• All-Everquest Game Studies issue

    Hours Categories Game talk

    Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research has published a special issue, EQ: Ten Years Later. Among the articles:

    • Nick Yee on “Befriending Ogres and Wood-Elves: Relationship Formation and The Social Architecture of Norrath”
    • Greg Lastowka on “Planes of Power: EverQuest as Text, Game and Community”
    • Sal Humphreys on “Norrath: New Forms, Old Institutions”
    • Lisbeth Klastrup on “The Worldness of EverQuest: Exploring a 21st Century Fiction”
    • Bart Simon, Kelly Boudreau, & Mark Silverman on “Two Players: Biography and “Played Sociality” in EverQuest”
    • Eric Hayot and Edward Wesp on “Towards a Critical Aesthetic of Virtual-World Geographies”

    There are also interviews with Chris Lena (with whom I worked in the R&D group at SOE back in the day, and who was producer on EQ for years); and with Brad McQuaid and Kevin McPherson. The interviews don’t appear to be recent, but they still give some great insight.

    BMQ: Back when designing EverQuest and coming up with the various playable races, we looked at the more human-like races and decided purposely to make them in appearance similar to real world races. This is true also for the architecture, a lot of the background, etc. But the important point is that what we were trying achieve was familiarity. In other words, the Barbarians in EQ might have had a Scottish flavor to them, but they are not Scots; likewise the pyramids on Luclin might appear to be Egyptian in flavor or style to a degree, but there is no real relationship. This allows the game designer (or fantasy author, for that matter) to create races, cultures, architectures, etc. that draw on the richness of the real world in terms of depth, without actually being constrained by actual real life history or stories or, hopefully, if done right, too many preconceived stereotypes.

  • How David Beats Goliath — a lesson in game design

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 25 Comments

    Malcolm Gladwell’s latest article, “How David Beats Goliath,” is a must-read for anyone interested in game design. Or business strategy.

    It’s all about how underdog outsiders can come to a “game” (meaning, a formal structure of rules with win conditions) and because they are free of social preconceptions of how it “should” be played, can use unorthodox tactics to win. The article purports to be about game-playing strategy, but I think it has just as much to say about how you set up your rule systems as anything else.

    “Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation of reality,” Lenat explained. “What the other entrants were doing was filling in the holes in the rules with real-world, realistic answers. But Eurisko didn’t have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged.

    This is the second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.

  • The Sunday Song: I Will Be There For You

    Hours Categories Music
    Comments 12 Comments

    I wrote this song for my son. He’s been having migraine headaches and some sort of sinus infection, and has missed a lot of school. He’s also just turned 11, and you can see him growing up day by day. But I suppose it could be from anyone to anyone, really.

    Guitar is in double-dropped D, then capo III; song’s in Bb. It still could use a fresh vocal track, a fresh bass track, and it’s missing the backing vocal part from midway to the end (software crash ate it).

    Read More “The Sunday Song: I Will Be There For You”

  • Brenda’s games

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 77 Comments

    Brenda Brathwaite is one of my many brilliant friends from the game industry, and this is some of her recent work:

    The object of Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.

    The destination? Auschwitz.

    The “game” didn’t stop there, however. The game board, pictured above, is an allusion to Kristallnacht – Brathwaite explained that she needed to break a fresh piece of glass each time she “installed” her work in a new location to properly evoke the violence of the experience. She even typed the game’s instructions on an actual SS typewriter, which she purchased solely for that purpose.

    There were audible gasps in the audience when Brathwaite revealed Train‘s shocking conclusion; one attendee was so moved by the experience that she left the conference room in tears.

    — The Escapist : TGC 2009: How a Board Game Can Make You Cry

    You should read the whole article. I could add commentary, but I am sure you can guess the sort of thing I would say.

  • Real world LA government Town Hall in Metaplace

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 9 Comments

    This was cool — State Representative Nancy Landry of Louisiana just held a town hall meeting in Metaplace. A big part of the event was Q&A sessions with a middle school class run by teacher Margret Atkinson of Northwestern Middle School, and in attendance were the state’s Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, and the school’s principal, Debby Brian. I believe a few blog posts elsewhere and a video of the event are forthcoming. Eidt: and here’s one.

    I was asked to give brief remarks on digital citizenship, and here they are:

    So I was asked to make a few comments about digital citizenship, and I think the thing that most strikes me about an event like this is the fact that citizenship is the same whether it exists in the real world or a digital framework. Here we all are at this wonderful event, and the things that we are talking about in this cartoony, digital world are big important, real world issues, like funding for science education, and the legislative process.

    Online communities are a VENUE, not an end in themselves. They are just a new way for us to engage in very old practices. And I think that if we managed to transplant some folks from ancient Athens and given them an intensive course in language and computer literacy, they would be perfectly at home with the substance of the discussions today!

    At the same time, I think that it also highlights how important that digital literacy IS; after all, without those lessons, they would be less able to participate. And as our society’s tech capabilities grow, I think it’s wonderful to see that our society — and legislators — and principals and school superintendents, and teachers — are willing to invest in that literacy so that future voters, citizens, will be able to participate to the best of their ability using this new technology.

    So I want to just say thank you to all of you for taking the plunge!