Now you too can roleplay a Hamburglar

 Posted by (Visited 4916 times)  Game talk
Aug 042008
 

HappyMeal.com v3.0. As you would expect — codes with every Happy Meal. Two servers, one named “Golden” and one names “Arches.”

Today’s kid world is tomorrow’s teen world is day after tomorrow’s adult world. I look forward to seeing Olive Garden’s world and Ruth Chris’ world and so on, someday.

*(I don’t actually know if you can roleplay a Hamburglar).

Mass market game hardware

 Posted by (Visited 7525 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Aug 032008
 

The guys at Unity have posted hardware stats for their web users, in a manner akin to how Valve publishes stats for theirs. The results may be surprising to folks still used to the core gamer market.

Among the key things:

  • The single most popular video card, at 12% of installs, is the Intel 945.
  • Dual Core CPUs are common — like, 44%.
  • 1/4 of the machines run at DX7 level, and ~70% support 2.0 shaders.
  • But almost 4% still run in software mode.
  • 90% or so have graphics pixel fillrates of 2.0GP/s or less. That’s basically like a Radeon x1600, a card which sells on Amazon mostly used for between $45 and $120.
  • Almost 80% are running without a DX10 card and without Vista; only 2.6% can even use DX10 (since it requires both).

It’s worth bearing in mind that Unity likely still isn’t as casual as the true mass market, despite their good penetration (this data had about a million users in it), since it requires a plugin install.

This speaks, of course, to designing for everywhere.

Where to get A Theory of Fun

 Posted by (Visited 4828 times)  Game talk, Writing  Tagged with:
Aug 012008
 

Nowhere, that I know of. Occasionally you see it on half.com or from third-party sellers; sometimes, for over $200. (Of which I get nothing, of course).

This comes up particularly now because Penny Arcade linked to the book today. But I probably get a couple of inquiries a week about it (thanks for your interest, Karl, Brady, John…).

The good news is that I hope to have news on its renewed availability in the next few weeks.

Gamers rejoice: you can cancel easily now

 Posted by (Visited 4915 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Aug 012008
 

Virtual Worlds News reports that an alderman in Illinois tried to cancel his kid’s MMO account, found it too hard, and took it up with the House. And now it’s the law in Illinois that there has to be a way to cancel on the website, with no phone call or snail mail required.

This will likely be a ripple effect, unless companies are going to make Illinois-facing websites and account management. 😉

Name your MMO dream team: eep

 Posted by (Visited 10192 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jul 312008
 

So Massively asks for people to list IPs & developers for “dream teams.”

My dream team would be to purchase the MMO rights to MechWarrior, have FunCom develop it under the excellent command of Raph Koster! And use Valve to distribute over steam.

I’d like to see Raph Koster’s vision applied to the GI Joe world. A GI Joe Online similar to the original vision of PreCU SWG would be great, and without a mythos-engrained alpha class, I think it could work.

I think my brain broke.

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