I meant to throw this link out there earlier, but I was too busy hitting deadlines 
I have a column series at MMORPG.com called the MMO Underbelly, where I try to show the seamy, dirty, behind the scenes stuff of MMO production. The latest one is here, and you can find links to all the older ones under my cartoon picture. I love that picture, by the way. That’s how I wear my hair as a civilian, yes, and go ahead, make fun.
…is “we all know each other.”
No matter how many studios rise and fall and rise again, the MMO industry remains remarkably small. Let me illustrate:
I was working on an article a little while ago when my IM blooped at me. It was an old friend, pinging to ask for an unofficial reference.
So, every game seems to think that powerleveling is somehow bad and sad and god kills a kitten whenever a twink dings without suffering. Therefore, there’s always some code to prevent a low level guy from getting all the experience if a high level guy does any damage to the mob at all. (Side note: Why was City of Heroes’ sidekick mechanism not widely stolen emulated? Anyone? Bueller?)
In practice, of course, this means that if I’m soloing a monster in LOTRO, and about to win because, dude, I’m level 34 in full crafted gear and the mob is level 28 yard trash, and some punk ass comes up and plinks it with an arrow for seven points, I get a fraction of the experience I would have gotten without any “help.”
I just told someone that in my day we’d have trained frogloks on him for that stunt.
In. My. Day.
Excuse me, I’m going to go drink some Metamucil and fetch a donut shaped pillow for my scooter.
There’s an old joke that goes “For every time you have sex before you get married, put a jellybean in a jar. For every time you have sex after the wedding, take out a jellybean.” The punch line is that the jar will never be empty. That joke is so old that originally, you were supposed to put the jellybeans in the jar during your first year of marriage. But (as usual) I digress.
You could make the same “joke” with developers and how much they post before and after launch.
Hell, I could do better typing one handed than this stupidity. Hey, that’s an idea for a blog post! (Please note – I think… okay, I hope… the writer was trying to be funny. The intro to the piece gave the impression that he was trying to offer serious advice, and certainly that’s the way it was taken by a few people who should have known better.)
I am, sadly, not part of the Facebook revolution, the MySpace weltanschauung, or even the blogging mindset. I know, this is a weird thing to hear coming from someone who has been running some kind of website splattered with overflowing id since 1999, but there it is. Continue Reading »
Who gives a shit about Ike Turner, Terry Pratchett’s still with us. But that sound you heard this morning was me going Aaaa-OOOOOOOH!!! Oh yes. Multiple exclamation points. I believe that in this case, multiples are called for.
True story: After I read Monstrous Regiment, I realized I could occupy myself at game conferences, interminable meetings, and podcasts by imagining the sort of socks the speaker had. Tennis anklets with little pom pom balls on them came up a really disturbing amount of the time. (Do they still make those?) One person, who thinks he is The Man but I generally question whether or not he is even *a* man, given his propensity for whining, totally has gold toe space age fiber wicking action socks with padded heels and reinforced arches. And when I’m feeling generous, I kind of want to say, listen, they’re just socks. You don’t have to prove anything. You could probably just have cotton crew socks. They’d be just as comfortable and you’d worry less about losing them, or having people laugh as soon as you walk away.
Unfortunately, these days I’m usually feeling a touch petty (not knowing where I’m going to live in sixty-eight days will do that), and I snicker a bit at what a small little package these supposed socks of the future are when they’re rolled up.
For the record, I have black cotton socks with little red Scottie dogs knitted in. No idea what that MEANS, really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o
In 1991, I worked for a temp agency along with my best friend. He and I both got assigned to work at AOL. Customers had the choice of either renewing their credit cards online or calling a human. My buddy and I were two of the humans. There was a giant LED “scoreboard” on the wall letting us know how long an average call was and how long an average caller had to wait. One person busting ass really could make a difference in the daily score. It was kind of… fun. I know, a CS pit, fun, crazy talk.
“Oh, you’re the one who hates marketing.”
Clearly, I have failed to communicate. I don’t hate marketing. I hate poorly thought out, knee jerk, disco-era marketing perpetuated by people who don’t understand massively multiplayer games. Or the internet. Oh, and I hate hype-based marketing done without consulting anyone actually implementing the features. I suppose it’s fair to say I hate marketing that is actually porn. Hrm, now that I think about it, I hate it when people confuse “booth whore” with “marketing.” Okay, and I admit, it does seem like some people get into marketing out of a persistent inability to do anything else.