For a long time the top spot of our ‘We want to interview’ list has been occupied by Chris Taylor.
His early work on such games as Hardball II, 4D Boxing, Triple Play Baseball. Then moving on to create Total Annihilation and it’s expansion pack, The Core Contingency, and Dungeon Siege. He is now currently the CEO and Creative Director of GasPoweredGames.
Total Annihilation has been acclaimed as a masterpiece and the defining example for the classical period of the RTS genre. Supreme Commander is shaping up for similar praise, as it carries Chris’s trademark technological and gameplay innovations. With it’s up-and-coming release, we were honored to get a live interview with Chris during his busy pre-launch schedule to talk about Supreme Commander, epic ping-pong-table-sized games of Risk, and other bedlam. My favorite quote being:
CT: Well then I would crush and destroy everything, with my new robot body, and I think that’d be pretty fun.
Download the MP3 here. (33 minutes, 11.6megs) The text transcript for the interview follows, as well.
Nothing new here, but just some interesting things I’ve stumbled across in my research and study of a few recent things, especially the discussion on Griefing.
A few friends at work have been teasing someone for her new found entry into the World of Warcraft. It’s mostly tongue-in-cheek but it’s come up in my mind that a few of these people talk about TV shows a lot. They asked her how much she played she of course skirted around the issue. Nobody wants to admit it, because you know exactly how much you /played. Sure enough, The Daedalus Project already had numbers to back it up:
MMORPG gamers spend on average 21.0 hours per week playing the game (N = 1996), and spend on average 7.7 hours per week watching TV (N = 1996). The national average for TV watching per week is around 28, which is what the above averages add up to.
A person who plays MMOs invests the same total amount of time having fun as someone who doesn’t. The only difference is, there’s no /played command for seeing how much time you’ve spent watching TV. Looking at the comments for some of these things, I also notice that the rift of MMO-players and non-MMO players is still there and very present. The general consensus that these games steal away your life is still out in the open, when it looks like the average person spends no more or less time playing then other people spend watching TV.
The comments that appear accusing people of spending that much time gaming as being addicted are the ones that entertain me the most, and speak to exactly what I’m talking about here. Don’t get me wrong, I spend quite a bit of my time in some form of game or another, but I’m not addicted. :3
The book on gaming addiction is still somewhat open, as far as I can tell. I’ve been reading more of the Theory of Fun, and as Koster talks about it, it’s completely possible; we ultimately play games because that squirt of chemical that goes off in our brain whenever we accomplish something feels good. It’s possible to get addicted to that, so that’s that.
WoW insider points to a 9 minute minidoc that went up recently about these same topics. It’s nothing new, but another good summary if you’re interested in catching up.
Anyone who was a gamer in the ’80s and ’90s remembers the days when you couldn’t turn around without running into some sort of new platformer with a furry and/or cheesy mascot.
It’s true. Other then characters like Master Chief or Gordon Freeman, the characters, mascottery (??) has fallen to the wayside. Perhaps they are relying on the games selling themselves, instead of salesman?
Chris Taylor interview incoming! If all goes well, the Father? Grandfather? of RTS games will be talking to us about his magical powers of game design and awesomeness. Since it’s now possible to play Flash games on the Wii, there’s a surge of Flash game developers who are gearing up to make games for the Wii. Ebay takes a stand and now no longer allows any virtual property auctions. This has re-lowered the bar now, making it harder to buy and sell virtual properties. Yet another coincidence falling along the release of the Burning Crusade expansion. N-Gage is coming out with a new device, we’re still questioning the first one. PAX 2007 has been announced, GenCon Socal has announced that it’s going to close it’s doors. All this and more in Show 140!
It’s made Newsweek, and MC Frontalot helping push the movement. It’s flared up in just the past few months, I think the Nerdcore Rising documentary has helped.
Ron Gilbert, creator of the Monkey Island game series, has started a Monkey Island-themed World of Warcraft guild.
This is now added to the list of a few other celeb-ish guilds in wow. The Knights of Arcadia, run by the PA guys, as well as the Children of the Korn, run by the lead of Korn. Do you know of any others?
Someone who’s never played an MMO dips into WoW for the first time, ever. An interesting journey blogged out. I don’t know if I would consider my first MMO to be a MUD, or UO, or what, but regardless, it’s been a while, so it’s cool to see someone’s first impressions, from a clean slate.
Intel makes an Advergame, where you hire a team of IT people. People realize quickly that you’re unable to hire any female employees, and it’s quickly taken down to be ‘fixed.’
There’s been lots of buzz with the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft release happening this week. One of the most exciting things about the expansion is the lowering of the raid cap, previously at 40 people down to 25 people.
During my quest here, I have stumbled upon some useful resources and advice thanks to the Elitist Jerks forum. These posts and threads look at Guilding in the past two years of WoW, as well as beyond, in other games. I eat this stuff up with a spoon; it’s a look at organizational behavior within virtual worlds, first and foremost. Seeing people having intelligent discussion about it means it isn’t going anywhere.
Because of the decrease in people needed to experience the endgame in World of Warcraft, larger guilds will probably shrink, and people previously not interested in guilds will form their own. If you’re interested in founding a guild, or any of the things needed to run a successful guild, check out these threads. Most all of the advice is from weathered guild masters and MMO players.
