In honor of the tenth MMOG Nation Broadcast featuring Paul Barnett, I thought it would be worthwhile to link back to my first discussion with Mr. Barnett. In one of my first ‘Face the Nation’ interviews last year, Paul and I chat very obliquely about Warhammer but – moreover – talk about almost everything else.

Part One focuses on Paul’s background and the inspiration for making games:

MN: The next more serious question I have is, moving the game back out until next year: that seems like an obvious, intelligent thing to do. But, can you give us some insight into what the decision-making process was there?

Paul: Yes, it’s about FARTs.

In Part Two the bulk of our time is spent talking about the role of designers in the games industry, and the wankery of both:

Paul: Let’s stop talking about C++, let’s stop talking about our new clever way of doing a design, and let’s start talking about the fact that we earn quite a lot of money, that we pay the bills, that we’re interesting people, that we’ve got a career, that you can do it, that we can all do it. And if we all work together, we can have a bloody good laugh. And! Mom will be impressed.

Part Three caps off with some discussion of class balance:

Paul: Ninety percent of the people playing Class A have no idea that they were unbalanced. They had no idea that they were cheating. They had no idea that they were having an easy run of it. All of a sudden they log in and find that their character’s crap. Their character is crap, and yet they did nothing to justify that. They were just paying you money, and playing the game. But because some la-di-da clever designer went and read the message boards, and found out that four people playing Class A were able to kill the dragon “Sparklers” while walking backwards waving fish, these people suddenly have their characters crippled.

To listen to the whole thing as audio, check out the (somewhat poor-quality) recording.

This week on MMOG Nation Broadcast, Michael is joined by veteran podcaster Shawn Schuster to talk about the possibilities and pitfalls of Guild Wars 2. Though it’s a game still far off on the horizon, it’s still something in the back of MMO players’ minds – lurking. Join us as we discuss the elements of Guild Wars that we really want to see moved forward to the sequel, and what some of the problems facing Arena.net might me.

Reference posts:
Guild Wars 2 – Too Soon?
Guild Wars 2 Confirmed and Explained
Guild Wars 2 – Too Soon!
Face the Nation: Guild Wars 2 with Mike O’Brien and Jeff Strain

Music:
Selections from the Guild Wars: Nightfall, Prophecies, and Eye of the North soundtracks. By Jeremy Soule, used without permission.

The eighth episode of the MMOG Nation Broadcast delves deep into dreary pits of despair and angst. “Slouching Towards Innsmouth” is all about the horror genre and how it intersects with MMO gaming. Michael discusses past successes in the industry, the challenges facing possible future games, and reads a little Lovecraft. Tune in.

Music:
Going down to Dunwich, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Command 1, System Shock 2 soundtrack
Living an Illusion, Dark City Soundtrack
The Dish, Star Trek: First Contact Soundtrack
Duskwood, World of Warcraft Soundtrack
Facetus Malum, The Truth and the Light (Music from the X-Files)

The seventh episode of the MMOG Nation Broadcast is a blast from the past. Late in March I attended the Independent MMO Game Developer’s Conference, and recorded a podcast on the way home. That Sunday I resolved to leave Slashdot, and the ensuing month has been a bit hectic. BUT! I have not podfaded. Not even slightly. Today I have for you a recap of my experiences there, and a sort of ‘how-to’ guide for attending conferences. This episode is the first in a collaboration I hope goes on for a long time as Shawn (of GuildCast fame) is now editing the MNB for me. Expect crisper-sounding, more timely, and all around better shows. And my apologies (again) for the delay.

Relevant Links:
De Casuals Iz Coming
Bartle’s Good, Bad, and Ugly
Gordon Walton’s IMGDC Talk
Trust Me, We Don’t Want Rights

Music:
Tomorrow Comes Today, Gorillaz. Composed by the Gorillaz, used without permission.

The sixth episode of the MMOG Nation Broadcast is another audio clip from out in the world … hopefully you’ll be able to hear this one better than the interview with Greg Short. Step into the world of Free Realms as you listen to audio from a Q&A with the game’s lead designer! Recorded at the SOE community Influencer’s event early this month.

Relevant Links:
What the Heck is Free Realms?
Free Realms: Getting Rid of the Bullshit in MMOs (Pt.1)

Music:
Demo track for the Free Realms video; used with permission, I assume.

MMOG Nation Broadcast Episode Five marks the happy return of the ‘cast … with some fantastic personal news for Michael. You’ll have to tune in to find out. Most of the episode is a discussion of ideas and concepts prompted from a talk Erik Bethke gave at the Game Developer’s conference earlier this year. “The 7-11 Gamer”, as a concept, is incredibly insprational for Michael – maybe he will be for you too.

Relevant Links:
Slashdot.org
Massively.com
Massively’s Writeup of Erik’s Talk
Worlds In Motion’s Writeup of Erik’s Talk
Erik’s PowerPoint slides from the Talk

Michael, you might be saying to yourself, you were doing so well! You’d posted pretty much all month long with some more-or-less interesting content … and then this weekend was radio silence. Plus, where’s MMOG Nation Broadcast number 5? You promised us something on GDC, which was a month ago at this point!

These are all excellent questions. I’d like to offer a few things to you on this Monday night:

• Assurances that MNB #5 is coming this week.
• A preview of upcoming blog posts -
  • Mauradon, Exploded (a WoW design experiment)
  • Why Microsoft Doesn’t Get Massive Games (an attempt to explain their actions)
  • The “Comfort” Game (why online games do more than just entertain)
  • Fabulous Faydark (recent EQ2 exploits)
  • Fists of Ham Instance Report #1 (WoW gaming journal)
• A preview of upcoming MNB episodes -
  • The 7-11 Gamer
  • Slouching Towards Innsmouth
  • Putting Yourself Out There
  • The ‘Mass’ Effect
• A promise that I’m going to have an important personal announcement by the end of the month. If you like my writing (and since you’re reading this I guess I can assume that) you’ll really like my news.