Wall Street Journal, on Indie Games:

The videogame business has traditionally been about big game developers, big budgets and blockbuster titles. Now it’s also about guys like Joe Rheaume.

Says Joe: ” Incidentally, my reaction to that article is not 100% happy. I gave them all the info on the business model… And the focus on ad-revenue sharing, which was less than 10% of the profits from the game!”

I’m very sorry that you’ve passed away.

As a player and a writer, I never had the chance to meet you in person. Primarily I know you from your writing and the games you worked on. I respect you a great deal, sir. I know many people that do, and will continue to remember you as a thoughtful commentator with a very well developed sense of humor.

Goodbye Mr. Freeman. And thank you for everything you’ve given to the community.

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The Warhammer database finally caught up with me, so my WAR sig is working, finally.

Brian Green has a great writeup about getting a gig in the game development industry, with a focus on MMO development.

One of the most important things to remember is that reputation isn’t based entirely on logic. It’s based on word of mouth, so you get some potential miscommunication as things go along. You can be a great worker that did everything to the best of your ability, but if the project is recognized as a tremendous flop, then that will potentially taint your reputation. Or, people may remember your loud arguments during the discussion phase of a project, but forget that you were one of the workers that buckled down and did things as ordered after the decisions were made.

His statements are great for folks thinking about games blogging / games journalism as well. Certainly the above holds true. I’ve known talented and intelligent writers who toil in obscurity, while overblown windbags make decent living wages working at big sites. Shame all around.

Good read.

I’m not going to recommend Order of the Stick. If you aren’t reading it yet, you probably don’t want to be.

I just wanted to note that today’s strip was really funny. Like, really funny on a deep and profound level. I laughed multiple times at the punchline, because the full comprehension of the punchline requires SO MUCH FORTHOUGHT as to be a work of art in and of itself.

By my guess to full appreciate this single comic strip, you need to have read hundreds and hundreds of comic strips. Just to get to the point where you can even understand the strip, let alone find it humorous.

I love you Rich Burlew. Keep on shining.

I imagine you have probably already seen this, but Gamasutra reported on the Ensemble MMO-that-wasn’t, Halo. Simon asked me for a few words on the UI, and I offered him up some semi-cogent statements regarding the possible use of what were undoubtedly entirely placeholder assets.

“The character pane shows a health bar and ‘mana’ — or Psion, as is referred to in this title… The upper right icons are for basic character functions. The one on the far left would most likely be inventory, represented by the outline of a man.

Moving right, I’d guess that’s a ‘talent tree’ screen for customizing your character, most likely a powers menu (a brain to represent the Psion?), a titles or achievements screen represented by the trophy, and a support ticket system represented by the chat bubble icon.

There are many obvious tips of the hat here to the World of Warcraft interface. Simplicity and streamlined play appear to be the object of the game, but it’s interesting to see so many strange icons on the hotbar.

From the choice of abilities, it’s easy to surmise that that the character would have been some sort of melee/magic brawler. The upper bar has some similarities to the WoW UI modification Titan Panel - a favorite amongst players.”

I don’t really care about my name getting around, but it’s nice to see Massively’s URL in such prominent places.

I’ve been looking forward to playing Warhammer, to be sure - but whenever I thought about it, I anticipated playing a Goblin Shaman. And over on Thorgrim I’ve got one - he’s a lot of fun. But interestingly I’ve actually adopted a Warrior Priest and I think she might actually be my main.

My Gobbo Experience:

• I still love the class mechanics. The Shaman may be the most fun MMO class I’ve ever played. It’s awesome to be able to bounce back and forth between damage and healing, all with that distinctive green grin.
• The Greenskin starting zone on Thorgrim is a ton of fun to play … unless you try to play with other folks. Maybe I just keep having bad luck, but in the single digits almost everyone seems to have funneled over to the Empire vs. Chaos pairing. The Mythic folks say they expect this to get straightened out as more players go up in levels, but initially it kind of stinks not to be around people.
• Add to this the fact that there are a ton of Destruction folks and few Order folks, and it takes a long time for Scenarios to fire.

My Warrior Priest Experience:

• Mechanically, she’s got a lot going for her. All of the heals the class uses, it seems, are either passive or HoTs. As a result I can wade into melee with my hammer willy-nilly, dropping heals on myself just before I reach combat. My only frustration is that I’m having a hard time healing other people. I thought that I was supposed to see the secondary target of opponents when they were selected, but that only seems to work sometimes. That means if I’m attacking a dude that’s attacking someone else, I have to guess at his opponent to drop a heal.
• She freaking rules in PvE. I’ve barely died at all, and that was just through poor planning. Really looking forward to being able to get into some higher level PQs and helping out.
• Already have run into some uncompletable PQs at lower levels. Even the first one is sort of sparsely inhabited at this point, as everyone presses firmly on to other content. I’m taking thing slower, doing Tome unlocks and enjoying lower level PQs, and as a result I’m by myself sometimes even in the high-traffic Empire/Chaos pairing.

Scenarios are so much fun, I really think it’s a shame that they’re working the way they are now. I know the Mythic folks can make them work better. This is what I’d like to see:

• Cross-server scenario queues to increase the overall number of players in the flow.
• Generic scenario queuing; you sign up for a queue in general, and the game slots you into one of the three scenarios in your tier. I love Fires of Nordlands, no doubt, but I really like Khaine’s Embrace and Gates of Ekrund too.

I’m honestly surprised by how much fun I’m having with the game. I really thought I’d be playing casually and working primarily to get my epic flying mount in WoW … dunno if I’m going to meet that goal now. Damn you, Mythic!