Firstly I just wanted to draw some attention to the good people over at Contains Moderate Peril who are asking for Donations to fund there main site as well as two community sites they are also running. The newbie Blogger Initiative and The Gaming Blog Nexus; two absolutely amazing sites that encourage and help newbie bloggers. I was actually unaware they ran The Gaming Nexus as well but am thankful as it gave me a lot of recognition in the beginning.
So Stop buy and cough it up you cheap bastards
The Links
- Evil as a hobby takes an interesting an in-depth look at the delivery and failure rates of kickstarter projects based on a number of variables
- Murf vs Net talks about how, in an effort to make mmo’s that don’t overwhelm new players to the title and the genre that they are intentionally creating experiences that could only ever be underwhelming. A focus on accessibilty, away from freedom creates an environment that is hard to feel attached to and immersed within… just rote activities.
- Another Diary of a ganker with stories of open world combat and tactics around a specific area. It’s interesting to see the rationalization on these ganks and such, consent already given for instance and the alls fair in lvoe and war mentality. I do have to agree that there is no fair in Open world fights, you do whatever, whenever you can to get those kills… if that is your persuasion of course. He also gets a little existential regarding the issues with how in comparison to other PvP titles and acknowledges that WoW just is what it is now.
- John Smedley, from Sony online entertainment has started up his own blog as a way of sharing his philosophies regarding mmo’s and development. So far we have one post regarding the needed departure towards more sandbox style mmo’s with dynamic with regards to player input. Basically it’s the same stuff a lot of us have been saying for quite a while now.
- Games Industry has an interview with Laralyn McWilliams, the creative lead of free realms that goes into an analysis of motivations on gameplay and retention, and the problems of metrics driven development
- Well, it seems based on the stodies of an eccentric anthropoligist World of Warcraft could be a religion or classed as one based on certain features and in comparison to other such things. The interactivity of the community and the sense with which it can become a spritual experience, how it denotes a certain set of social habits, that it encourages a sense of freedom and awakening and becomes a sacred space for some free from the corruption and imbalance of the real world.
“We are not just playing, but living.”
- MMO Gypsy has a great account of her experiences with what it’s like to play Day Z. Haven’t played very much at all and this makes me want to go back in again.
- The Grumpy Elf wonders what it would look like to have real life weather effects in-game and how they would translate in terms of mechanics. I can’t help but think some of these would make the world feel so much more alive and create some new, dynamic encounters.
- At the buzzer show has a quick account about the social rejections of a gamer girl. What often happens in social occasions when a girl wants to share in a mutual interests and some quick tips for guys that amount to “Don’t be a dick”.
- Don’t you just love when your local council does something so inane and stupid that it’s actually becomes cool. Well, the city I live in has decided to create a to scale model of the Brisbane city area in Minecraft. I would have killed to get that position.
- Here’s a quick guide to creating perfect columns in Landmark
ESO Stuff
ESO Head is looking to be a great resource for a lot of different things including a Addon database
The Vids
I’m really liking the look of this side scrolling dungeon crawler. It looks to have an interesting carboard look to the characters but it also some some darker elemetns to it that would be fun to play. They recently put up their Kickstarter as well and hit double their mark in a few days.
An ESO dungeon playthrough with some great commentary
South Park Gameplay
Evolve, a new cooperative multiplayer title with gameplay elements revolving around hunting and being hunted
Healing the masses 