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A thought occured to me recently that I figured I'd share realtively quickly: Efforts to conserve games for posterity will, by the very nature of the technology behind them, ignore MMOs. Read more»

I've been struggling for awhile with an interesting problem. It's more like an observation that I have trouble reconciling, I guess. It's all based on the sense of dissatisfaction some folks have with the current generation of MMOs. I'm talking about a particular type of player; the type of player that gravitates more to say, EQ2 or Final Fantasy XI than say WoW or WAR. The type of player that, perhaps, laments the lack of things like "lore" or "story" -- Often they're the very same people complaining about the lack of the capability for players to change the world they play in, even in games that do try to offer players that very thing.

The problem is how to address what they really want, when it doesn't really match what they've asked for. There's a huge amount of "interpretation" in what MMO developers do, I think. We look at the complaints and comments of the players and we try to figure out what we can do to provide what they're looking for. The trick, and the trouble, comes from figuring out what they're really asking for, which brings me back to that observation... Read more»

I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker, recently. In it, we discussed a few of the MMOs we played and what we liked and disliked about them. As you can imagine, this is a common topic of conversation, but what made this conversation was that it made me realize what it is I hate about the "forced grouping" mentality in MMOs and why I think they're bad for games, in general.

Or to put it another way: MMOs are not about grouping, no matter how social they are... Read more»

Looks like another one is biting the dust, even as I type this. Blackstar developer Spacetime Studios has just announced that they have been unable to find a publishing deal for Blackstar and are now forced to lay off half of the Blackstar team... Read more»

SOE to report to Sony Computer Entertainment - Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that
SonyOnline Entertainment will now report to Kazuo Hirai under
a newcompany structure designed to address the growth of the
onlinegaming market [GamesIndustry.biz news]

I wonder how stoked they are on the SOE side... SOE is a strange beast to me. I don't claim, to be clear, to know anything about how SOE works on the business side, but as a player the place seemed to me to be schizophrenic... I can't see this making things better.

I mean, on the SOE side alone, it always felt like they couldn't decide if they were a publisher with a huge stable of titles that offered a massive variety (a "Cable television model") or a single game company. When EQ2 came out, support dwindled and died for other games... Then when Vanguard came out, same thing...

So, what's being controlled by the guys that did the same thing to the PS2 - one of the best selling consoles of the current generation - going to do for that? Will SOE stop supporting their old, unprofitable MMOs all together, now? Will they suffer along as they have in the past - with too little support to thrive and too much support to die? Or, will this really be a good thing where we see a new revitalization of the stable of products SOE offers?

I really don't know, but my gut tells me this isn't going to be a good thing for what we currently think of as SOE. As a gamer, I'm already finding myself justifying my station pass subscription with rationale and flat out delusion, somehow I suspect that in the coming year, I won't even have enough fuel to do that.

Besides, I don't own a PS3 - and I've yet to see a reason why I'd want one. I'm pretty sure I'm not SCE's intended market. Chances are, they'll drive me out of their piece of the market entirely, sooner or later.

Damn, but I hope I'm wrong.

- Snipehunter