[...] This post is the best thing Raph’s posted quite some time. Of course, it helps that his thoughts mirror a lot of my thoughts on online worlds, especially the new meme of ‘everyone can open their own virtual world’. The fact that Raph is aware of this problem gives me a lot of hope for what they’re working on. [...]

Yeah, yeah, I know that language evolves, and that the majority ends up dictating how a term is used and it’s ultimately futile trying to prevent the loss of language… But dammit if I’m not still going to rail against the blatant misuse of a more than 2000 year old logic term, perpetuated by badly educated journalists and media talking heads. The logic courses would’ve done them some good.

Being past the age where I hang out in the bars, there was a time when the pinball machines were standing room only. This was before the dreadful SpaceInvaders that made all the bleeeping noises. Bands hated them. For some reason, it is easier to play through the noise of a pinball machine. We actually unhooked the digital games during sets.

Seriously though, if the topic is engagement in a game, it’s worth looking at different games and asking why they were/are as popular as they were/are. Pinball combined physical actions, hand to eye and *subtle* cheating (why the TILT). I believe that games need physicality to satisfy some needs (do’h). Do you think online chess is as much fun as WoW regardless of the casual distinction?

[...] (more…) The Chronicles of Spellborn: 15 Character Screenshots Posted by WarCry Network : Latest News [HTML][XML][PERM] on Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:06:15 GMT We’ve updated our The Chronicles of Spellborn Screenshot Gallery with 15 new images of characters in their game world. The images show that this Unreal 2.5 MMO out of Europe has really come a long way visually in recent months. [...]

Granted, I do remember playing pinball with a friend occasionally, where each of us controlled one flipper. But that was the exception rather than the rule, and usually led to lower scores, though it was fun in its own way. (See also the long dead gameshow “The Magnificent Marble Machine”. Contestants played “flippers” (the slang for playing two player like that) with a celebrity on a machine so huge nobody could have reached both flipper buttons anyway. I suspect beer wasn’t allowed on the show, though!)

I think Windows Solitaire is fairly “casual”. Whether virtual worlds are depends on your definitions. Personally I would say that chatting with a friend on a cell phone is casual, playing in an NFL football game is very much NOT casual. More like “hard core”. Attending a high society party at your boss’s mansion is non-casual in entirely different ways than the football game, both in dress code and in your non-casual attitude as you worry intensely about whether you’ll make a terrible impression, or such a good one you get a promotion.

I’m not sure that “time spent” is the ideal metric for casual in the dictionary sense, which I relate to where things are on the hippie spectrum from “laid back” to “uptight” (or at least “tense”). You can spend a lot or a little time on the football field, the fact that 350 pound guys want to hit you hard makes it fairly non-casual (though non-padded friends playing touch football at a picnic might be pretty casual). Likewise, though some people spend immense amounts of time on the telephone, it’s usually a highly casual experience during most of that time.

By that metric, I would say that Furcadia is a pretty casual game for most – though not for all of its players.

Of course words change faster than Humpty Dumpty could change them at his best, nowadays. Roleplaying, or just RP, used to mean “playing a role” whether it was acting, cowboys & indians, kinky sex, or the occasional D&D game that wasn’t entirely hack and slash. On computers, RPG apparently means “a game where you kill stuff to go up levels and get phat lewt”. If you don’t have that, many people say you’re not an RPG, and if you do have that, apparently you are whether people actually, you know, play a role, or don’t. Go figure!

Casual Games long ago came to mean “games that have a lot of players who’re someone other than hardcore gaming geeks, i.e., normalish people”. And to some extent also “games made BY someone other than the hardcore gaming geeks that founded & form the core of the computer and videogame industry and keep making the same kind of hardcore games over and over again, and who often refuse to acknowledge that card games or licensed Barbie games are even actually games at all”.

Personally, I have to admit I enjoyed the fireworks game on the Bella Sara horsie cards website. Though the other two I tried left me yawning.

What was the topic again?

Also, look at SkyRates.

But to the main blog here I have nothing but agreement.

Dem dat haz gits. Dem dat haz not gits got.
If you gotz not, you needs not.

Bands and the semantics of popularity: given minimal skills and reasonable looks, learn every top ten hit for the last five years plus the short list of the most popular frat party songs, and you’ll be working in a month and popular until the beer runs out. Hide your wedding rings.

The challenge is scale not in the number of gigs but in the pay per play.

This, BTW, is where people who claim bands can be very popular without label/marketing support have never been in the business. Getting out of the local culture requires more than a web page and a CD. It takes an incredible amount of legwork and schwooze.