A busy day, so to tide you over a few pictures from this past weekend. All of the stuff I shot will be up on Flickr eventually, but I like to take my time with that. Here you go, in the meantime.

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I just got back about an hour ago from the Indie MMO Game Developer’s Conference. It was a great trip; just four hours by car from home to Minneapolis, great speakers, lots of great conversations.

Quickie highlights:

• Dr. Bartle! In general, and in specific - his chat on government interference in MMOs, which dovetailed nicely with his keynote this morning about the future history of the genre, annnnd getting to interview him. We ended up talking pretty much all about World of Warcraft. Which, at least, I enjoyed quite a bit.
• Nick Fortugno, of Rebel Monkey, did a fantastic talk about the casual industry’s view of Massive games. Really engaging speaker, very fun to listen to, and amazing content.
• Gordon Walton did a more directed ‘future of the genre’ talk, and it was some amazingly inspiring stuff. Personally inspiring as well as professionally - just really really great.
• Interviewed Scott Hartsman, Brian Green, and Jonathan Stevens about various and sundry.
• Fantastic dinner with some fellow MMO commentators, fish and chips and Boddingtons, and a great argument about WoW’s older content that feeds right into my feelings about revamping old content. Also: Got pissed at and made up with Kendricke. Good times.
• Recorded MNB #7 on the way home in the car! So with some (hopefully quick) editing, next show will go up promptly.

Cuppy, Scott, and Cameron were all there as well, and have some discussion of the event. If you’re curious as to where you can see my coverage, that’d be Gamasutra - probably all week long. Got a looot of stuff to transcribe. I wasn’t sure before I went if the time was worth it for the reward, and I think I chose wisely.

Thanks to everyone I got to chat with over the weekend for stimulating my brain.

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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.

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This year’s present to MMOG Nation, I think, is pretty fricking swanky. How the heck am I going to top this next year?Make sure to a.) Hit the site to get the full effect and b.) let me know what you think!

Update: Joe asked below (and a few folks have asked in email) where this image came from. I contracted with The Logo Company for it, actually. Despite the somewhat uninteresting business name - they get the job done. The thing that pushed me over the edge to spend my $149? This postmortem on a logo they did. They really are that responsive, imaginative, and iterative. Great experience, A++++, would buy from again.

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Via Damion, an actually-pretty-interesting webquiz. I hate these things normally, but the test itself is worth taking because the questions are so good. It also tells you how you scored on the various axis afterwards, which is always nice. This close to being Chaotic Good. My stat block is below.
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I’m sitting gate-side at the San Diego airport, readying my kit for one last day of travel. Last night was the final event of the Summit, a party that brought together folks from across the length and breadth of SOE: developers, producers, designers, marketers, and community folks. There was even a band partially composed of SOE employees (warning: MySpace page), rocking the house at the W’s ‘Beach’ bar.

I’m not really a ‘party guy’, but it was a pleasantly memorable experience.  A few photos below.

Additional: Many thanks to Pex for the ride to the airport. Bloody Yellow cabs!

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The meat and potatoes of the SOE Influencer’s event was today’s series of presentations and discussions. With the last two days spent getting to know each other and the SOE Community team, today we were ‘on the clock’. The central goal was to have the team present us with big slices of the Sony Online experience, and then comment on the problems and obstacles we saw in their path. My understanding is they hope that by having outsiders enter the Community process, their work will be the stronger for it. Likewise, as ‘influencers’, we can turn back to the player community and disseminate the impressions we gathered by meeting with the Community folks.

Considering that we were supposed to be some of the most opinionated members of the community, I was a little underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, now that I’ve been through pretty much the whole thing I personally found it to be a useful exercise. And to be sure, it’s been a good time. But as an outpouring of useful feedback to the community team I’m not sure it was all that helpful. Who’s to blame? Well …

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