One area I’ve been curious on for a while is what proportion of players actually complete the games they play. A lot of attention gets put on games about how their narrative sophistication is evolving and how players love playing for the story they uncover, but all of that is so much puffery if the … Continue reading
Filed under Multiplayer …
EA Thanks Australian Classification Board For Free Publicity
So EA Australia won’t appeal the Australian Classification Board’s decision to refuse classification to Syndicate, effectively removing its ability to be sold in Australia. And why would they? It’s sacrificing four or five figures worth of sales (at best) in Australia for the greater good of seven figure or higher sales in other countries. Getting … Continue reading
The Single Player RPG Versus The Massively Multiplayer RPG, Round 47
It happens with a frustrating reliability: a single player game RPG (you choose if the ‘R’ stands for ‘role’ or ‘roll’) is released that contains a large world to explore and threads of emergent gameplay, leading to a large number of people wonder why they don’t see the same in the massively multiplayer online space. … Continue reading
The Party Was A Bust: The Short Life of Playboy Party
Back in May 2009, I wrote an entry that covered the announcement of Jolt Online’s Playboy MMO and how no-one cared about it. Following that article, I’d kept half an eye on the (now offline) official site because I was interested in seeing what actually happened with the title. And I waited. And waited. And … Continue reading
Cloudbursting And The Sad Case of Sony Online Entertainment
By now I’m sure you will have heard of Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) being hacked, 77 million account details stolen, Sony Online Entertainment having to go offline and may remain offline until the end of May. And if you haven’t, well, there you go. Bad times to be online at Sony. There are a ton … Continue reading
Duke Nukem Forever: Respect Yo’ Momma, Slap The Rest
Part of me is dreading the launch of Duke Nukem Forever. As a horribly misogynistic, outdated franchise that is more remembered for containing pixellated boobs and ripping off Bruce Campbell than great gameplay (and for a game development cycle from hell) it is something that should have died off long ago. Sadly, no – Gearbox … Continue reading
Mortal Kombat: Flawless PR Work, But…
Warner Brother Interactive Entertainment’s approach of “we failed the first time, but here is the same thing again but this time we’ll point out how wrong you are” around getting Mortal Kombat classified in Australia hasn’t worked, with MK being refused classification a second time. WBIE then thanked “the thousands of Mortal Kombat fans in … Continue reading
Five Reasons Why SWOR Is A High Risk MMO: #5 BioWare Doesn’t Do Great Game Mechanics
It was announced recently that Eric Brown, EA’s CFO, finds that blogs about the cost of Star Wars: The Old Republic “bring a chuckle” to his day. Glad to bring a smile to your face, Eric – here’s hoping the following brings some belly laughs. Back when I started this series, I said there were … Continue reading
Dead Island: Where Creative and Design Clash
A wonderful trailer for the long-in-gestation zombie title Dead Island was released a few days ago – it manages to portray the terror of zombie invasion in a very artful way. It’s a bit gory, but it is a very well crafted trailer that shifts the focus away from how awesome zombie killing is to … Continue reading
World Class Villains 