Ten days ago, after an incredibly successful viral marketing ploy ensured truckloads of eyeballs were at the ready, Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the long-awaited Diablo III at their Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Many were pleased. But in the days since, a single online petition has revealed that at least 40,000 individuals were not. They took issue with [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 5, 2008
“I don’t seem to be having any fun. Maybe I need to be paying more.” It’s difficult to imagine a player saying these words about a game. Yet, there is an entire business model that centers around providing this precise benefit to players — most frequently, of MMORPGs and other games whose balance centers on levels [...]
Continue reading...Friday, May 16, 2008
Eurogamer has a great interview with the two World of Warcraft lead designers, Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton, and producer J. Allen Brack delving into the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The interview is very detailed and probing, and it is worth a full read for any WoW aficionados, but what really stood out [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, May 14, 2008
At the 2008 ION Game Conference, there was a panel called “Real Money, Fake Money and Loot: Designing Economies for MMO Games” in which participants spoke about the economic game design issues that surround MMOs. The consensus opinion from the panelists was that the best way to combat gold farmers was to design an MMO [...]
Continue reading...Friday, May 9, 2008
The folks at MMO Champion have done all of the World of Warcraft nerds of the world a great service. They have gathered together all the delicious little factoids about Wrath of the Lich King and put it together in one convenient location. For those of you who are not currently enthrall to that wicked [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, May 8, 2008
According to a report at TechCrunch, Electronic Arts has agreed to purchase Rupture, a social network focused on gaming, for something in the neighborhood of $30 million. The startup was founded by Joe Baudanza and Shawn Fanning, he of Napster and VW commercial fame. The company’s core product is a social network that mostly [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Gameforge Productions, the company behind the engrossing web-based Civilization clone Ikariam, has just opened an office in San Francisco to better enable the company to market its games in the U.S. market. In addition to marketing its own games, which also includes OGame, a space trading game, the German-based company is trying to position itself [...]
Continue reading...Monday, April 21, 2008
With an install base of 10 million, it’s almost inevitable that a World of Warcraft movie will be created. In fact, fanboys of the game frequently make silly statements on forums to the effect of, “I would pay $<insert absurd amount of money here> to see a World of Warcraft movie. Imagine how much money [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Only three months after its premiere, the pirate-themed MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea is beginning to show cracks in its hull. (Look, it’s either I say stupid things like “Yar!” or “Walk the plank” OR I make ridiculous puns. Something about pirates brings out the dark side in me.) Flying Lab Software is closing [...]
Continue reading...Monday, April 14, 2008
Kazunori Yamauchi, head of Polyphony Digital, hinted in a recent interview that the Gran Turismo series may come to PC.
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
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