(This is the fourth part of an ongoing series of skientific infestigations into the physics, chemistry and biology of Azeroth, the world known as ‘of Warcraft’. This will probably be gibberish unless you have read part 1, part 2 and part 3 first.) The ecology of Azeroth, part 2 The strangest aspect of the animal [...]
Filed under: fantasy, game design, game philosophy, game theology, geophysics, mmorpg, online games, playfulness, rpg, science, world of warcraft on July 11th, 2008 | 10 Comments »
If you’ve been commenting to my last few blog posts on the World of Warcraft, or you have a scientific hypothesis of your own about the nature of Azeroth and how it came to be that way, or you have too much time on your hands and enjoy thinking about stuff that doesn’t make sense, [...]
Filed under: fantasy, game design, game philosophy, geek culture, geophysics, google, humour, information use, meme, mmorpg, online games, playfulness, science, storytelling, world of warcraft on July 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I finally played Puerto Rico, Andreas Seyfarth’s award-winning boardgame from 2002, over the weekend. I’ve had it sitting on my games shelf for well over a year, but for some reason I’d forgotten I’d never got around to giving it a try. On Saturday evening I was forcibly reminded of that reason. It wasn’t the [...]
Filed under: ARG, arcade games, game design, geek culture, munchausen, online games, tabletop on August 3rd, 2007 | 10 Comments »
Have a look at Prakbot. Take my word for it, it is unutterably cool. It may seem a bit techy, but what it boils down to is this: lately I’ve been playing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom, 1984) over Skype. They (Ben and Mind Candy) don’t seem to have released it into the wild yet, [...]
Filed under: online games, retro, text adventure on June 19th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
(This post is a follow-up to “Things not to do in game design #2: cheat“) Because it’s not about fairness or balance or level playing fields. It’s about the user experience. Let me tell you about a game you’ve never played. It’s called Starpower. Starpower was created in 1969 by R. Garry Shirts and published by Simulation Training Systems [...]
Filed under: emotion, game design, game philosophy, geek culture, history of games, old media, online games, rpg, street games, tabletop on May 13th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Richard and Judy, king and queen of the late-afternoon chat-show and freelancer bunk-off hour, did a segment on World of Warcraft today. Richard was enthused, Judy predictably befuddled. I missed it. Fret not: it’ll be on Youtube soon. The spur for the piece was Caitlin Moran, the tabloid journalist who writes for the Times, who [...]
Filed under: mmorpg, old media, online games, rpg on March 29th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
TIPS FOR MEDIA AGENCIES ON WORKING WITH EXTERNAL GAMES DESIGNERS (I jotted this about eighteen months ago, probably while on the Tube. I think I had the intention of working it up into a proper document and circulating it. Evidently that didn’t happen. If you’ve got any tips that would fit in the list, bung them down below. If you know of any media agencies that would benefit from this advice, feel [...]
Filed under: commercial, game design, online games on February 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I’ve been working on quite a lot, thanks for asking. My current major project is publicity for the forthcoming Crime Scene game for the Office of Criminal Justice Reform. I designed the game last year, and it’s due to go live in early March. Right now I am writing five blogs for five in-game characters, [...]
Filed under: Second Person, online games, personal, storytelling on January 24th, 2007 | 4 Comments »