This article has an awful lot to say about why games are the way they are — especially the go-go-go level-up-madly sorts of virtual worlds.
Specifically, I’d call back to these two posts of mine:
Is it even possible to design a game where people stop to admire the beauty? And if so, how?
(via Kim)
So, I am speaking at Web2.0 Expo in a week or so. Two sessions, actually: a panel, and a joint lecture with Ben Ceverny.
Details below the fold.
So China has set up time limits for MMOs. I think this is actually the final implementation of the plan they announced previously, but whatever. People’s Daily Online reports that under-18 players will only be allowed to play for 3 hours a day at full XP rates, with declining XP gain thereafter until at 5 hours there’s no advancement at all. After five hours, you’ll get spam warnings every quarter hour telling you to go log off because it’s unhealthy for you to keep playing. And games not compliant by July 16th will simply be shut down.
In order to enforce this, they are requiring underage players to register with real names and identity card numbers. And this is where the real rub is: the issue of anonymity, rather than the issue of time spent.
CNet has word that Live handles and MSN buddies will merge soon, but the part that struck me as interesting was this:
Microsoft will launch a new text input device this summer that will attach to the Xbox 360’s controller and will let users type messages using a QWERTY keyboard. Currently, sending such messages from the Xbox requires using an on-screen keyboard or plugging in a USB keyboard.
Why? Because despite debates going on over on the MUD-Dev2 mailing list, text chat is still the universal solution. Yeah, it’s not best-suited for a console, but it’s the best-suited for a range of devices, even over voice. There are some advantages text has — such as asynchronicity — that just aren’t going to go away.
The Electronic Times is reporting that “3D virtual reality service reviving in Korean market.” Specifically, that people are seeing all the attention paid to Second Life, and are getting projects underway.
Among them, Real Time Worlds Asia (any connection to Real Time Worlds in Scotland, the guys doing APB?) says they’re making an SL clone with the Unreal engine. And there’s another one called Azitro that is launching next month and features a very charming line art style on its website — but not in its world, based on the screenshots, which look a lot like SimCity.
The article also introduced me to a Korean world I had never heard of: Dadaworlds, which looks like a Shockwave virtual world with a very heavy dose of cyberoptimism and a lot of real world tie-in.
“There will be about 100 of Second Life resemblance this year,” Director of Acid Crebiz, who developed virtual reality for the first time in Korea, forecasted. Meanwhile, developed by Shin Yoo-Jin, architectural engineering professor at Kwangwoon University, the first virtual reality service DadaWorlds once had over 100,000 users, but now there are only 200 users.
