Once again RMT (Real Money Trading) is in the news. First the various lawsuits against IGE – one from a former director and one class action suit which are putting the squeeze on the world’s biggest RMT operator. Then the news from Sony that they were splitting off their Station Exchange service to Live Gamer and finally the settlement between Blizzard and RMT/powerleveling company Peons4Hire.
Phew!
I recently got a bit of a surge in viewer numbers here and, checking the stats, it seems that quite a few people are coming from this WoW forums thread to visit a link post I made regarding PvP MMO design. It’s a little odd because I didn’t actually say anything on the subject in that post, I simply pointed to a discussion that was raging elsewhere. However a good chunk of people seem to be headed this way to see what it is that I have to say for myself on that subject. Never one to disappoint, here I go.
I should have been back at work today however due to a family emergency I’m still 7 time zones distant from my desk. As a result I’m sort of telecommuting in an unofficial capacity whilst the slack is being taken up by my colleagues back in sunny Dublin. As I was looking forward to returning to work (and most certainly not looking forwards to the circumstances that are keeping me here), I’ve been doing a lot of work related stuff at my in-laws PC.
This enforced absence from actual productive work alongside my regular exposure to game related discussion has had me mulling over a few things recently. I’ve been trying to get things internally consistent before I put them down in writing but I figure that’s what the edit button is for so here, for those who care, are my thoughts on MMOs and why they are the way they are.
Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green has an interesting discussion going on at his place based on a post by Scott ‘Lum’ Jennings about PvP games and how to design them. I’ve put my tuppence into the ring which I may expand on here later. In the meantime go, read and comment.
Gamasutra has an interesting article about some comments made by Richard Garriott at the recent Independant Game Conference in Austin. He gave a speech about making MMOs and afterwards was asked what, in his opinion, went wrong with his latest game Tabula Rasa. I think it’s fair to say that TR has undersold its potential by a long chalk. I haven’t played it myself so I’m not going to comment on whether it’s any good or not, however for a title like this with a name like Lord British behind it, most people (including NCSoft) would have expected it to make more of a splash than it did.
Rather bizarrely Richard Garriott believes that at least part of the reason for the underwhelming reception is due to beta burnout.
Thanks very much to Ryan Shwayder for adding me to the Bloginati webfeed.
For those of you interested in how games are put together, bookmark it. People who actually put games together for a living like Raph Koster, Scott Jennings, Richard Bartle, Steve Danuser, Ryan Shwayder and many other industry flag bearers pour out pearls of wisdom and nuggets of insider commentary there.
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