All Night Gamer

Murder Most Foul

allnightgamer — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:47:50 +0000

If you’ve ever had one of those days when you think life can’t be any weirder, read on.

In Japan, apparently it’s a crime to e-murder your e-spouse, or as was the case here, your e-ex-spouse. That may sound confusing so here’s the simple version. A Japanase female gamer and her male e-friend got e-married in a game. When he divorced her (in the game) she decided to murder him. Not content to get in the game and simply off him during a bout of combat (where at least she could have claimed self defense), she plotted and planned and ultimately insured his permanent e-demise. During one of his more trusting moments he had confided what his Maple Story ID and password were. She used them to log in and delete his character.

Wait! The story gets better. The man, outraged at this virtual murder, convinced the police to jail his former wife (her real body, not her virtual body) on the grounds that she’d accessed a computer illegally and manipulated electronic data. If convicted she may face up to five years in prison and be fined up to $5000.

You can read all of the titillating details about Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned here.

Abstinence Education Works…Not!

allnightgamer — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:48:15 +0000

Unless you’ve been living in an igloo for the past few days you know that John McCain’s choice as a running mate is Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. At first glance she’s a conservative dream; anti-abortion mother of five who chose to keep her Downs syndrome child, soon to be mother of an Iraq soldier. fiscal conservative, long time NRA member, hunter, and with the integrity that makes her a McCain-like female clone. It didn’t take long however before the controversy started; first about her total lack of foreign experience (unless you count a visit to Iraq as experience), her husband’s long ago DWI, the continuing investigation into whether her firing of a state employee was retribution based, and a full out character attack that tried to claim that her four month old son is really her daughter Bristol’s baby.

Trig (the four month old) definitely can’t be Bristol’s son, since it was revealed by the McCain camp today that Bristol is five months pregnant with a baby that really is hers, meaning she was pregnant a full month before Trig was born. What can be said is that Sarah Palin’s unequivocal support for abstinence only education, and the total repudiaton of sex education in schools, appears to be a total failure. Bristol’s pregnancy is definitely family only business. What is public business though, is that Sarah Palin has failed in her parental duty to convince her daughter that abstinence is the only right road, and that contraception shouldn’t be considered by young people. In spite of this it appears she still wishes to prevent other young people from obtaining information on how to prevent them. Whether it might also be suggested that Palin and her husband put her job as governor ahead of insuring that young Bristol was supervised sufficiently to keep this from occurring hasn’t yet been suggested, but surely will be by people on both the far left and the far right.

As a side note I also find it interesting that many conservative, gun-toting Republicans find life sacrosanct, but only for humans. Animals, like moose (or what ever it was that Cheney was trying to kill when he nicked Harry Whittington), apparently have no claim to life if a politician is in the mood to kill. Shooting for food is one thing, but shooting just to kill, as both Palin and Cheney have apparently done on a regular basis in the past, points out a characteristic I’d rather avoid in someone who might assume the presidential office.

60,000 Game Jobs Available…

allnightgamer — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:27:39 +0000

Imagine what would happen if a company offered to hire anyone who was interested to help them make an online game. Acclaim Games did just that, and 60,000 people showed up to be hired. Now a year and a half later, most of them seem to have stopped showing up to work. Admittedly there was no pay offered, but there was a major prize held out for those who stayed. Now, among those lucky few who have stuck with it are two people who are going to walk away with jobs with Acclaim. David Perry has announced the finalists for the project. Congratulations to all who made the final cut.

Most Influential in the MMO World?

allnightgamer — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:57:35 +0000

Beckett Massive Online Gamer has an article in their most recent issue that lists their picks for the top 20 most influential people in the MMO industry. I took a quick peek to see whether I was in agreement with them. No surprise; Rob Pardo tops the list and is joined by John Smedley, Raph Koster, Richard Garriott, Mark Jacobs, and Sulka Haro. I was a bit surprised at some of the people left off the list. I was pleasantly surprised to see Daniel James and David Perry included. I was especially surprised to see that Perry’s Project Top Secret was listed as his “most prominent work in the MMO space”.

You can see the complete list online, but if you want to read their reasonings behind each selection, you’ll have to subscribe or find a hard copy somewhere.

No Fun at Funcom

allnightgamer — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:15:32 +0000

After saying for months that Age of Conan didn’t look like it was my kind of game, I let a friend sway my resolve. Yesterday I joined the three quarters of a million people who’ve rushed to see blood gushing as heads are lopped off. It only took a little over an hour (maybe it was less, I was doing other things so had to keep checking back with the computer) to install and update.

The character selection screen is intuitive and there was quite an array of choices to make in avatar customization. I decided to play what I thought would be the easiest class for me; yes, a ranger. First snag I ran into was my name was taken. Second problem I ran into was the map system. I’m obviously not a geographer, since I couldn’t figure out where anything was (except the bad guys. They’re the people on the beach who try to kill you, and the people in the jungle that try to kill you. That part was easy to figure out). I did figure out the chat system, or at least how to make a comment in anyone in the absolute immediate are. I never did figure out how to talk in OOC. That’s okay. I probably wouldn’t have said anything at that point that anyone wanted to hear anyway.

The third problem I encountered was the combat system. No it’s not intuitive. I hated it. I obviously am not l33t enough to figure it out. I did figure out how to die, though, so I guess I have some talents. I decided to calm myself a bit by logging out, and reading up a bit about the game somewhere online, then try again. Logging out was easy. Finding a few websites wasn’t hard; just google AoC. The hard part was concentrating. The music from the game was still playing. I rebooted, thinking that somehow it hadn’t logged me out properly. The music was still playing. I stared at my desktop some and when that didn’t stop the music, I logged back in, out, rebooted; music was still playing. Pushing the mute button on my keyboard didn’t seem to work either. I began to get nervous. Was HAL taking over my machine?

I logged back in; went to Account Settings, tried clicking various options in the Audio settings. The music played on. I posted a message on IGN. The single response was that I should try things I’d already tried. I tried them all again. There was still no silence in my office. I uninstalled the game. Success! Back to peace and quiet.

Russian Communists, “Ban Indiana Jones!”

allnightgamer — Sun, 25 May 2008 21:23:41 +0000

According to the Russian communist party, Harrison Ford is a second rate actor who’s also a CIA lackey. Okay, they didn’t actually call him a lackey. They actually called him a “running dog of the CIA.” The controversy stems from the way the party is portrayed within the latest Indy film. The Russians also want us to know that they were never after any crystal skill in the 1950s, because they were too busy putting sputnik into space.

Wow! I bet that, along with me, you’re surprised to hear that this movie is fiction, and doesn’t actually portray Russians accurately. I know I was really surprised to hear that. Ever since Star Wars I’ve been convinced that any film Harrison Ford acted in was based on reality. I suppose the next thing we’ll hear is that Luke wasn’t really a Jedi and Darth Vader was actually a nice guy beneath that scary mask and black suit.

Who woulda thunk it?

Indie Bonanza?

allnightgamer — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 23:15:15 +0000

Raph Koster and team have announced their new project and I have to say, it sounds pretty cool. It’s described as “a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does”. If they’re not lying (and somehow I think they’re not) once they have it up and running, you’ll be able to use MetaPlace to quickly build a virtual world for games and who knows what else? And … you’ll be able to do it quickly, rather than in the years it currently takes for much of that stuff. They developed a new language to script it all with; a lua-like language that they say anyone will be able to use.

Another user-friendly game development project is Dave Perry’s project, Top Secret. The game, which has been in the design phase for over six months now, is being designed by gamers who signed up for the project, and is a beast racing game, where riders compete against each other in an environment where they must overcome obstacles and traps, as well as avoid defeat by other mounted riders. Perry made a rather stunning announcement at the Austin GDC related to the development portion of the project. Acclaim Games, which is publishing the game has decided to choose the development team by means of a contest, for which IGN’s ModCenter is offering free support. The contest will award a $100,000 cash prize to the development team which submits the best entry, and the team will be allowed to choose a game engine of their choice. Acclaim will allow the winning team to spend up to $1,000,000 to purchase the license for that engine. There are no restrictions on who may enter, so long as they are serious contestants and feel they have the ability to compete, so Indie teams that have the ability now have a way to develop a viable game…so long as they wind up the winner.

I’m Not Guild Material

allnightgamer — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:18:40 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this for a solid week now. I’m not guild material. I’m antisocial, only like to help when the mood strikes me, and don’t like to give away anything of value (hey! wtf do people think they created the AH for? Junk? No way!). I also have a really unfavorable view of about 95% of our guild members, and every time they add a new member, the likelihood that the number will increase, grows. My ignore list has four guild members on it. My ignore list in total has five people, so that’s probably not a good sign.

I like to raid. I don’t necessarily like raiding with my guild, but right now I don’t really have any other option. Okay, I could not raid, but I don’t see that as a good solution. I’ve always had this loyalty problem, too. I take it way too seriously. I remember in Asheron’s Call, I actually thought swearing allegiance meant something. Then xp chains came along and rained on that parade and I sorta got over it. No, actually I didn’t get over it. I still felt like swearing allegiance to someone meant something. What I got over was thinking that other people thought it meant something. So, leaving this guild sort of presents a problem. It goes against my code of honor. I need some sort of yardstick to measure how much abuse constitutes a good enough reason to leave.
Someone suggested that I should try to change the guild, so that I’m more receptive to being part of the social structure. I thought about that. I even thought about it for longer than five minutes. I see problems though. The first problem is the new leader is an autocratic jerk who thinks his play-style is the only way to go (sort of like me I guess). I don’t see someone like that as being very receptive to changing things to my way of thinking.

What I really see is this guild falling apart. That would pretty much solve a lot of my problems. Except for the raiding part. If the guild falls apart I won’t have anyone to raid with.

Solution: I need a new game.

Numbers and Marketing Geniuses

allnightgamer — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:02:59 +0000

World of Warcraft’s first expansion hits the streets in two or three months. The hype surrounding its release is monumental for an expansion. There are original MMOs that get much less. In all the posts you read about it, invariably there’s at least one person who refers to WoW’s seven million subscribers. It never fails to amuse me when I read that.

WoW does have an enormous subscriber base, across both Europe, the US, and the South Pacific (mainly Australia). There are about five million Chinese accounts. Comparing them in like numbers to the rest of the subscriber base, however, is a stroke of marketing genius. Those five million accounts don’t actually pay a monthly fee. They buy game cards for about $3.65, which allows them to play for 60 hours. Those 60 hours can be used up in one week, one month, or they can be used slowly over one year. The truth is, most Chinese have neither the free time to use up a card quickly, nor the financial resources to buy new cards very often.

But hey! It’s still five million “subscribers” that other companies can’t tout in their own press releases. Many of those companies have modeled their current practices and development after Blizzard. How long until they pick up on this aspect too?