Archive for the 'Game Design' Category
Dragon Age: Origins – AI Woes
There’s no other way to put this: The AI of your companions is absolutely abysmal. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been trying to wing it through an easy fight, only to flip through my team-mates and see none of their skills are recharging. A game of this caliber having AI so poor [...]
Filed under: Game Design, Personal | 2 Comments
Tags: AI, DA:O, Dragon Age: Origins
Time to report in after a weekend spent hacking and slashing my way through the kingdom of Ferelden.
Filed under: Game Design, Personal | 1 Comment
Tags: Baldur's Gate, Bioware, D&D, DA:O, Dragon Age: Origins, Immersion
The Death Of Traditional MMORPGs
So right now there is an interesting debate going on between Tobold and syncaine, on whether the next Blizzard MMO has a shot at getting over one million subscriptions. Syncaine thinks it doesn’t, because WoW’s success is largely down to timing and the sheer amount of work put into it over the years. Tobold does, [...]
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Tags: elephant statue, Hardcore Casual, MMO, MMORPG, syncaine, Tobold, WoW
Valve Skeptical of Natal
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who isn’t all that pumped about Natal just yet.
You have to ask yourself exactly how many gamers want to get up off the couch and dance around like an idiot when they play a game? Not too many, I’ll wager…
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Tags: Natal, Valve
Recently (as covered in a previous entry) I picked up a copy of Planescape: Torment, the best game you probably never played.
I’ve probably sunk around 22–26 hours into it so far, and the deeper I get into the game the more astounded I am by how ambitious Black Isle were.
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Tags: Game Design, Planescape Torment
iPhone Games
Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with the available iPhone games, getting an idea for the capabilities and constraints of the platform. Having spent some time with the best looking games on the app store I thought I’d put up some mini-reviews of my favorites so far:
Fieldrunners
Tower Defense Strategy from Subatomic Studios, LLC.
Fieldrunners [...]
Filed under: Game Design, Industry | 1 Comment
Tags: Assassin's Creed, Fieldrunners, Game Design, Hero of Sparta, iPhone, ZENONIA
Stagnation Pt. 3 – Innovation
In my previous post I talked about the inability of some community managers to shrug off old clichés and start customizing their practice to the needs of their community.
The inability to recognize those needs runs in parallel to the inability to innovate for your community. If you can’t recognize and meet their needs in one [...]
Filed under: Community Management, Game Design, Industry | 1 Comment
Tags: Community Management, feedback, Game Design
Sanya Weathers on User Feedback
Seeing how ‘User Feedback’ is a drum I frequently bang, it would be remiss of me not to link a fantastic article by Sanya on the topic.
World of Warcraft didn’t get a billion people playing because of their wonderful communication, but in spite of it.
The gist of the article is ‘hey guys, communication is cool’. [...]
Filed under: Game Design | 2 Comments
Tags: Community Management, feedback, MMO, Sanya Weathers
A Look at MMO Business Models
It’s heartening to see more non-subscription business models being tried in the current generation of MMOs at a time when innovation elsewhere is sorely lacking. For too long, it’s been the common opinion that a subscription is necessary to develop a quality product; Anything advertised as ‘free’ must surely be of lower quality.
That rather unfair [...]
Filed under: Game Design, Industry | 3 Comments
Tags: Business Model, Guild Wars, Hellgate, MMO, RMT, Runes of Magic, Subscriptions
