opinion

Wizards of the Coast zap piracy by.. er.. encouraging piracy

Published April 7, 2009

In what I can only call a very odd coincidence, the very same day I published my post encouraging you to go download legitimate, reasonably priced PDFs of copyrighted Dungeons & Dragons source material, Wizards of the Coast have pulled all PDFs from sale. Not just old, out-of-print material; all Wizards of the Coast material, anywhere.

Why? Apparently, they’re trying to crack down on piracy. By, umm, cutting off people’s only legitimate way of buying these hard-to-find products.

I am, understandably, not the only one shaking my head here, not by a long shot. While arguably this move is aimed at cutting off the ‘ready-made supply’ for those who are spreading bought-PDF copies of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition all over the interwebs – and they have the lawsuit to show for it – it’s also had the knock-on effect of stopping anyone from legitimately owning vintage D&D material.

This shows a remarkable lack of understanding over at Wizards as to how the modern web works – indeed, how modern economics seem to work, at least from my chair. Continue reading →

Posted in Personal, Roleplaying | Tagged , ,

Rip van Rockjaw

Published March 24, 2009

A couple of years ago I worked with someone who was coming back into the (video) games industry after being out of it for over 10 years.

When I mean ‘out of it’, I mean it was like he’d lived in a cave for a decade. He hadn’t played key games; more than that, didn’t even know what they were.

It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating to talk to him. Terrifying because he was in charge of some major product decisions; exhilarating because he came to everything with incredibly fresh eyes and intense new ideas. Needless to say he’s now blazing a trail somewhere.

I feel a little bit like that in relation to tabletop roleplaying today. Apart from the odd session here and there, almost always with an old system, I haven’t been properly aware of or up-to-date with the roleplaying industry since… probably 1994, when I was finishing university. Continue reading →

Posted in Gamey, Personal, Roleplaying | Tagged ,

Variety gives me a gazil – okay, four more thoughts on Gazillion

Published March 19, 2009

While most of the gaming press pretty much shrugged and moved on regarding Gazillion (or in the case of some blogs, sneered – but hey, that’s what blogs usually do) Ben Fritz at Variety* did that crazy ‘journalism’ thing and got the right people on the phone to comment.

In the process, he discovered a whole bunch of new facts which are very interesting, and led me to some more thoughts. You absolutely should read the article, but I’ll pull out some corkers here:

1. Gazillion has eight ‘projects’ in the works.

Four we know about (LEGO Universe, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Marvel Universe, Slipgate Ironworks’ MMO) but that leaves four more they’re keeping under wraps. That’s pretty huge. Again to give you context, while at NCsoft there were usually half-a-dozen or more MMO projects in various stages of development in Korea, it was rare any of them were made public.

Right now, again by comparison, NCsoft has four MMOs in development that you know about (Guild Wars 2, Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Carbine Studios’ MMO, Blade & Soul) but I guarantee you more are under wraps. Continue reading →

Posted in MMO-related, Press | Tagged , , ,

Predicting 2009

Published January 3, 2009

“Welcome… to the world of tomorrow!!”

Ahem. So, a few things will definitely happen in 2009, like the sun completing another orbit around our planet, Obama being sworn in as President of the US and me writing this post. Well, all of them should happen at least. But what about the other stuff? What about… the unforeseen future??

Let’s make some wild predictions and see how we do, eh?

Before you rush off to the bookies, by the way, these predictions are entirely guesswork on my part. Possibly educated guesswork, but not insider-trading style guesswork. Honest. Continue reading →

Posted in MMO-related, Personal, Rockjaw | Tagged ,

Predicting 2009

Published January 3, 2009

“Welcome… to the world of tomorrow!!”

Ahem. So, a few things will definitely happen in 2009, like the sun completing another orbit around our planet, Obama being sworn in as President of the US and me writing this post. Well, all of them should happen at least. But what about the other stuff? What about… the unforeseen future??

Let’s make some wild predictions and see how we do, eh?

Before you rush off to the bookies, by the way, these predictions are entirely guesswork on my part. Possibly educated guesswork, but not insider-trading style guesswork. Honest. Continue reading →

Posted in MMO-related, Personal | Tagged ,

Goodbye 2008

Published December 31, 2008

… and good riddance?

I thought of sticking that in the headline, but I’m not so sure. For one glaringly obvious reason, 2008 won’t go down as a banner year for me; but then, I did a lot of good stuff too. Let’s look back. Cue the wavey flashback lines… Continue reading →

Posted in Personal | Tagged

Bartle vs blogosphere and, er, me

Published June 28, 2008

I’ll get back to the grovelling “Sorry I haven’t posted a lot recently, I’ve been busy” stuff in a second, but if I don’t say something about this, it’ll totally leave my head.

You may or may not know that Richard Bartle has been blog topic du jour a lot recently, all stemming from an interview he did with Massively in which he said:

“I’ve already played Warhammer [Online]. It was called World of Warcraft. “

Which apparently, is the Quote That Was Heard Around The World. Assuming your world consists of nothing except reading MMOG-focused blogs and then getting very upset that either:

(a) your new favourite (unreleased) MMOG is being ‘dissed’ or

(b) your old favourite (out right now and doing very well) MMOG is, er, also being ‘dissed’ or

(c) Someone has an opinion on either game.

A few days ago I might have tried to weigh in on the reaction to Richard’s comments, but better people have beaten me to it – read this very good summary by Alec Meer over at Rock Paper Shotgun if you want a good overall view (and read the comments too).

All I really wanted to say is, I’ve met… Continue reading →

Posted in MMO-related | Tagged , , , ,

Coagulation

Published June 25, 2008

I know I’ve been quite absent lately, but hey – this is what happens when work gets a mite busy and out-of-work gets busy too. Between work, socialising, theatre trips, writing and the (very) occasional game of something-or-other, it’s left very little time to think. Let alone write.

To guilt-trip myself into doing them here are a few posts in the brain hopper, ready to go down the chute:

  • UK Games Expo (in one post) – half, maybe two-thirds written
  • Something on being ‘almost famous’ which is not as dumb as it sounds (I think)
  • Reflection on comments made by Richard Bartle recently… go Google it
  • Something on the games industry, students, breaking in, etc…
  • The reality of, well, working in the biz Continue reading →
Posted in MMO-related | Tagged , , , , , , ,

20 most influential people in MMOs, huh?

Published May 29, 2008

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…. Continue reading →

Posted in Links of Others, MMO-related, Rockjaw | Tagged ,

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