Closing Down World Of Warcraft

I write all this because Bartle himself will be a featured speaker, talking about virtual worlds, at the Indie MMO Developers Conference up in Minnesota at the end of March, 2008.  Mark it on your calendar, cos if you can get up there, Bartle won’t disappoint … if you like smarty-pants from the University of Essex, that is.  For proof, check out the third link.  Man actually would close down World of Warcraft.  See why below.

http://www.imgdc.com/about.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD#MUD_the_game

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2007/07/17/id

Crawl Right Up: Illusive Centipede Creator Speaks

Back in 1980 there existed only one female engineer in all of Atari – Dona Bailey.  For that reason, Bailey took her hits.  She could code with the best of them, and she proved it when she created Centipede. 

And yet the people around her didn’t believe that she actually made the game.  It was such a strange reaction from colleagues, she says in a Gamasutra interview, that Bailey experienced very complex emotions: “The typical kind of thing that people would say was, either it was a fluke or I didn’t really do it, somebody else did it. I’m a very peaceful person, and I felt sick of fighting, so I really just disappeared, and I haven’t had contact with the industry for at least twenty years.”

The damn, dirty loons at Atari may have silenced one of the best minds in gaming.  She’s back now, though, speaking at the women in gaming conference on September 8th in Austin.  Go Bailey!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1659/the_original_gaming_bug_centipede_.php

How The Wiimote Was Made

Now this is the kind of post I love to see.  Gizmodo has a great article about how the Wii-mote was created, complete with sketches.  It looks like they started out with a typical controller, split the thing in half and went wild from there.

Says designer Matt Presta, “Based on a requirement to roughly preserve the existing Game Cube button layout we created usability concepts that would work for one- or two-handed gaming. We experimented with different configurations through sketches, models and interviewing various hardcore gamers.” 

Usability, schmoozability.  It was one great idea that changed the nature of gaming.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/exclusive/wii+mote-prototype-designer-speaks-out

Mucho Xbox Live Arcade News

OK, here goes.  You've got to check out Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix which “brings together Capcom's coolest fighting characters to provide extremely addictive puzzle mayhem. Enjoy single-player, local and online versus play, and spectator modes.”

Then, are you ready for some sci-fi football? There’s Cyberball 2072 where you “control of your robotic team, and call the plays to move your team downfield for a touchdown. But watch out, the ball gets hot if you don't keep moving! Keep your eye on the ball to make sure it doesn't go critical before you can score.”  It’s a pretty, addictive remake of the classic. (The old school version’s pictured below.)

Finally, there’s a sale on about XBLA four or five games (I guess some kind of Labor Day Weekend Bonus).  These include:

·         Small Arms – 400 Microsoft Points (normally 800 Microsoft Points)
Easy to pick up but hard to put down, “Small Arms” is a frantic multiplayer action game with the feel of an arcade shooter.

·         Zuma Deluxe – 400 Microsoft Points (normally 800 Microsoft Points)
Explore more than 20 realms in Adventure mode and put your skills to the test in this fast-paced puzzle game.

·         Gauntlet – 200 Microsoft Points (normally 400 Microsoft Points)
The original dungeon crawler lets four adventurers explore and fight together as a warrior, valkyrie, wizard, and elf.

·         Dig Dug – 200 Microsoft Points (normally 400 Microsoft Points)
Experience the fast-paced action of this quarter-cruncher from 1982 as you take control of Dig Dug himself and vanquish Pookas and Fygars.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/c/cyberball2072xboxlivearcade/

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/s/superpuzzlefighter2turboxboxlivearcade/

The BBC Goes Multiplayer

Finally, for your weekend viewing pleasure, here's a look at the making of the BBC's online multiplayer brain game, The Last Brain Thinking.  Looks like a lot of the challenges in the game are drawn from actual psychological tests. It doesn’t test knowledge; it tests your cognitive skills in the multiplayer arena. Plus, the characters are cute brains-with-legs kinda things.  And, hey, it’s the BBC: they don’t make crap.  Check it out. Fascinating stuff.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2V3sdTZsyK0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/communities/onionstreet/lastbrain/

Hands On: Brand New LocoRoco!

Yesterday at a Sony event high atop New York's Parker Meridien Hotel (best view of Central Park in the city), I got a chance to play the new LocoRoco.  Basically, I walked into Sony thinking I’d see Buzz and Lair, you know, things I’ve already seen and you already know about.

But seeing the new LocoRoco Cocoreccho was a pleasant surprise.  The game build was so brand, spankin’ new that even Sony’s Alex Armour, who was doing the demo, didn’t know what Cocoreccho means in Japanese.  I’m sure all this will be revealed shortly.  Cocoreccho’s PS3 downloadable game – which means you’ll play by tipping and jerking the Sixaxis controller and tapping the O button to get the LocoRoco to follow you Pied Piper-like through mazes that seem a lot tougher to navigate than did the PSP version.  The level I saw looked like a kind of big-ass Rube Goldberg-type device. 

To help the LocoRoco find the magic path to victory, there’s a butterfly for them to follow through these pachinko-like maze worlds.  The new gameplay mechanic is a little confusing as first blush, probably because I’m used to the PSP controls.  But it *may* be even more fun than the PSP version.  The only thing I didn’t like about the latest iteration is that the LocoRoco theme song hasn’t changed.  They need more original tunes before it drops on September 21.  (I need a new earworm!)

Here’s a video from PlayFirst, BTW.

http://www.playstatic.com/news/689

PS3 Slot Car Game

It reminded me of the slot car racing club in Chelsea where I feel for a young Irish lass whose job was to place cars on the track when they raced off.  Pixel Junk Racers got me going as a deceptively simple multiplayer slot car game that you’ll be able to download from the PS3 Network.  All you use is the R1 button to speed up and the D-pad to move through lanes without knocking into anyone’s car.  The more cars you pass, the higher your score will be.  You’ll be looking at tracks of varying degrees of complexity as if you were an eagle spying down from above.  The graphics for the game aren’t all that, just cars on a track.  The reason? They’ve saved the coding for a ton of modes of racing and the ability for at least eight folks to play the game online at once.  This one’s an utterly addictive quick fix for all casual gamers who love speed fast and furious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_Qxi8iX5k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%

Everyday Shooter 4 PS3

Everyday Shooter was a finalist in the Slamdance Guerilla Game Competition this year.  According to creator Jonathan Mak, it’s “an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters. Dissolute sounds of destruction are replaced with guitar riffs harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack, while modulating shapes celebrate the flowing beauty of geometry.”  The pitch? “What if God made you a little glowing dot and the music in your head had nowhere to go but out?”  (Makes me wanna sing, what if God was one of us?)

According to Sony, Mak’s code was so clean that the game was seamlessly moved to the PlayStation Network from a PC platform.  I thought, after being submitted to various competitions, Mak’s game would be released on the Web in Flash format.  But it looks like Sony bought up the rights and Everyday Shooter will be a PS3 only offering.  Fine by me.  And forget the shooting: I was mesmerizing by the sights in the game, and especially, the alt rock-meets-Moby-like music of the demo yesterday.  Can’t wait til it drops next month. It’s anything but ‘everyday.’

http://www.everydayshooter.com/

Eye of Judgment Update

I've rarely had the time to play card strategy games.  Honestly, I was interested but skeptical when I saw Eye of Judgment demoed at the E3 convention two years ago.  The game was supposed to be a PS3 launch release, and when it didn’t show up when the console dropped, I thought the game itself had been nixed.

Actually, the game was just going through its normal development stages.  Thing is, a new, HiDef camera (with a serious omni microphone) called the PlayStation Eye replaced the original camera, the EyeToy.  That in itself probably added a fair bit to the game making schedule. (You can see the old EyeToy originally in use in the game via trailer below.) 

There are a ton of monsters to pit against each other in the game, and that’s not unusual.  What’s cool is that, in a kind of holographic way, you can hold the monsters in the palm of your hand and watch them react to your touch.  This looks like one card game I’m going to play with when it drops this fall.  I’m not promising to play it a lot, but I will give it a fair shake – just because I can virtually hold the monsters in my grubby hand like fire-breathing pets.

http://news.punchjump.com/article.php?id=4707

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/THE_EYE_OF_JUDGMENT

Lonely House-Moving

Patrick of Jay Is Games fame says Lonely House-Moving is the latest offering from Nigoro, the folks who gave us Rose and Camellia.  Patrick’s analysis is right-on thoughtful, so I’ll let him spew:

“Lonely House-Moving is more than just a simple run, jump and dodge game, it's a meditation on love and what a person is willing to do for that love. The setting sun that marks your progress through the game implies a subtle sense of loss, like the sun has set on the relationship, while simultaneously all the junk that imperils you gradually lightens the truck. Eventually, it becomes so light that the girlfriend notices, and sees you, so she jumps right out the back of the truck. When you see this happen, you're suddenly jarred out of the conventional arcade-score triumph you might expect from similar games in the genre, and you're inspired with a sudden moment of ownership: you are this man possessed by a sudden exuberance. I jumped right up to catch her in my arms. The feeling is genuine.”  A game about truck driving and love?  Geez Louise, lightning hit me.  I think this could be the next Louis CK HBO comedy show.  Well, maybe not HBO since the network cancelled his “Lucky Louie” sitcom.

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/08/lonely_house_moving.php

http://www.louisck.com/