vw design

This list of 10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website has plenty that is applicable to developing online games and game communities. I won’t bother to do the translation, because in most cases it’s very obvious.

What’s interesting is how much is different from the way online worlds do it. Is it that the Web world and the online world-world are so different? Or that we aren’t up to speed on current thinking? (After all the Web world moves at warp speed compared to the glacial pace of online world development.)

Abalieno has a post up at the Cesspit about The “healer” role as a byproduct of the meta-game we played till today. In it, he argues that the traditional healer role that exists in the modern MMORPGs only exists to fill a need in the core combat game system; that it is, in other words, purely mechanical, and present merely as a formal system, not because it captures the spirit of healing in any way.

Which makes me think, rather of a game where healing is the core mechanic.

Read More “The Healing Game”