Highlights:

• I missed MMOG Nation’s 3rd anniversary. Again. Sorry!
• It’s really freaking snowy in Wisconsin.
• I’m working on a fun post about the ‘next’ EverQuest.

Just got this via email:

Dear Michael Zenke:
Your account has been removed by the Vimeo Staff for violating the Terms of Service of Vimeo.com

Reason: Uploading game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, or other videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game. We hope you find a video host more suited to your needs. If you believe this was an error, please send a civil response to this email and we will work with you, assuming you are correct.

Regards,
Vimeo

Here’s what I actually sent them:

Dear Vimeo,

No, you’re absolutely correct. “Videos that simply depict inviduals play a videogame” were all I had in my account. Under the terms your site operates, my account was entirely due for removal.

However, I want to note two things. First, I find it a bit offensive that videogaming  should be looked on as somehow ‘beneath’ the notice of your website. Machinima and in-game activities are a rich part of gaming culture, and the dismissive tone of your email to me here is very frustrating. Why videogames and gaming activities are somehow ‘not good enough’ for your site is somewhat beyond me.

Second, I just recently obtained an HD camcorder. Given the (previously) pleasant experience I’ve had with your site, I was planning to spend the money required to move my account to premium status. Now that you’ve removed my account, you’ve also removed my interest in doing so. Your choice to view videogaming in this light has, as of today, cost you money. Please take that into consideration as well.

Thanks for your time,

- Michael Zenke

Here’s what I want to say to Vimeo:

Fuck you. Fuck you and the horse you road in on, you pretentious ‘art-loving’ prats. Gaming’s not good enough for you, eh? Well, gee, I guess I’ll just have to go spend money with one of the other hojillion video-hosting services out there. Sucks to be you! (raspberry)

I’m so glad I’ve grown up so much over the last few years.

This was one hella long year. I began the year working, as I had for the previous three+, for Slashdot.org as their games editor. Two months later I was one of the lead bloggers at Massively.com, a gig that would see me through to my first E3 and a bunch of other far-flung industry events. Interesting times don’t even begin to cover it … but that old Chinese curse seems like a good way to describe a long and strange year. Below is a month-by-month rundown of my best content here on the site. Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, just as we did at the end of 2007.

As I said last year, the ongoing conversation that this site has become is one of my favorite parts about maintaining a commentary blog. Thanks for the opporuntunity to chat with such interesting folks!
Read more

Just as with last year, I jotted off a few quick thoughts on the year in MMO trends. The result is up on Gamasutra, again as with year. Simon’s insistence on the ‘MMO expert’ title makes me feel a bit like a talking head, but still …

For one more special bonus, guest MMO expert Michael Zenke takes a look at the year’s five most compelling trends in online gaming. The world of MMOs is an enormous business and huge opportunity for the game development community at large. As a fast-growing and influential part of the industry, ripples in MMO development will have serious consequences in the rest of the pond down the line.

Here are the biggest stories of 2008 in online gaming, so you can know what to look out for next year.

Tomorrow I’m heading to LA to help Massively and Joystiq cover the shredded remains of E3. Wish me luck.

As you might imagine, I’m unlikely to get a ton of blogging done here over the course of the week.

I also think I’m going to take a short break from MN – maybe just a week or two. Need to do some relaxing now that I’ve gotten my ‘out of the gate’ shakes down pat.

In the meantime I’ve got two podcasts in the can to fill out the time off. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Hope you’re looking forward to a good week.

I’ve been keeping this one under my hat for a while, because I didn’t want to tick off the people at Catalyst Games or my game designer buddy Aaron Pavao. Aaron (a friend for many years) has of late been getting his name into Shadowrun sourcebooks, mostly for playtesting and editing. The upcoming title Unwired, though, bears a big chunk of text written by his meaty hands. All the great content in there about ‘trix Security and a good hunk of the ‘life in the Matrix’ section? That was him. I have a ton of respect for the effort he put in to get there, and my hat is off to him.

I have to give him the respect, too, because (whether my name ends up in the credits or not) I’ve got some words in that book as well. I know it’s not something that shows up much of anywhere, but I’ve actually done a lot of fiction writing over the years. Most of it is on my hard drive or locked away in college projects. In one case I can reference it via an embarrassing high school literary magazine. If you get a copy of the Unwired book, you should know that the quick jots of fiction at the start of the security section and the ‘life in the Matrix’ were written by yours truly.

As if that wasn’t a treat enough, apparently my stuff was enjoyed by other people working on the project. The scene of the security hacker defending her garden from an interloper was re-interpreted from the other side for a section about illegal hacking. The image to the right (the full version of which is a click away) is an artistic vision of the other piece of fiction I wrote, about a young woman seeking escape from a sheltered corporate existence.

It can’t be more than 1000 words in an enormous book, and I didn’t get paid for it. That said, it’s some simple writing I’m smiling about seeing in print.

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.