CAN MMOs be sandboxes?
M3mnoch offers the provocative statement that “you can’t really do a sandbox game with an mmo” because of the impact to other players.
Game talk
This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.
-
-
-
When game design is outlawed…
Allen Varney included my answer is his Escapist article I Will Survive. The question: if you were legally enjoined from making games, what would you do? My answer:
I’d play music in seedy bars, and write, and maybe draw cartoons. All the while, I’d secretly develop games, passing them around on illicit CD-Rs, always tempting fate. Sprites would be traded in back alleys with other like-minded ludotraffickers, and I’d be looking up algorithms on a loose network of pirate BBSes that would go up and down. Eventually, my counterculture existence would attract attention, and depending on how the roll of the dice goes, I’d end up raided by the FBI, a martyr to the movement, and a cause celebre; or I’d be vanished, to work for the NSA providing military-grade puzzle games to keep the troops amused.
Or maybe I’d be an accountant.
-
A bit on how I think games work
Abalieno at The Cesspit reacted kinda negatvely to “The Healing Game” and raised some interesting points. But I think we’re talking past each other to a degree, so I wanted to take a step back, and make sure we agree on terms. The below is the framework that I am using in thinking about “How Games Work,” which I am thinking about a lot because that is, broadly speaking, the next book.
-
Where’s innovation gonna come from?
…you’re only going to get big changes from big companies, with big resources…
Indie developers have a real purpose in this world. They make little niche products for markets too small for Activision… They rewrite Asteroids… because someone has to.
But truly innovative games? The sort you’re only going to see a few more times in your lifetime?
Those will come from Electronic Arts.
Please feel free to kill yourself now.