I am not sure there’s a comment I can actually make here! It’s too easy a target… Ironically, Brazil has a thriving indie dev scene going on.
Counter-Strike, EverQuest banned in Brazil // GamesIndustry.biz
It’s alleged EverQuest is harmful because players are asked to accept both “good” and “bad” quests, the psychological burden of which is said to cause problems. The game was never officially released in Brazil.
Right before Christmas, I posted the lyrics to something called “Let Us Just Be.” Well, here’s some noodling around the music for it — you should be able to mostly follow right along the lyrics even though there’s no singing.
This is using my new toy, a Yamaha P70, for controlling both the cello and the piano, which are VSTs. My hands and forearms ache in ways they haven’t in years, because I am so very very rusty on piano. I am totally loving the P70 though.
As I have spent the last couple of years yelling loudly that the game industry (despite record years) is actually in dire trouble in a business sense (not just creatively), I have repeatedly run into one comment from core gamers. You see, I keep saying that the rising landscape has a lot more lower-budget, asynchronous, low time investment, web-based games. And the response is usually,
“But the landscape you are describing doesn’t sound like games I would like.”
Julian Dibbell’s My Tiny Life remains, to this day, the best book written about what it is like to live immersed in a virtual world. The fact that the world in question in text-based, and the events described happened over a decade ago, is completely irrelevant. You cannot call yourself knowledgeable about virtual worlds unless you have read this book.
Unfortunately, it’s been out of print for years. I am lucky — I have two copies, one a galley proof and one a real copy, first edition and everything. They get checke dout of our little office lending library and read by Areae employees. But for most people, it’s just hard to find.
Until now, because Julian has made it available via Lulu for a very reasonable price in printed form, and as a free PDF for download. Go get it. Read it. Enjoy.
Gamasutra has posted the Project Horseshoe report on story. Alas, I didn’t make it to PH this year. 🙁 This is a very good read.
