Jonathan Zabel

For your blog, compare & contrast Player community sites (WoW and at least one other) with these developer/industry pro communities. What function do they serve? How do they differ? While they cover much of the same content, their areas of influence are very different. As a developer, which should weigh more heavily in your estimation? Are they worth participating in? Are they worth reading/following/subscribing to?

What function do they serve?

World of WarCraft and City of Heroes: To provide technical support; to help new players become acclimated to the game; to provide customer service; to allow general discussion between players; to discuss PvP; to discuss proposed improvements...

Terra Nova and Virtual Cultures: To present news stories on the subject of virtual worlds that would be of interest to game developers; to allow discussions between developers in response to these stories; to give a developer context on certain news stories that didn't previously have it in other news coverage.

While they cover much of the same content, their areas of influence are very different. As a developer, which should weigh more heavily in your estimation?

Naturally, community feedback is always useful in a general sense and if you're Blizzard, then of course the community forums will be more useful than professional blogs that cover virtual worlds in a general sense. If you're working on a different game, the WoW forums would still provide insight into the types of issues you might encounter, but the professional blogs would likely be more useful in making top-level design decisions.

Are they worth participating in? Are they worth reading/following/subscribing to?

Speaking strictly from a developer perspective, participating in community forums is less important than sitting back and following recent developments among players. Professional blogs are worthy of reading, certainly, but should only be participated in with full knowledge of the issues being discussed.

Posted by Jonathan Zabel at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After reading the chapter and giving some thought to community, events and such, write up a Blog entry analyzing some of the game applications we've looked at thus far (lite MMOs, other online games we've looked at) in terms of community tools, relations, events, etc. What's really terrific and why? What's innovative? Which games are really lacking in this department and why?

Community Tools. In terms of broadest community appeal, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better option than the avatar systems currently being put to use in many Asian MMOs (many of which transcend the traditional fantasy genre we're so used to over here). You can't really overestimate the power of being able to customize an avatar just the way you like it, and the thousands of accessories that are offered in games in places like Korea enable each player to carve out a unique identity... as opposed to, say, World of WarCraft, in which people are mostly going to look the same despite best efforts.

Community Relations and Events. Strangely enough, the best examples of this that I have seen haven't taken place in traditional digital games at all, but rather in ARGs. ilovebees still sticks out in my mind, and I can still remember the fiendish devotion to Wiki editing and communal effort it took to solve most of the puzzles. I can't neglect to mention the phone portion of the game, as people scrambled to reach the most remote of pay phones. I've yet to see a non-ARG come even close to the same high level of community integration.

Posted by Jonathan Zabel at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog about why this works or doesn't (What's compelling? What's particularly cool about it? Is it boring? Interesting? Addictive?

Puzzle Quest absolutely works, and I would argue that mixing the addictive mechanics commonly associated with RPGs (leveling up, getting new skills) with the Bejeweled mechanic is nothing short of brilliant. PQ proves my personal philosophy of game design - take a good game, change one mechanic and the dramatic elements and you have a another good game.

How does the theme pair with the game mechanic?

Like a hand to a glove. You choose a character class, each of which has a different set of spells that draws primarily on one color of mana. In turn, this shapes your play style as you choose which types of color matches to make in a Bejeweled clone. (With one notable difference, the dramatic tension between either getting experience or filling your mana bar).

Propose a different theme and how it would be implemented. (For instance, a speak-easy, 1920's flapper theme; how would the art assets be changed to fit that? What game mechanic elements would need to be changed? Could it merely be reskinned or would there need to be fundamental changes?)

Naturally, you could reskin PQ any number of ways. After all, haven't we already seen sci-fi RPGs? Steampunk RPGs? Cyberpunk RPGs? There are even Western RPGs, for goodness' sake! Fundamentally, I don't think you could meld another genre with puzzles quite as effectively as an RPG. The sense of achievement RPG gameplay gives you is intoxicating addictive, and although each encounter only lasts a few minutes, you find yourself playing for hours...

Posted by Jonathan Zabel at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)