The good news today was that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the California video game law that restricted sales of "violent" video games to minors, known as "Brown vs. EMA" (previously "Schwarzenegger vs. EMA" before the change of governor in California). The upshot is that the highest court has said that computer games enjoy the same protected status as other forms of expression such as movies and books.
Hooray!
(more...)
Yeah, I know. Three posts in rapid succession previously, then nothing for a few weeks. Had some family issues to deal with and the "day job" has been heating up... in a good way. Expect to hear more about what I'm working on within the next few months.
This time around, let's take a look at three seemingly related topics that actually have a lot of subtlety: Criticism, criticizing, and complaining. Specifically, let's see how these relate to game development.
(more...)
Nils, a frequent commenter on this blog, wrote some articles on his own blog about business models:
Business Models
The Evil in Monthly Subs
The Evil in F2P games
He goes into some of the dangers of different business models. I've left some fairly lengthy comments over there, but I thought I'd go into a bit more discussion about different business models.
(more...)
At the recent LOGIN conference, I was on a panel entitled "Wannabe Farmers replacing Pretend Mass-Murderers: Are Social Games a Fad?" To make the panel more interesting the panelists took extreme positions, and I was the solid "social (network) games are a fad" guy. Not that I believe that entirely, but it made for an entertaining panel discussion. (I'll post a link when the talk is posted online.)
But, I mentioned something that I think is very true: business works in cycles. And, by looking at previous cycles we can use them to divine the future of the current cycle. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
(more...)
I'm an MMO developer, but I'm also an enthusiastic player. Not every MMO designer has the luxury of spending a lot of time in games, but I think it's important to stay current with games given that I've spent a lot of my time running a rather "retro" game.
So, I like to think that I have a bit of insight on how the player side of things work as well as the designer. So, while I'm a big fan of microtransaction (or "free to play") business models, I certainly do understand how players can be wary, even frightened by this type of system. So, let's look at two games from the same company and see how they handle microtransactions.
Jessica Mulligan, a person I admire greatly, said that she stopped writing regular columns when it felt like she was just repeating the same thing over and over again. (With the unwritten lament, and still nobody is listening!) That's kind of how I feel about one of my pet topics: innovation. I keep posting, but little seems to come from it.
Not that it's necessarily going to stop me, of course. Allow me to ruminate a bit more on originality and how it applies to game design.
(more...)
...don't bother, they're here.
In game development, clones are seemingly a way of life. A popular idea gets lifted and repurposed and hopefully expanded. It might be good, then we call it "inspired by" or an homage to the original. It might not be so good or a bit too blatant, then we call it a rip-off. (The difference between an homage and a rip-off reminds me of the joke about the difference between a religion and a cult: one is more popular than the other.)
Let's take a look at clones, why they're so tempting, and why they can be so harmful to game development.
(more...)
Let me write this last post to try to leave the old behind with the passing year. This is going to be a hard look at the past year, and it's not going to be pretty. Let me purge the angst and bitterness now so that perhaps I can have a fresh perspective coming into the new year.
So, from a developer's point of view, how was 2010?
(more...)
There's been a small surge in people discussing the problems with MMO games lately. There are a few variations on the theme, but it comes down to the old, "where's the innovation?" People are complaining that MMOs haven't advanced, that they're stuck in the same old gameplay, and one source even saying they should be more like action-orientated console games.
So, once again, let me stifle a weary sigh and let's take a look at this issue, shall we?
(more...)
So, what's happening at Psychoavatar? As I mentioned, we're working on an RPG in a month for October. So, I figured I'd do a "developer's diary" type entry. Won't be daily, but I figure a few postings to give a glimpse at what an accelerated development schedule looks like might be interesting. Not that I shouldn't be working on it instead....
(more...)
|
|