Right. So, hopefully you’re already familiar with Thursday’s big news. For once I was actually at my desk when the news hit, and I was able to get up a story 4 minutes after Gamasutra and 15 minutes after Kotaku. That’s close enough to the zone to satisfy me.

There’s going to be a lot, a *lot*, of talk about Nintendo’s system between now and E3. I think by dropping the name they’ve effectively choked off any wondering-out-loud that folks were doing about the PS3. We know that system’s name, we know what it is about, and we’re going to see games for it at E3. Even though we’re all looking forward to the shiny, we know generally what we’re going to see. (Killzone, Metal Gear 4, etc.) Nintendo, though … even with the couple of details dropped along with the name, it’s still something of a mystery.

Even the games that we’re fully aware of so far are shakeups. Red Steel is a Yakuza shooter, Sadness is black-and-white film noir, and Madden is going to be a football game I might actually play. No ‘kiddie’ games, nothing super sacharine.

So, the question is … what are the first MMOGs on the Wii going to look like?

I’m no longer 1.) going to another state 2.) coming from another state or 3.) getting someone married. Topical, thy name is Michael.

Raph knows what he’s talking about.

Bottom line: The next next gen isn’t graphics; it’s stuff that fits into the new paradigm for distribution, and leverages the business models possible there. Assume a world where there are no game retailers, where there are no publishers (but lots of aggregators and portals), where there are a lot fewer artist jobs (but lots more procedural content jobs), where games are services and not products. In such a market of bite-sized games, celebrity is going to matter more than ever in order to gain eyeballs.

Lum got some gloves.

Being main tank meant I moved from boredom to confusion. What, I need to pull? Where? Pull what? Wait, hold up, I’m trying to taunt… oh, it’s on cooldown. I’m sundering as fast as I can here! Could someone actually kill this stuff? I’m a mighty warrior and I’m holding a shield, THAT MEANS I CANNOT ACTUALLY KILL ANYTHING. Did I mention the gloves? HIT THE GLOVES, YOU. 

I’m again filled with the happy that Jeff Freeman is blogging again, because he talks about such wonderful things. Like, why the Tabletop gaming industry is choking on a bone.

Could be wrong about that, so if you don’t want to venture any further down that path with me, you could stop reading now and save yourself the angst of what comes next. ‘Open Source’ is killing the commercial tabletop RPG market. 

Now, in fairness to the craziness quotient of reality, this is the ‘Silicon Valley Weekly Newspaper’. Even still, it’s pretty funny seeing a WoW Power-Leveling ad in a local rag over on GameSetWatch.

Now admittedly, you’re likely to draw a geekier crowd with a Bay Area newspaper, but even so – it’s truly bizarre to see, next to a ‘ready for an extreme smile makeover?’ ad and a clinical hypotherapy school advert, the text: “We use real players, not macro or bots that could harm your account”, and, indeed: “Mention you saw this ad in Metro & receive 10% bonus 1st power leveling”! 

I do so love Three Rings. Daniel James and Co. are giving away a real gold coin to their five millionth lucky customer.

Three Rings Design announced today that the purchaser of the five millionth doubloon in Puzzle Pirates will receive a real-life gold doubloon. This coin apparently comes from actual pirate booty, a genuine 1787 Spanish Gold Escudo Doubloon. As for the the in-game currency, Three Rings has changed the subscription model of Puzzle Pirates so the game is free with the option of purchasing micro-currency (in this case, doubloons) for upgrades and other content.

Tickled, financially, by the loving streams of WoW cash, they are. Vivendi is now planning on importing a sports MMOG to the U.S., specifically some sort of online basketball simulation.

As can be inferred by the title, Freestyle Street Basketball trades in the swords and sorcery for slams and jams. Instead of roaming the countryside looking for dragons and ogres to gang up on, players hit the hardcourt with their customized characters and form pickup basketball games. Given that the game has an unusual MMO theme, VU Games is looking to market it to an unusual MMO audience with an unproven business model. Freestyle Street is designed with mass appeal and quick play sessions to target casual gamers, and it will be supported not by subscription fees, but by the increasingly noticeable trend of micropayments.

Despite a personal lack of interest in the subject matter, this is exactly the kind of thing I like about the Eastern market, and would like to see more of here. I hope they manage to get some traction with it.

1 comment

If n3rfed keeps posting my eyebrows are going to pop off. An amusing comparison of the Foton-captured AQ rant and a long-lost complaint from EQ.

In either case, Blizzard failed the community communication test here. No official comment on C’thun being looked into after uber guild after uber guild was failing consistently. No official comment on the C’thun encounter being broken and players should wait until a fix. Nothing from the 157 Community Managers that Blizzard employs. And yet will no one think of the fanbois??!!

It’s like reading papers from Thomas Paine. Only dumber.