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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.
]]>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.
]]>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...
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Sissy Fight: Sissy Fight already has a chat system, but I think there’s a lot of design space in tying the chat to the gameplay. For example: when you type out an insult, it would be the equivalent of imputing the insult command. This would require a pretty advanced text parser.
MSN Games: I’d say the ability to create a personal profile would add a new dimension of social dynamics, simply because you would be able to see who you were playing a given game with... having that profile would engender a sense of player agency.
Yahoo Games: Yahoo already has profiles, so the next step would be an avatar system. Customizable avatars and a rewards system (win games, earn points to purchase avatar items) would greatly increase player involvement. (“Look at that guy with the crown, that cost a millions points to buy! He must be really good!”)
]]>How is community being dealt with?
Encouraging or discouraging social interaction?
Yahoo Games
How is the community being dealt with?
Encouraging or discouraging social interaction?
Set: The atmosphere in room was somber, intensely focused, and competitive. Sure, there was some laughing, but not nearly as much as the other games.
Boggle: Boggle was a little better than Set in terms of encouraging laughter and camaraderie, but it still felt like mainly a solo activity. When the timer was running, the conversation died down to nothing but a few pithy comments. The crossing off of words at the end was also pretty mechanical.
Scattergories: Scattergories still felt non-interactive when the timer was running and people were thinking of words, but when we were comparing words at the end it started becoming more multiplayer and interactive. Some of the words provoked laughter and were telling of the personalities of the people who wrote them, but the process still felt a bit mechanical.
Cranium: Cranium was very distinctive from the get-go in its multiplayer aspects. All of the tasks (save for perhaps trivia) were telling of the personalities and skills of the people playing: modeling things, drawing things, acting out. All of these activities not only were fun to watch a prompted peals of laughter, but they also allowed me to get to know the people I was playing with a little better.
Kingdom of Loathing: Kingdom of Loathing is an MMORPG, but the mechanics felt solely geared towards a single player experience. The aesthetics, with the primitive “notepad doodle” art style and the tounge-in-cheek writing really served to distance me from the actual action of the game, and I grew bored very quickly.
Sissy Fight: Though not really an MMORPG, Sissyfight is a multiplayer game that I was immediately able to immerse myself into thanks to the simplistic mechanics. I also found the dramatic elements (a schoolyard catfight) to be huge detractor from my engagement, but I was able to play for a while. I did feel like I was interacting with the other players to a much greater extent than with Kingdom of Loathing.
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The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is putting out their annual call for volunteers for the 2007 D.I.C.E. Summit at Green Valley Ranch in Las Vegas from February 7-9. For more details, e-mail casey@interactive.org or call (818) 876-0826.
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NAACP Attacks Racially-Charged Sony Ads [via Kotaku]
]]>Human beings are storytellers. It is part of our genetic makeup. From cave paintings to mind-numbing advertisements and the mental catheter that is television, tales are told.
In fact, we cannot help but tell stories. Simple conversations resulting from simple questions like, "How was your day" provoke stories. Since their inception as grunts and gurgles to paintings and refined literature, they've come a long way and across numerous media.
We are compulsive storytellers, spending millions of dollars and many years of our lives creating new ways of sharing those narratives. Whole industries have been birthed through the desire to tell stories.
It can be argued, then, that video games are our latest and most immersive storytelling vehicles yet. As such, where is our great video game "literature"? More to the point: Will video games ever have their "Moby Dick" or "Citizen Kane"?
[MORE]
]]>Despite this, these are the three responses he usually gets:
(a) I don't care.
(b) My kid already has Halo.
(c) So what? You see worse on TV.
This saddens me -- after all, it can't be easy to sell GTA to a seven-year-old child whose parents ignore the content.
]]>The SomethingAwful commentary reads:
Roger Ebert doesn't go to the set of "King Kong" and get the vapors over dolly shots. Leonard Maltin didn't ride a trained seal around the ocean during the filming of "Into the Blue" and start hooting "I smell Oscarrrrr!" over a bullhorn. Even cover articles full of huge pictures and adjective-laden text in Entertainment Weekly don't dare to claim that the movie is going to be great.Anyway, for equal parts comedy and insight, I'd say these are worthy of a read:
The Five Worst Gaming Articles of 2005
The Five Worst Gaming Articles of 2005 (The Final Battle)
The Academy is looking for 4-6 students in the field of Interactive Entertainment to help with the event (travel expenses will be paid for). If you're interested, e-mail your resume to Geri Gordon Miller at geri@interactive.org.
See you at D.I.C.E.!
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