First it was Andrew Wildman’s pen caressing the curves (er… okay, flat panels) of a custom-built City of Heroes styled PC.

Now it’s Neil Edwards’ turn, who picked up his paint brushes to create a one of a kind PC case featuring Statesman and Ghost Widow.

Where can you win it? In The Sun, of course – that super soaraway superpowered paper of record.

Click here to go enter the competition and win!!

Links from the past, given to you in my future…

A slideshow gallery of Ralph McQuarrie paintings for Star Wars. (Link will go direct to a Flickr slideshow; click here if you’d rather see the set.)

If you like that, you’ll probably like Concept Ships, which is a blog all about… concept art. Of ships.

Superhero Nation: a website all about writing, and writing superheroes in particular. A lot of the advice seems aimed at a certain kind of superhero writing, but there’s good advice here regardless.

If you’re worried about the Watchmen movie, feel free to read this and see all your fears realised. Assuming you’re one of those people who basically feel that things should never be adapted, ever.

Right now as my work and home ‘computing’ (God, that sounds pre-pre-millenial; actually millenial sounds ancient) is divided between iMac and MacBook Pro, my PC-based gaming has fallen off a bit. So I’m looking for web-based stuff when I’m not playing with the 360.

Something that I found recently which you might find interesting too – yes you, there – is Twilight Heroes, which seems to be… well, a text-based, turn-based, web-based superhero RPG. Mmm. Thought you might pay some attention.

What’s interesting (apart from the text, turn and web-based bits) is that it’s sort of like Unbreakable with a sense of humour. You play a very ordinary person who suddenly decides to put on a weird costume and go ‘fight crime’, although in the city of Twilight, crime often means old lady bowlers, or muggers with weird fashion sense, or angry bike couriers.

It’s kinda odd. But kinda fun. And still has that easy ‘must level up, just gotta get more XP’ hook that any good RPG manages. Oh and of course it’s free; so check it out.

I couldn’t possibly comment on this list from Beckett, who publish a print magazine (how quaint!) called Massive Online Gamer (I assume that’s not a cutting reference to one’s weight). It is apparently, a list of the 20 most influential people in the MMO industry. Like I said, I can’t comment.

But you can.

Discuss….

The complete list of the Top 20 Most Influential People in the MMO Industry:

• 1. Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design, Blizzard Entertainment
• 2. Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer, Turbine
• 3. John Smedley, CEO, Sony Online Entertainment
• 4. Hilmar Pétursson, CEO, CCP
• 5. Jack Emmert, CCO, Cryptic Studios
• 6. Rob Seaver, CEO, Vivox
• 7. Min Kim, Director of Game Operations, Nexon America
• 8. Scott Hartsman, Formerly Senior Producer, SOE
• 9. Raph Koster, President, Areae
• 10. James Phinney, Lead Designer, ArenaNet
• 11. Richard Garriott, Creative Director, NCSoft
• 12. Starr Long, Producer, NCSoft
• 13. Cory Ondrejka, Formerly CTO, Linden Labs
• 14. Mark Jacobs, GM and VP, EA Mythic
• 15. Sulka Haro, Lead Concept Designer, Sulake
• 16. Sage Sundi, Global Online Producer, Square-Enix
• 17. Jess Lebow, Lead Quest Designer, Carbine Studios
• 18. David Perry, CCO, Acclaim
• 19. Sanya Weathers, Director of Community, Guildcafe.com
• 20. Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings Design

Jess LeWho? LeBow. Jess used to work at ArenaNet (on Guild Wars Prophecies/Factions) then jumped ship (pun alert!) to go work on Pirates of the Burning Sea. Now he’s mutinied and returned to the good ship NCsoft, where he’s ended up as Lead Quest Designer at Carbine Studios.

Ah, but working on what…?

If you don’t know who Carbine are right now, you might want to get acquainted. That’s all I’m saying.

Jess doesn’t have a lot to spill about his new project in this interview with Massively (except for one tiny comment right near the end which most people will probably miss…) but he’s still got a great history; he worked for Wizards of the Coast as their fiction editor when he started in the biz.

For some reason I have random lyrics and snippets from Oliver! in my head. Why.

Anyway, set up a new blogroll linking category to cover off a few of you called Playas, ‘cos y’all are. Which led me to checking a few places which leads me to pimpin’ ya out with linkage and quotage.

Dave’s finally finished off his re-telling of the MiniCon with Part 4:

… we had our picture taken after the awards, and again, this was a great goodbye not only to the weekend, but to the lads. We’d drunk a bit (too much), we’d laughed (probably too much, my cheeks were hurting) and played some great games!

That’ll be this picture then, would it?

Out-of-the-blue newcomer Kris, however, has taken the short-but-sweet route, summarising his entire MiniCon experience in one post, just about exactly two months after it all happened:

We loitered around in the downstairs area chatting and get mistaken for other people (blame the Mohawk).

Just so you don’t mistake Kris for anyone else next time, here’s a handy picture. (Don’t leave the evidence in your ‘swag shot‘ next time Kris; and by the way, good haul!)

Sidekick Hazel has a few post-MiniCon things to say that made my black, frozen heart beat briefly:

I went to the omega sektor knowing only 2 people from my SG. Being totally nervous about being surrounded by strangers and worrying about making myself look stupid. I came away with loads of new friends. A new found confidence and apparently my own mini fan club.

And finally how can I forget Zortel? Especially when she’s the only blogger under ‘Z’ and has such nice things to say about Bristol Comic Expo – what, no MiniCon write up, Z?

… many people were getting sketches done and walking away with big grins on their face. I’ve had 8 done so far, and I’ve enjoyed every single one. They proudly adorn my wardrobe.

Just so he doesn’t feel left out, I’d better link to Sidekick Gangrel’s nascent blog where he’s got some interesting points to make about grouping in MMOs:

”Oh fine, we’ll disband, but we’ll need an invite.”
”Um.. I think someone’s afk, so you guys really should leave your group.”
”Fine, I’ll disband. Everyone disband now.”
”Wait, did you guys disband too! OMG!!!! Epic fail.”

Finally although we’ve yet to meet in person, Samurai-ko’s LJ gets a link, if for no other reason than she makes ‘teh awesome’ City of Heroes videos. Oh, and she asked.

And then I find out not only are the NCNorCal devs (for CITY OF HEROES) fans of mine, but apparently so is one of the devs of NCSoft Europe! DO I ROCK OR WHAT?!?! (And I found that out entirely by chance while looking up my site traffic…)

(Pssstt… Michelle? I’m not a dev. But I get that a lot, so no worries.)

Is that it? I think that’s it. Man, this was supposed to be short, I got carried away. Of course, if you’re blogging and would like some linkage, just holler in a comment.

“I don’t know how, but they found me.”

Who’d you think? Massively, who linked to me today* – I guess it was only a matter of time. Adrian Bott, the writer who put up the piece, was at the MiniCon and is apparently tracking me on Stalkbook too, as that’s the image he chose to use on the piece.

I seriously need to get my ‘official’ NCsoft picture** done.

Anyway, hi Adrian! And anyone else who’s randomly arrived here. Leave a comment, don’t be a stranger. Oh and by the way Adrian, why not subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed so you get the story up when the thing releases. Not three days later. It’s the Internet people! Seconds matter! (Although yes, I do realise you may have done just that – and are at the mercy of editors.)

Also – via Massively – just read this interesting interview at TenTonHammer with Scott Jennings, AKA ‘Lum the Mad’ (whose blog you should read). Scott’s working on a Top Secret Game Project inside NCsoft in Austin right now, and has been since some time in 2006. In fact, that was when I was last over there (believe it or not) and I did have the chance to sit down and get his pitch on the game. At the time it was looking pretty damn cool in design form. Of course I can’t talk about it any more than Scott can, but suffice to say I think Scott’s a damn smart guy and I hope his game turns out as good as he hopes.

As well as being a smart designer Scott’s also a great industry pundit, so when asked, as he is in the interview, about the future of the industry he’s got loads of good stuff to say. I particularly liked his final answer though, which is practically a call to arms for gamers everywhere:

Be more demanding. Don’t accept mediocrity. Don’t accept games that try to deliver less polish. WoW has set the standards that we have to meet, and if games don’t meet it they will fail and deserve to fail. That standard has now been set and we have to meet it.

Amen, brother!

* Well kind of. It’s the usual Massively thing, one link amongst a billion others, some of which may lead to interesting places and many of which just lead back to Massively. It kind of drives me nuts.

** Which, I hereby promise, will look as close as possible like that existing picture. Except better quality.

Want to know about the in-game advertising that’s going into COH/COV? The internet to the rescue once again….

I didn’t listen to it live – probably because it went out in the middle of our night – but if you missed it too, The Cape Radio have a downloadable version of the interview they did with Brian Clayton (General Manager of NC NorCal), Matt ‘Positron’ Miller (Lead Designer) and Lighthouse (Community Relations Manager), where they talk primarily about in-game advertising.

Haven’t listened to it myself yet either, but if this Massively article is anything to go by, it’s all good stuff.