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[...] users, more paid users, and more money than the vast majority of “old school” MMOs, as Raph Koster is vindicated in spades, over and over, when people start to actually notice that more people play Maple Story than World [...]

[...] This is just part of a bigger trend. I blame Bethesda for much bigger things in my opinion, that was the way they did not tell the truth about minimum requirements, telling unwary gamers that they could play the game with their system when it would not be possible. That was diabolical and put PC gaming even more into the second-hand car selling type sleaze! The second was selling official mods in a crass way of making money! to pay for horse armour was patently a rip-off at even $2, because it ratcheted up the bigger mods! This is also part of a trend of giving us less for the same game price. As much as I love HL2, for example, I am not so blind as to see that 5 hour expansions selling for $20 retail is going to lead to more 12-15 hour $60 games rather than the 35 or so we have had for 15 years up to about 3 years ago.Last year saw the smallest number of PC game releases. This year doesn't look like it will be much better. The over emphasis on graphics and the lessening of content is killing PC gaming in front of our very eyes. Oblivion and Bethesda are part and parcel of this problem. Why there was not an outcry over the dumbed down Oblivion like there was for Deus Ex 2 is about the fact there are fewer PC gamers who care. They have given up and are moving into console gaming (reluctantly), and independent games and retro games that they know have the gameplay they don't see in modern PC games. You only have to look at the growth in 'abandonware' sites and the opening last year of the ebay retro section to see where the interest is going. And what major PC gaming site and magazine doesn't talk about the growth in inde gaming? In fact the huge success of the Wii is as much about a resurgance in retro style gaming as it is about the control sticks! If Fallout 3 is dumber still, and other PC games continue to go down this route of less gameplaying hours for the dollar, I can see PC gaming coming to a quiet close sometime in 2009. As a 20+ year PC gamer, that saddens me.There are plenty of warning voices out there. You should start opening your eyes as a PC gamer! This blog is a good start: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/04/21/the-next-next-gen/ [...]

[...] that I’d much rather see the list ranked by contribution margin rather than just revenue. To borrow Raph’s metaphor, (which is also his business plan, I guess) I think you’d see a lot of small mammals ranked higher [...]

[...] the kind possessed by famous movie directors and producers) and if so, how? Raph Koster frequently talks about this, and I believe his rationale is fairly solid. But Raph, who does a good job of reaching out to the [...]

[...] men flottere grafisk og lydmæssigt. En interessant artikel om fremtidens gaming kan læses på : http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/04/21/the-next-next-gen/Skrevet 2007-03-28 18:43 Citer [...]

[...] Among those with the surname MMORPG, Second Life and a very few others, have a distinct genetic code. This lack of genetic diversity among those bearing MMORPG surname presents cause for concern. At least one MMORPG-geneticist has commented that this might well contribute to the extinction of the MMORPG surname in the face of growing environmental pressures. Of particular interest to this budding genealogist are the direct descendents of UO (Diku, Sand-Box, Monopoly, Ganker-PvP/WTF), including SWG (Diku, Sand-Box, Monopoly, recessive Ganker-RvR) and EVE (Diku, Sand-Box, Monopoly, Ganker). [...]

[...] The next next gen [...]

[...] The Sunday Poem: The City the Genius BuiltYou could walk forever                               and never run out of streets tripleproofed and wired                with maps on every corner The police carried ray guns                               and there was a rocket launch before breakfast once a week –                anyone was welcome to watch The genius himself presided                               from inside his marvelous house glass panels                translucent paper walls Passersby wrote on the walls                               tales of the genius and the genius read them backwards                from [...] Some historical precedentFor the next time that your friendly local government starts using your hobby as a weapon in the culture wars… Wired catalogs past “threatening” media. It’s interesting to me the way in which control of idea flow is truly a nonpartisan concept. If it’s not the right bashing evolution, it’s the left protecting the children. Both [...] Massive, XFire, what’s next?CNet says that the Wall Street Journal says that Microsoft is going to buy Massive, the in-game ad people. This mere days after we learn that Viacom is buying XFire for $102 million. Obviously, it’s great to see Chris Kirmse, one of the pioneers of MMORPGs, get his fair share of all the riches that are being [...] New laptop: a tablet PCSo I settled on a new laptop, and I got the Toshiba M400 convertible Tablet PC. I’ve been wanting a Tablet PC ever since Mark Terrano and Mike Steele showed me theirs, since I frequently design and think while sketching. They both have Motion Computing’s slate models, but I wanted something with a better keyboard [...] Mischiefblog has a surveyJust helping spread the meme: take the MMO Survey, improve human knowledge or something. http://www.sicher.org: The Game Content DodgeOver at http://www.sicher.org there’s a post discussing the “next next gen” issue that ends with a challenge and an interesting speculation. The challenge seems a close cousin of the annual Indie Game jam: I would like to see a contest that is a little different – that has a different focus. I would like a challenge with [...] The Sunday Poem: So I RememberIt seems that mortality is around me everywhere these days. Relatives left and right are failing, and a few days ago, my sister-in-law’s mother passed away. I have many poems about death and dying, because I have had a lot of people die in my life — most specifically, a lot of peers. Over time, [...] Second Life on the cover of Business WeekI guess our hobby is mainstream now. My Virtual Life article, discussion at TerraNova. The article also features an assortment of extra goodies, such as a slideshow of the evolution of online worlds. Image of the cover: The next next genSo here we are, in the next gen land of 75+ person teams and $30 million dollar budgets. What do I see when I look out across the future landscape? I see an inflection point. We’re hitting a wall on the financial side. Barring major breakthroughs, we’re looking at incredibly high costs for content generation. Unless we [...] ( vote for this news ) [...]