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I was inspired recently, by something a friend was doing. It was an art project; one that really grabbed me because, well, in its way it was a piece of lore. I mean it seemed to tell a story and it seemed like a glimpse into at a larger, deeper world. I'm sure some art critic somewhere would tell me it's not really art, blah blah blah, but it inspired me to take on something I've never tried before and that's pretty rare.

So what did it inspire me to do?

It inspired me to learn how to build electronics projects -- to tinker out here, in the physical world instead of in the game worlds I sculpt for a living. Read more»

Sorry, I haven't made much an attempt to keep the site up lately. I could work up a lot of excuses, but honestly -- it's because I'm wrapped up in work. I really don't spend much time thinking about anything else, lately. I suppose that's because I'm finally working on one of the very few "dream projects." Heroes of Telara is one of those project that I've waited more than a decade to make and now that I'm working on it, that's pretty much my whole life. Getting a chance to work on your dream project is rare, so rare in fact that for most designers it never happens at all. I've often wondered why that is, and it's that question that motivated me to write, today. Read more»

On Father's Day, Obama Urges Dads To Swap Video Games for Books -

Repeating a theme that he frequently touched upon during his 2008 election campaign, President Barack Obama has once again referenced video games as a metaphor for academic underachievement.

In a Father's Day message published in Parade, Obama writes:

We need to set limits and expectations. We need to replace that video game with a book and make sure that homework gets done. We need to say to our daughters, Don’t ever let images on TV tell you what you are worth, because I expect you to dream without limit and reach for your goals. We need to tell our sons, Those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in our house, we find glory in achievement, self-respect, and hard work.

Interestingly, the Parade feature is Obama's third mention of video games in the last 10 days. On June 11th he told an audience in Wisconsin:

Even with the good schools, we've got to pick up the pace, because the world has gotten competitive. The Chinese, the Indians, they're coming at us and they're coming at us hard, and they're hungry, and they're really buckling down.And they watch - their kids watch a lot less TV than our kids do, play a lot fewer video games, they're in the classroom a lot longer.

Last Monday the President mentioned games during a speech to the American Medical Association in Chicago:

[Preventive care] starts with each of us taking more responsibility for our health and the health of our children. It means quitting smoking... It means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.

[Game Politics]

I'm pretty big fan of Obama. I like what he's done so far and - generally speaking - I agree with his message, but his derogatory comments about video games are getting worse. On top of that, they're getting less accurate. Before it was "We gotta get kids to stop playing games and get outside" and you know -- that's not a bad thing. We could all benefit from more active lifestyles, right? But now he's saying replace video games with books.

Sounds noble right? I mean, surely a book will teach you more than a video game ever did? Video games are just distractions after all, there's nothing really intellectual or literary in them for you to see, is there?

Is there? Read more»

Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage - mariushm writes "After deciding to shelve metered broadband plans, it looks like Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers whom they deem to have used too much bandwidth. 'Austin Stop The Cap reader reader Ryan Howard reports that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center. "I called the number and had to leave a voice mail, and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote. Howard was then "educated" about his usage. "According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
[Slashdot Updates]

Whew! Thank god Time Warner got the message and bowed to consumer desires like they swore they did. Am I the only one who sees this as a 3 year old's tantrum? "Fine then! I'll just turn it off completely! I'll show you who's boss!"

*sigh* Seriously, why don't they get that this is untenable? If you couldn't deliver unlimited transfers at the rate you promised, why did you sell it that way, Time Warner? It's because you couldn't have sold it any other way, right? Consider what that means before you decide to play "screw the consumer" again. Read more»

News: City of Heroes user content surpasses dev's in 24 hours - 'Mission Architect' system generates 3,800 game scenarios in first day [GamesIndustry.biz news]

Wow. Great statistic. That's like saying, "It takes an hour of work to build a bicycle and 24 hours of work to build a car. Since we can produce more bicycles in a day than cars, bicycles are clearly better than cars."

Some bicycles are better than cars, in ways, but are bicycles better than cars? Not really. I would like to think that if they were, there would be a lot fewer cars on the highway, when I go to work. Read more»

I was asked today to speak at a conference on a panel discussing writing curriculum in game design schools. I couldn't make it due to a scheduling conflict, which is really too bad. As you are likely aware, I have a pretty well documented, if misunderstood, stance on writing in the industry: I don't think you should hire a writer, if a designer who can write is also available.

I can imagine that some people might interpret that to mean you shouldn't teach writing to new designers, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I think there are few more important skills you can teach a game designer. Learning how to write well enhances your ability to think critically and allows you to more easily convey your thoughts to others. Everything else a designer does hinges upon those skills. Really, why wouldn't you teach aspiring game designers to write? Read more»

Along the same lines as the concept of a limited set of basic tools is the often muttered MMO adage that there are less than a dozen quest objective types. I actually think it's a lot less than 12. In fact, most of the folks I know who are making MMOs think there are only 7, just like my basic tools:

1. Kill Things
2. Acquire objects
3. Talk to NPCs
4. Give objects to an NPC
5. Interact with Objects in the World
6. Travel to Locations/Waypoints
7. Protect or Defend something

You could probably argue that some of those object types are really just embellishments of others as well, so maybe it's more like 5:

1. Kill something/prevent something from dying
2. Acquire Objects
3. Talk to NPCs/Deliver objects to NPCs
4. Interact with Objects in the World
5. Travel to locations/waypoints

In either case, that's a pretty restrictive collection of things a player can do, right? There are only so many combinations of those objectives you can string together before a player has essentially done every quest you can imagine, mechanically. In other words, if you've played an MMO with questing, there's a good chance you've already played every type of quest you could possibly think of. Even on a small game, this is true: there were thousands of quests in Auto Assault across the three factions, but all of them used objective types listed above and pretty much nothing else. So how does a designer use these simple quest types to make interesting content?

The answer is context. Read more»

I wanted to print an old design doc I'd written a few years ago, but sadly I haven't heard back from the studio I wrote it for, so I can't do that. Instead, I suppose I'll just talk about an idea I worked on once. Using the parlance of junk patents, let's call this installment of French Design - "A technique for eliciting lifelike behavior using simple tools." Read more»

When I was a kid, I used to watch MacGyver all the time. In a very real way, he was my hero - a guy who could make anything from anything and who did so for the betterment (and wonderment) of everyone. As a kid, I really wanted to be that guy. I mean, I didn't want to be an obviously Canadian would-be spy, but I wanted to be a builder - a guy who could make what was needed when it was needed using only the razor sharp talent of his mind. Read more»

Keith Vaz Moves in Parliament for UK Ban on Rape Game -

Making good on a vow to bring up Japanese PC title RapeLay in Parliament, British Labour MP Keith Vaz has issued a call for the game to be banned in the U.K., reports the Evening Standard:

Mr Vaz, who campaigns against violent computer games, called on the Government to ban [RapeLay] from sale to UK players over the internet.In a Commons motion, he said he was "appalled that a video game that simulates rape has been readily available for sale on the internet".He welcomed the decision by Amazon to withdraw the game.

As GamePolitics reported earlier this month, Vaz was one the first to speak out against RapeLay.

[Game Politics]

The moral of the story being, apparently, that one should never attempt to resell one's pornography on Amazon's market. Look folks, it's not like this "game" is being put on shelves at Walmart or something -- it was, literally, one dude trying to sell a game he'd clearly imported directly from Japan. Why manufacture a crisis here? One guy has poor taste and there's a nation out there that made a video game that satisfies that taste. Is this less true in books? Or movies? Or plays? Seems to me we've had examples of the sort of thing this game covers in every medium but television and radio, so I don't get it -- what makes this one worse?

Seriously, what is the crisis here?

"Oh dear! There seems to be a tempest in my teapot!"

- Snipehunter Read more»