Our list under the jump:
(more…)
Play the N64 HM. It is by far the best, and if they can get it on the VC, joy and joyness will flow from the heavens like the sweet rain upon the parched earth of eternal magicalness, and then candy trees will grow, and unicorns will frolick abd pandas will stop being endangered and tigers will be even cooler and let you ride them like in harold and kumar, and then new york city will be cheap to live in, and then global warming will go away, and then cars will make sparkles come out instead of death, and captian planet will chill out with me, and then I will geta degree and I will finish this manhunt 2 article I’m writing right now, but don’t want to finish cause I’m lazy, and then britney spears will lose weight and be not look like a cow, and she’ll invite me over to play Melee, and I’ll pwn her ass and she’ll be all like, “damn” and I’ll be like “ewww” and then I’ll leave, and ride my tiger to play HM 64 in london on the tube from picidilly to barons court to playtennis, then go back to california with my mom and eat pesto pasta salad, without mayonase, cause that stuff is dirrrrrrrrrty, then I’ll have a pet dolphin to use to ride to school.
i think I just got banned. oops.
Weed, Feed, Repeat: Next Harvest Moon Takes Repetition Online - Kotaku
I have begun to follow EVE Online much closer now that I have delved into it personally. In pure internet synchronicity, the news temperature surrounding the game has spiked in recent weeks.
First, September 3 housed their highest peak user count record to date. While 35,000 doesn’t seem like a lot of users in the post-WoW newsworld, when put in context the achievement is actually substantial. World of Warcraft has millions of players split into sharded servers of smaller population. The average US WoW Server has about 20,000 accounts (not all online at once - probably only a few thousand online at once during peak). Under this light 35,000 sharing one world and economy is an impressive endeavour (and no record breaking is possible without a little database record scratch sound effect).
In other news, the first report from CCP’s own in-house economist was posted. It contains the kind of qualitative analysis that makes my mouth water and makes drool come out of my eyes (er.. I think the other way around). Look for more awesome totally SFW graphs and charts soon.
Lastly, Shacknews released the second part of their ongoing series on EVE - primarily covering the GoonSwarm alliance and the drone bay worth of political intrigue swarming their frothy hull. This story covers the rocky formation of the alliance and some amazing PVP tactics.
It’s a good time to be a pilot. If you want to hop in for 14 days via the buddy program, just let me know, I can hook you up and show you around (read: I’m actually really a n00b but I think I’m hot shit).
At Penny Arcade Expo 2007, we interviewed Noah Ward, one of the developers. Eve has been a frequent subject of ours, we love our sandbox games. We had the opportunity for an impromptu peek at the development and history of EVE online. Unfortunately we didn’t get the best audio recording of our interview so we’ve transcribed the chat for your reading pleasure! Video and Transcription under the jump.
Right, and you can just go out and pew pew, as they say.
Sony and Virgin Comics are teaming up to make an MMO based on Ramayan 3392 AD.
It’s hard to put into words how awesome this is. Sony Online… you may not have delivered on the previous lasting promises - but you currently have so much win lined up I think it’d be impossible not to at least get ONE of them right.
In relatedy news, Sierra is bringing Spiderwick to a gaming form. Also as you probably know, Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) is slated for the same movie/game treatment.
I think at this point it’s quite safe to say that we’ve entered the realm of MULTIMEDIA storytelling. You could argue that I’m about 10 years late to the game in saying that but I will argue back: Movie treatment was reserved for books with very discernable action/visual elements (usually to the extrapolation of only thus a la Starship Troopers), and were required to have the screenplay/pitch before being considered. Now I think we’re at the point where movies are not made without at least shopping around and discussing the game tie-ins, and books are either made with the tie-in rights well establish and on the market or are shopped as soon as they hit the smallest glimpse of fame. This multimedia experience, for the consumer being able to experience the story either on their medium of choice, or on many if they are not satiated by the first - is reliant on the translations producing a good quality product.
I’d say at least two major events can be blamed for this success: the first being probably the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies. The huge commercial and artistic successes brought two things to America: the ‘fantasy adventure blockbuster’ - opening up a huge genre of video game-ready stories and amazing novels (some of which had previously gone straight from novel to game with no movie like Dragonlance for example), and the destruction of the 90-minute movie formula. With movie stories being able to fill the time mold and episodic devision most appropriate for the story that they are telling (much like games easily vary from 2-hour-to-end to 50+ hour epics), the “you can’t fit that/translate that into a movie’ stigma was largely erased.
The second major event I’d have to argue is video games themselves. We’re a far cry from movie tie-ins that do lip service to the characters and plotline involved while being completely auxiliary to the experience. We don’t routinely have to suffer-or-avoid such atrocities as the ‘we-gotta-have-a-tie-in’ game that really can’t succeed to begin with (Home Alone anyone? - LOL at Bethesda). These days, even the most forced tie-ins are of average gaming quality at worst (on average anyhow) or are ground-breakingly good. Now that we can almost rely on a decent product and a return on investment it’s easy for investors to treat video game rights as part of the package.
Better yet we’re now in the era of true cohabitation at times. The BBC finally announced its shrouded MMO project as a co-released game to tie in with a children’s television show that they are working on. This is a bit of an interesting break for virtual worlds in general as the story of this game world itself revolves around the dualism of a real world and an alternate world. The game is tied in by being the real players’ alternate world analogue - bringing the players to the role of main story characters directly as opposed to through a virtual or roleplay abstraction. More about this in another post, as this post is almost big enough to get movie rights and I’m sure the game for this one won’t be the blockbuster it’s expected to be.
Here’s youtubes from the costume contest:
The MMO Project Entropia (aka Second Life with less penis and more game) is announcing plans to completely rehaul the engine by 2008 using CryEngine 2. This is pretty big news in my opinion from an MMO standpoint especially when coupled with the recent news about JumpGate Evolution.
I think there’s something to this whole MMOlting thing - these games may be nearing or in their long tail but with a little reinvention and a lot of reincarnation I think they stand a chance to position themselves as a new game entirely. Certainly better than throwing away MMOs like paper cups after their 2-3 year run into niche obscurity. The real question is whether this works out as a business model, and how it is marketed. Short of the black-and-white to color ansi character type of transition of some of the early MUDs, I don’t know of many games in the past where you play the same game for years in a row and it updates its graphics to stave off the has-been stench.
