From the Mailbag: hacking DDO

 Posted by (Visited 15856 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 212008
 

Got this via the website’s mail form:

Hi, Sorry to bother you, I was wondering if you would be able to help me. I play an online MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online and a program called windows packet editor recently came to my attention 🙂 I was wondering if you’d be able to spare a few moments to give me a better understanding of WPE and how it can be used to *ahem* alter packets of data so I might be able to say duplicate items or alter certain in game values in DDO. Kindest regards, [name redacted]

Sure, here’s the answer:

Continue reading »

Metaplace is looking for a lead designer!

 Posted by (Visited 5468 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with:
Nov 202008
 

Are you a veteran lead designer with a strong interest in the webby side of the gaming world? Because we’re looking.

Basically, we want someone to own the user experience top to bottom. Ideally, this person is someone who has both good system design chops and also a strong ability to craft user experiences. The full description is at the link!

D&D as a racist tract

 Posted by (Visited 21965 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 202008
 

Well, here’s a barnburner of an essay and Powerpoint!

To quote Steve Sumner’s essay again, “Unless played very carefully, Dungeons & Dragons could easily become a proxy race war, with your group filling the shoes of the noble white power crusaders seeking to extinguish any orc war bands or goblin villages they happened across.” I would argue with/ Sumner’s use of the phrase “could become,” and say that unless played very carefully, D&D usually becomes a proxy race war. Any adventurer knows that if you see an orc, you kill it. You don’t talk to it, you don’t ask what it’s doing there – you kill it, since it’s life is worth less than the treasure it carries and the experience points you’ll get from the kill. If filmed, your average D&D campaign would look something like Birth of a Nation set in Greyhawk.

–Race in D&D.

It’s “just a game” you say? Check out this quote: Continue reading »

Google Lively is shutting down

 Posted by (Visited 10304 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Nov 192008
 

Google Kills Lively, says TechCrunch, and speculates that it is because it never drove sufficient traffic. Lively did get moderately bad reviews around the Net when it launched, but even the traffic that TechCrunch shows on its graph would be a respectable daily user number, if the product could monetize.

Google’s statement is here.

…we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

They also encourage users to “capture” their hard work in building their rooms “by taking videos and screenshots.” Ouch. Meanwhile, users are gathering in rooms with names like “Lively is Murdered.”

A bad sign for virtual spaces? Nah — look at the latest figures for investment that Jussi Laakkonen gathered. There’s a very bright future ahead still, for the right products.

VWs go to Washington

 Posted by (Visited 6309 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 192008
 

As several game news sites are reporting, having connected the dots, virtual worlds are starting a new level of integration with Washington — with the naming of Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach to lead Obama’s FCC transition team, there are now two knowledgeable denizens of the virtual world helping set some policy.

I first met Kevin at a social policy conference that was themed in part around virtual worlds; I first met Susan at State of Play, the wonderful legal conferences around VW issues. Both are associated with Terra Nova. Kevin is also a Tauren Shaman & a Night Elf Rogue, and Susan is a Second Lifer, plus she has me on her blogroll (hey now…!).

What will this mean for VWs and MMOs? Nothing right now, I am sure — net neutrality is sure to be a bigger issue. But it’s sure not going to hurt to have people who know the field in the governmental mix.