It seems likely that if you have this feed in your reader, you are already aware of Mark Jacobs’ departure from Mythic Entertainment this week. His departure marks the end of an era for the company, something Scott Jennings does a great job of discussing over at Broken Toys. An unnamed source that spoke to Massively’s Tracey John (so cool to be able to say that) noted that the departure was something of a shock to the company. Just the same, everyone there is hopeful about their upcoming collaboration with BioWare.

Sanya clarifies exactly what that collaboration is likely to look like, using a fantastic fruit metaphor.

If EA sold fruit, they would have a Vice President of Citrus, and bananas would have their own VP. If the fruit selling version of EA acquired a studio that sold kumquats, that studio would be assigned to the VP of Citrus, even though there is room for debate as to whether or not kumquats are “citrus” or something else entirely.

While my personal view of the industry differs pretty significantly with Mark’s, it’s hard not to appreciate the dedication and enthusiasm the man had for online gaming, Mythic as a company, and Warhammer as a game.

Good luck, sir, in your next endeavor. A big good luck and congratulations on what I hope is great, amazing things for the Mythic Entertainment crew.

There’s been a bit of a meme going around where people share the sixth screenshot from their sixth screenshot subdirectory. Unfortunately, I don’t order screenshots quite like that. Instead, I thought I’d just go through my big old FRAPs folder (which contains the last 5 months or so of screenies from me) and show you my personal favorites. Here you go (with a key after the cut):

Mulling the last few months of bad MMO industry news has made me think of titles I’ve missed out on. I’ll be honest: I never played Auto Assault. Not once. I feel bad about it too, but it really didn’t appeal to me much back then. Now, mired as we are in the designs of today, a car-based fast-action game sounds like a ton of fun (and makes me kind of hopeful for Jumpgate Evolution).

One game I did play, and I’m really happy I did, was the short-lived Mythos. The stunted step-sibling to Hellgate: London, it was a quirky fantasy hack-and-slash that never made it out of Beta. You have to wonder if Flagship had gone after Mythos instead of the muddled mess that was Hellgate, would they still be around today? Their RMT payment concept was much more straightforward than what they floated Hellgate with, and the tried-and-true hack-and-slash genre was much more of a sure bet.

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Over at Massively they’re talking about the layoffs of some dozens of people from Mythic Entertainment. To a lot of people this is a sign of the times, yet another economic indicator of terrible downturns. It’s also (to yet others) a result of the impact of a game design that couldn’t overcome the inexorable gravity well of World of Warcraft.

I couldn’t care less. I’m at the point now where I look at games and all I see are people. So Warhammer Online, the Warhammer Online I’ve been playing for the last three months, is now gone. Justin, Angie … both gone.

Update: Carrie pinged me to let me know she hadn’t been let go. And yes, I know this was a petulant and infantile response to this situation. I’m not going to apologize for expressing what I felt here. I have to do a lot of tongue biting most days, and I just felt like getting this out.

Thanks for putting up with my hissy fit.

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A while back Steve Danuser put up a post weighing in on the fate of Tabula Rasa. His was but one of many, with Scott, Damion, Eric, and Adam all putting in their two cents as well. I can’t hope to add anything to this discussion that hasn’t already been mulled by these guys, but I do want to clarify something that Steve links into. He says, “So if these guys are so smart, and if making a AAA epic fantasy MMO is a solved problem, then why did so many games have a rough year in 2008?”

“Making a AAA fantasy game is a solved problem” is something I said in my 2008 MMO wrapup on Gamasutra, and it’s something I’ve said frequently in the past. And I mean it. AAA fantasy games are ‘solved’, the formulae is complete, development and iteration on that particular niche of the niche market can stop now.

I never said anything about making one being easy.

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Less than a year ago, I fervently wanted to work for 1up and Ziff Davis. Writing for a team that included folks like James “Milky” Mielke, Ryan Scott, Jeff Green, Shawn Elliot … right around the time I was thinking about leaving Slashdot, that would have been the bees knees. I even sat down with Sam Kennedy during GDC last year to talk to him about possibilities in the SFO area.

This is the part where I say I’m ultimately glad I didn’t get hired.

While Ziff-Davis CEO Jason Young’s message to his company — including current 1UP Network staff — today, along with coordinated press releases regarding 1UP’s sale to UGO, painted a picture of strength in (and growth of) the 1UP brand, we’ve begun to hear reports quite to the contrary. Several key members of the 1UP staff have announced their termination via Twitter messages and posts to the NeoGAF forums.

As Joystiq has pointed out, pretty much everybody that made 1up what it was has been let go as part of the UGO brand acquisition. They even fired Milky. How can you fucking fire Milky? Seriously? One of the only high level writers left on the games journo beat that “gets” MMOs, and you can him? What-ever.

My best hopes and well wishes go out to everyone I’ve had the chance to talk to over there, everyone who will now be denied the opportunity for freelance for a reputable name in games journalism, and all of us out here who now won’t get to enjoy the fruits of their game-loving labours. This sucks, and I hate it.

Thanks for all the good times, EGM. RIP 1up.

Additional: I want to add an extra good luck to the 1up staffers that are staying on to man the Marie Celeste, including Jeremy Parish, Sharky, and Sam.

Instead of the usual enormous blog post (which I used both in 2007 and 2006) I decided to take a different tack this year. Below are embedded a pair of videos running down my thoughts on the upcoming year. Enjoy!