WoW.” If anything, those statements just show a lack of imagination [...]
Hellgate: London Closes for Good
Sunday, October 26th, 2008I had pretty much written the game off anyway after Flagship’s July announcements, but the news came out today that Hellgate: London will finally be shutting down and closing its doors entirely at the end of January. As I mentioned in July, the only reason I even care is that I ponied up the $200 [...]
Race and Faction: The Final Frontiers
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008I was reading Silentstephi’s World of Warcraft rant about being stuck with her dwarf priest this morning, and I totally sympathize. She had picked a dwarf not because of their pleasing aesthetics, but because at the time it was the only realistic option for raiding due to the Fear Ward ability (once only available to [...]
Open Beta? More Like Free Trial
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Can we stop pretending that an open beta is anything but a free trial? This complaint ties in with a post I made last year where I complained about the practice of using an open beta as a marketing tool. Whether they openly admit it or not, many companies do exactly that. I don’t know [...]
Recruit-a-Friend vs. WoW Glider
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Tobold touched briefly on the double-dipping topic and riffs on an idea that a number of us in the blogosphere have been discussing for a long time: payment to advance more quickly. Go check out his article because he highlights some of the problems with that methodology. The big one is that it removes incentive [...]
World of Warcraft is Tuckering Blizz Out?
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Excuse me a moment while I play the world’s tiniest violin for the developers of the mega-successful World of Warcraft. Michael Zenke at Massively just pointed me to this interview with Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce where he laments that the “voracious appetite” of their playerbase is stretching their wee 130-person team out just a little [...]
Fallout 3 Impressions From PAX
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Fallout 3 is one of my most highly anticipated games this year. It’s got so much going for it: an immensely strong and unique setting pioneered by the first two excellent games combined with a company responsible for what’s arguably my favorite series ever (though I strongly preferred Morrowind to Oblivion). While my confidence in [...]
Dragging at PAX 2008
Friday, August 29th, 2008I’m sick as a dog right now — my fiancee brought home a nasty cold and infected me, and I was feeling miserable last night. This morning I felt a little better, so I got up and headed downtown to PAX to check out the floor and use my two hours of press time to [...]
Sick, Sick, Sick
Monday, August 18th, 2008Reports keep rolling in about just how fast the leveling is with WoW’s new recruit-a-friend program. I’m seeing a lot of discussion on the official forums about it, Cuppy was telling me that she expects to have her character up to 60 in just a few nights of dungeon running, and someone suggested that I [...]
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