The experimental and quite different MMO Seed is closing its doors.
This is a real shame, as Seed had an aesthetic that was quite different from anything else currently out there. With a cel-shaded comic book look, and a game system heavily premised on non-combat roles and ongoing procedural narratives per character, Seed was definitely outside of the mainstream, but was shooting for mainstream-level production values.
Another one for the timeline, I suppose. 🙁
Rob Ellis writes,
10 years ago today I drove the crew up to CompUSA to find our game sitting behind a pole… on store shelves! =) First to hit 10… WOO HOO!
Let’s see, what’s up.
I’ll be speaking at the end of January at Entertainment in the Interactive Age. The official invite looks like this:
The University of Southern California’s
Annenberg Center for Communication
&
The Interactive Digital Software Association
Present
Entertainment in the Interactive Age
Join leading game designers, critics, researches and educators for a
two-day exploration of the art and craft of interactive entertainment
and game design.
For conference information and to register online, visit our web site
at:
http://www.annenberg.edu/interactive-age
Some of the other folks who will be there include Geoff Zatkin, Warren Spector, Will Wright (keynote for him, of course!), Drs. Greg & Ray from Bioware, Janet Murray of Hamlet on the Holodeck, Hal Barwood, Tim Schafer, and more. It should be a lot of fun, and it’ll be nice to see some of these guys at a place other than E3 or GDC! The project is going well, but I can’t talk about it. But check out the official Star Wars Galaxies website for info. I have been posting there under the name Holocron. Yet another handle to add to the ever-lengthier list… *sigh* I have a bunch of updates to the Online World Timeline to do, but I didn’t get it done for this update. I kinda want to rearrange how I did the timeline, since it seems to have turned into a somewhat more widely used resource than I expected.
Crossroads of WWII Online recently reprinted a little thing I wrote on monthly fees being necessary for online games as part of their FAQ. I hear it also made the news at Evil Avatar. Maybe I should add it to this site too. 🙂
Got a note asking to use Declaring the Rights of Players as a debate topic in a debate society on Cybertown. That should be interesting, but I never heard about it again…
As usual, I did the annual live storytelling thing on LegendMUD this year. Every year since 1994, I’ve gone to the graveyard there, and in front of an audience, improvised a spooky story on the spot. This year the story was called Sugarheart, and I’ve posted it here under Stories/Live.
If you like these stories, head on over to and check out the spooky story contest. Alice is one of my favorite online comic strips, and voting ends today–the prize is some original artwork from the strip, I believe.
I got permission from the Rantings of Lum the Mad site to reprint the Roundtable on Fiction in MMORPGs so look for that under the Gaming/Talks section. I also reprinted the RPGVault interview I did a little over a month ago. You can find it under Gaming/Talks, as usual.
I’ve also updated the Online Worlds Timeline with a bunch of new info from folks like Daniel James (formerly of Avalon & Middle-Earth Online), David R. Woolley (long-time developer on PLATO), and a great set of dates for Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project supplide by KaVir aka Richard Woolcock. And more… so if you’re into the whole history bit like I am, you may want to check out the latest there. There’s even one new law, named Dundee’s Law, since he spotted it fly by on Mud-Dev.
Lastly, today I found a UO emulator shard that is using the “Advice to Virtual World Admins” from the article on Declaring the Rights of Players as the basis of their code of conduct. Yipes.
Another year, another birthday. Next year will be the big 3-0. Ah well.
I’ve done a big update to the Online Worlds Timeline (under Gaming/Essays). A bunch of info on PLATO, Minitel, MTrek, new info in the year 2000, and a somewhat nicer format.
Saw lots of citations of the Laws (& a nice quote from “Current and Future Developments in Online Games”) over at the Games Domain Review.
