Sierra Kilo

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotGames/~3/19878380/article.pl

Curt Schilling (pitcher for the Boston Red Socks), Todd “Spawn” McFarlane, and R.A. “Drizzt Do’Urden” Salvatore formed a new game studio named Green Monster Games. That’s an interesting combination. I could see good things coming from this.

Evidently, Schilling is an avid EverQuest player. This could mean a possible MMO in their future. McFarlane designed characters for an Ultima Online expansion (Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge). Salvatore is a great writer and has developed some very famous characters. They want to change the industry, so more power to them. Hey guys, I’ve got ideas out the wazoo, so just let me know if I can lend a hand. *Waits patiently by the phone*

The Austin Game Conference is going on in…um…Austin. Rob Pardo of Blizzard was the keynote speaker. Raph wrote a quote from Allan Adham (Blizzard founder), who, after drawing a picture of a donut, said “…The middle of the donut is the core market. The casual market is the rest. We see Blizzard as being about both, and that the casual market grows faster than the core.”

Just a quick comment on that: In a donut, the center is missing. More specifically, it is a seperate entity. I know this is just an analogy, but it’s slightly misplaced if you think about it. If you compare the gaming market to a donut, you end up with casual market (the donut), and the core market (the hole). There is no overlap, so there is no single game that would meet both markets. This is true in a sense, and is one of the problems designers face. How do you make everyone happy?

He talks about designing the game depth first and accessibility later. They actually did a good job with this. The average player can get in and play fairly easy and the hardcore players seem to have plenty to do as well. This is a good avenue for average players to become hardcore players. Quests are training wheels, raids are BMX. Good approach.

What you miss out on are the players like myself who might enjoy all of it, but don’t have the time to keep up with their friends. Since content is gated based on levels (literally, there are certain quests and items that are completely unusable until level 42 and it is clearly visible, “Requires level 42″), once one player in a group crosses that gate, he is either stuck having to wait on his friends, forced to continue alone, or forced to find a new group of friends. It usually takes me a while to warm up to new people, much less consider them a friend, so where’s the fun in that for me? I’m stuck making temporary friends and using them for my own agenda, or going solo. If I’m going solo, why waste my bandwidth displaying all of these other players running around?

I seem to be ranting a lot lately. Anyway, it’s a good read. I love hearing about why companies designed things the way they did. Different perspectives are fun, even if they’re wrong I’m no expert, I just know what I like, so my wrong could be right in somebody else’s eyes. To each his own.

Keep fighting the good fight EFF!

I bought the new Polyphonic Spree EP from iTunes. It’s a few cover songs they recorded. Nothing too spectacular, just decent music. I do enjoy their cover of Nirvana’s Lithium. Anyway, I wanted to convert them to MP3 because my entire library is in MP3. Well, no dice. Apple’s DRM (digital rights management) won’t let me convert them to a non-DRM format. I’ve already paid for the music, why can’t I put it in the format I like? Why can’t I put it in a format that’s compatible with my other music players (Archos)?

Well, part of Apple’s deal with the record companies and artists was that they had to make sure nobody could redistribute the music. Fine. I get that the whole Napster thing led to widespread “music piracy”. The thing is, if you buy the physical CD, iTunes allows you to rip it to a non-DRM format. So what’s the difference if I buy the album in digital format vs. physical format? Well, the difference is that the CD manufacturers get a cut. To get a file to MP3, you need to rip it from a CD. Well, to do this through iTunes, you need to burn your purchased music to a CD, then rip them from that CD (at the cost of some audio quality). So why not just buy the CD? Well, because I don’t want to go to the local store. I just want to get some new music while I’m working on my project.

Why MP3? Because iPods are the only music players that play these DRMed files. That means that my choices are limited. “But Steve, you have an iPod, so what are you complaining about?” I’ve had some of my MP3s for nearly 8 years! iPods have not been around that long. Before my iPod, I had an Archos Jukebox. It was excellent. Trustworthy, stable, organized the way I liked it. It was a bit bulky, though. I walk the dog twice a day and it wouldn’t fit in my pocket. The iPod fits in my pocket and plays my MP3s, but I can’t buy digital music that is guaranteed to last 8 years. After all, who knows if the Zune will kill the iPod, right?