Name your MMO dream team: eep

 Posted by (Visited 9457 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jul 312008
 

So Massively asks for people to list IPs & developers for “dream teams.

My dream team would be to purchase the MMO rights to MechWarrior, have FunCom develop it under the excellent command of Raph Koster! And use Valve to distribute over steam.

I’d like to see Raph Koster’s vision applied to the GI Joe world. A GI Joe Online similar to the original vision of PreCU SWG would be great, and without a mythos-engrained alpha class, I think it could work.

I think my brain broke.

Scrabulous goes poof

 Posted by (Visited 9818 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 292008
 

Scrabulous, the Facebook app that cloned Scrabble, has been removed from Facebook for US and European users. Apparently because Hasbro pushed Facebook hard enough, now that they have launched their own official version.

It’s still there for other countries, because outside those territories, Mattel has the rights.

Now, I haven’t seen enough on the case,so I am curious about what IP law is being used, exactly. I suppose there’s a trademark case, since there’s a reasonable chance of confusion. I see copyright mentioned, but usually you cannot copyright game rules (people used to patent game designs, back when!). And the DMCA was invoked, according to this article. Anyone know?

The Sunday Song: Dadgaething

 Posted by (Visited 5538 times)  Music  Tagged with: ,
Jul 272008
 

This is a very old guitar instrumental of mine, and a very old recording of it, originally. You can hear the aquarium in the background… that would be the fish tank we had back in Austin. In fact, this was probably grabbed off of four-track tape at some point. I’ve always liked it, even though it’s rather quirky and in an odd modal mood.

It got its title from the tuning that it is in: D-A-D-G-A-E, a tuning I used to use a lot but don’t much anymore. I started messing with it on the piano, after the “chorus” part came to mind this evening, and this is the result — just some orchestral instruments layered on top of the original recording.

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Rest in peace, Randy

 Posted by (Visited 6292 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Jul 252008
 

‘Last Lecture’ professor dies at 47 – CNN.com

Most of the world thinks of him as the guy in the video giving the last lecture, the guy with the bestselling book. To me, he’s the guy who co-founded CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center and graduated tons of kids into the game industry, organized academic summits at GDC, and spearheaded the development of Alice. Not a distant author and academic, but one of us.