Over the past few years, I’ve tried out more than a few MMOs. Most of them have been of the RPG ilk, a couple have been more of a shooter experience, and a few others have attempted to go for something else entirely. Across all of them, however, I’ve noticed that there are certain things [...]
25Feb10
How to Make Reviews Helpful
When you read a review of a game on a site like IGN, GameSpot, Eurogamer, 1UP, and/or many of the other such sites out there on the web, what do you expect to find? Do you go in with the belief that the review should allow you to make up your mind on the game [...]
21Jan10
MMO? Not? Who Cares?
Those who know me know that I’m fairly actively involved in the community of the soon-to-release game Global Agenda. For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s designed around a third-person shooter core gameplay that is manifested in large numbers of instanced battles on a single central server “shard” – including a larger Conquest system that [...]
4Dec09
Making PvP Scale, Part 2
(Continued from Making PvP Scale.) When I wrapped up the first part of this discussion, I had just mentioned the core issue with designing scalable PvP: finding some way to maintain a rough balance between technique and strategy regardless of the numbers of players involved in the conflict. Before I go any further, I’m going [...]
3Nov09
Live by Subs, Die by Subs
I was reading through Syncaine’s argument of why one MMO dying benefits players of another MMO, and realized that there was something that nagged me about the entire thing – and it wasn’t really what the majority of those commenting on the article were looking at. After all, I have to agree that Syncaine has [...]
25Oct09
Harvesting Good Ideas
Typically in any game you come across, unless it’s utterly terrible (and sometimes, even if it is), there are a couple of ideas that just stand out as good. They may not be part of the core game play; sometimes they may not even be part of the play at all – but they still [...]
10Oct09
Critiquing The Aion UI
When you’ve seen and worked with game UIs as much as I have, you tend to be able to spot some issues in a UI without even really using it much. Other issues, however, can be a lot more subtle and won’t rear their heads until you’ve actually taken the time to use them for [...]
14Sep09
Making PvP Scale
When PvP in computer games was first introduced, I’d have to assume that participant scaling wasn’t even on the radar. After all, it’s a bit hard to envision a “zerg” in Pong. As games have grown in both complexity and scale, however, the problem of how to make PvP fun regardless of how many people [...]
If I were forced to guess, I’d probably be safe with the assumption that cheating has been an issue for nearly as long as online multiplayer games have existed. As more and more games move into the realm of internet play, the question of how to deal with those who choose not to play by [...]
