Sierra Kilo

http://www.halowars.com/

First, congratulations to Ensemble Studios (based in Dallas). I look forward to seeing how this one comes out. An RTS (real-time strategy) game based on the Halo games might be pretty fun…

…that’s why I was looking forward to Halogen, a modification to Command & Conquer: Generals that was shaping up nicely. The 3D models they had were very nice. I think their problem was that it was taking them too long to release it. I’ve known about it for over a year, if not two.

So, the big bad Microsoft corporation swept in and basically scrapped all of their hard work. One would hope that they would buy the assets developed by these folks. The IP was Microsoft’s and Bungie’s, but the time the team put into developing the 3D models could be put toward another game. It’s a shame that money stifles creativity. I guess that’s the name of the game in a capitalist society, though. “Put your money where your mouth is or get out of my way.”

What’s worse is that this game will probably become a part of the movie marketing. Sure, the Halo movie production team is probably working very close with the Bungie team and trying to stay as close as possible to the existing universe, but it’ll probably become just another LotR. I loved the movies, but the games do nothing for me. They’re marketing fluff like “collector’s edition” cups from Burger King. Let’s hope not.

http://pandora.com

Check out Pandora. It’s like a build-your-own internet radio station. You enter an artist or song name and it creates a “station” that plays music that is similar to what you entered. It’s pretty accurate, too.

It’s Flash-based and is pretty quick. I haven’t figured out the bandwidth requirements yet, but I don’t think it streams. I think it might download the entire file into Flash in the first few seconds of playing it because my network monitor doesn’t show any traffic after the first few seconds. The quality is good, too. I’d say around 128kbps.

I’m not exactly sure how they get it to match so well. My “AC/DC” station plays some AC/DC, Van Halen, Scorpions, and other songs that sound similar. It doesn’t do it by genre, it does it by what the song sounds like. It’s cool, but sometimes it’s so good that it almost seems like you’re listening to the same song over and over. This would be great for parties. I entered “YMCA” and it started playing disco classics from the Bee Gees, the disco-esque Jamiroquai, another song by the Village People, the Jackson 5, and even Kenny Loggins. Laura would dig this.

Now, iTunes (or another music library) should incorporate this functionality into a Mood Shuffle feature. If you listen to at least 75% of a song, it should recognize that you’re in the mood to listen to Disco, for example, and choose the next song at random from songs that have been labeled as Disco. Don’t base it entirely on the Genre tag, but on whatever system the Music Genome people are using. If you skip a song in the first half, it’ll get more random until you find something that fits your new mood.

I hereby claim ownership of such a feature.

Nerfbat and Psychochild are going to duke it out over game balance. I touched on the subject a little in my latest MMO Ideas article, but this subject is hard to solve.

I think both gentlemen have good points. Nerf says that systems can’t and shouldn’t be balanced for the sake of fun. Think about chess. If every piece was able to move the same, the strategy would be less difficult. It would be like checkers, basically. Still fun, but simpler, less advanced. But aren’t both games still balanced? Each side has exactly the same advantages and disadvantages. The only differentiator would be the side that moves first. (Ooh, I wonder if real-time chess would be fun?) I bet it would even be possible to “solo” a chess or checkers game, though. With the right combination of moves, a rook could pwn the board.

So, it’s quite possible to have balance in a game. The problem is that the rules must remain static once you’ve balanced them. You can’t expand without rebalancing. Hence, the “nerfbat” definition. You log in one day and your sword does half as much damage as it did yesterday. All because someone else’s club didn’t do enough damage. You never know how well your balance is going to be, though, until you’ve seen some test results. So that means that you’re still balancing after you release to the public to get enough results. So, perhaps the best explanation is that balance is possible, but extremely difficult to perfect.

Part of the difficulty is that 80% of your playerbase will be the classic “fighter”. It’s an easy class to play. Find something to kill, kill it, repeat. So do you give more power to the classes that make up the remaining 20% so that they can kill fighters? 2 wizards vs. 8 fighters of the same level would be an even match? Sure, but should one player wield so much power as a wizard? Possibly, but it should be more difficult to wield such power, right? These are the questions that designers must ask themselves when attempting to balance their rules. Is it possible? Sure. Difficult? Definately.

http://wisdump.com/web/top-10-web-20-winners/

According to Wikipedia’s definition, I could see how some of these items could be considered Web 2.0. However, “Web” implies something else in my mind.

“Web”, to me, is anything that is viewed in a web browser. That means HTML with possibly a little Java/JavaScript thrown in. Why? Because the “Web” is not the “Internet”, it is only a subset. It is one port (80) out of 65534 possible ports that your computer uses to communicate with other computers. FTP (ports 20 & 21) is not the “Web”. Skype (port 443) is also not the “Web”. From their own mouth, “Skype does not use HTTP”. That’s the protocol used to transmit HyperText (HTML). HyperText is the “Web” to me.

I will concede that “Web 2.0″ might be an idea. It lets people “collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways.” Fine. By that definition, MySpace could be considered “Web 2.0″. However, my definition restricts it even further, squeezing MySpace out of the running. My definition of “Web 2.0″ is a website that uses HTML and AJAX to emulate native software along with allowing people to collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways. By my definition, here are my “Web 2.0″ winners:

- Digg: I don’t get much of my news from Digg, but the concept is sound.
- Google: Spreadsheets, Writely, GMail, and their other “web applications” are perfect examples of my definition.
- Yahoo! Mail: Not sure if they’re out of Beta yet, but that is another perfect example of my definition. It works almost exactly like Outlook.
- There are others, but I’m tired of writing…these give a good example of what I consider “Web 2.0″