oh what dastardly plots I’ve run a foul of, bringing my post to the pit of despair. Planning to undo me in the most wicked of ways, curled around me and suffocating the will of the scheduled post. In other words the unemployment/ vacation vibes made me forget what day it was.. so i missed a day.
But alas, you are still trapped within the telling of these terrible tales of trite tidbits.
Hellooooooooo everyone and welcome back to the now so weekly Progress report. I can’t of dumped doing this a bit back as I really didn’t have the time, or it was cutting too much into gaming time and I didn’t have that much I wanted to say. There were a few games I might have skipped over because of that as well as the stuff I’ve been watching and doing but.. oh well.
And now it’s back, hopefully as with all the down time lately with being unemployed I seem to have a lot more time for gaming. It’s funny though because it’s more now that I have the time for all my random web searching, funny things, reading blogs, watching tv and anime and just general house stuff and so I have that time solely for gaming in the afternoon most of the time. It’s nice… someone please find me a wealthy donor so I don’t have to work though haha.
Beware… An ancient evil has take over the blogging community of late. A disease some enticing yet corrupting at the same time and swept amongst the many people. No-one is safe, no-one immune… it will be the end of us all. It’s name is Liebster.
And yes haha, it seem like there was a little less regular blogging this week because of a certain chain award being spread about but, I still have a collection here waiting down in the basement, stored for such a time as now.
Following links is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get
This week week we have some excellent article looking at the undercurrents of sexism within gaming and society as a whole, an impassioned plea really. And then there is the usual collection of critiques and boundless optimism about mmo’s
press play to continue
Is it a rant, is it a Ramble.. NO. It’s the champion of all the defender of rambles. The champion of Rants. The Prophet of all that is bloggy and awesome.. LINK… DEAD… RADIOOOOOOOOOO.. *applause*
This week I’ve been scouring the deep dark alleys and canals of the bloggy backwaters for new, amazing blogger to add to my ever growing collection. I’m like the Collector from guardians of the galaxy… except for gamey blogs. CHECK EM out. Oh.. and there’s other stuff from some other boring old bloggers… =p
Welcome to another episode of Signal Static express, the place where you get news and opinions later than everyone else cause I can’t be arsed making individual posts.
The latest overhyped idea from the idiosyncratic mind of Peter Molyneux has of course failed, rather spectacularly to meet most of it’s kickstarter goals and pledge levels. So far it looks like all that will get developed from Godus is the ftp mobile style app, and a rather incomplete vision. A lot that was claimed within the kickstarter, even the higher up tiers will never be completed and well.. the project has pretty much been abandoned now. There was a community update that set the internet on fire for a while, and there are a lot of interviews circulating now about it all of which my favourite was probably from the winner of curiosity and the supposed position of god over Godus.
I’m just saddened by this because it pretty much represents the absolute worse of kickstarter, a model of supporting game ideas that I actually enjoy. What’s more worrying is that it seems to be the more well name names, those with reputation that are using it to get funds they don’t really need to then end up failing on this promise. Due to how high profile these people are, and how widely it gets circulated it is really quite damaging.
Another week, another controversy within the MMO industry. This time it is the newly acquired and renamed Daybreak Game Company that is back in the news but for rather terrible news. A large number of layoffs occurred of which there aren’t any true numbers yet. I’m guessing a lot of contract based staff but also many quite high profile names like Dave Georgeson, leader of the Everquest Franchise. I believe In An Age covered one of the fuller name lists and it is an extremely extensive list.
There was a lot more talk on twitter from many of the people let go, as well as comments on reddit and a few other places of which Inventory Full did a good job covering. For me, I don’t know what else to say really. I’m rather sad for the loss of jobs but I didn’t have any personal connection to any of the franchises. From my position it always seemed like they were taking on too much, maintaining and developing too many projects at once for it to really be that profitable. You have development teams, customer service people and a lot of overhead for that many projects.
While I understand the worry about some of the projects, especially Everquest next but from what I see this whole layoff thing seems to be more about consolidating resources into the projects that have potential. Planetside 2 was said to only have just become profitable lately which explains a lot of its layoffs, and the Everquest franchise can’t really be pulling in that much money. The there’s landmark as well which seems incredibly weird to me in how they’ve basically only had a one-off fund boost and then been running everything for free for the last 18 months. Just seems like bad business to me regardless of their world building aims.
It doesn’t make sense to get rid of, or stop development of Everquest next either because it would probably have been evaluated as their asset with the greatest value. You don’t just throw away the code for such an asset, unless of course your Blizzard.
The Ncsoft earnings report for the fourth quarter is out now and all I have to say is OUCH for Wildstar. % million this quarter, so soon after its initial release doesn’t bode well. It seems to have only made a 45 million total too which would have to be close to its development and marketing costs.. wasn’t that what rift cost after all, Wildstar couldn’t be that far off from there. It is NCsoft too so I would say now is the time to not get attached to the game.
Generally I did like the idea of Wildstar and the environment design was rather interesting when you got used to it. The Housing was very well designed and allowed a lot of customisation and their costume design for characters was some of, if not the best I’ve seen: realistic design ideals, detailed and just rather amazing looking. It just failed in the usual important aspects of end game ideas and personal goals… and that open world aspect to an extent.
Guild Wars 2 continues its downward trend of profits, still doing reasonably well i would think but for the population of players, and its general popularity I would expect a lot more than that. Definitely the reason behind the upcoming expansion but also a telling case of what happens with btp earnings. They just fail over the longer term unless you can actually support it with a decent cash shop.
Is having a cheap deal for beta access at the moment for 20$. I really enjoyed what I played, warts and all as the game has potential to be the next big sandbox to consume my play time. You can go to the website or even steam to pick it up.
We interrupt your regular scheduled rants and ramkbles for this special.. ONE TIME OFFER to the first 500 customers. An amazing blog offer of astounding proportions. Just look at what it has there, and wonder how your miserable life can possibly continue without it.
Of course just send a cashiers check too ERI IS AMAZING and your blogs will be in the mail.
Or continue on… whichever is good for you
WELCOME BACK WOOOOOOOOO…. exicted again.. Ravished for interesting articles. Need that next hit of blogging goodness from around this backwater of the interwebz.
..
no
..
oh well, that’s what you get anyway and this week we have a collection of farewells, New blog goodness, early access ideas and some thoughts on fun.
Boot Sequence initialised… Testing global parameters… testing….. failed
Boot Sequence Initiated…. Testing Global parameters…. testing …
… Activating Rant shield ….. success
.. Activating Interesting articles…. Failed
… Hyper Abusive Commenters … Rising
… Joke going on WAY too Long …. ABORT … ABORT … ABORT
This week there seemed to be a lot of conversation around the gaming industry and the practice of early Access and Paying for broken products. Where does the blame lie and how to fix this mess, if it indeed can be fixed? And yes, the irony of having these conversations while also displaying new videos from Alpha/Bet products is not lost on me.
Healing the masses 