Do players know what they want, c.1985

 Posted by (Visited 7630 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 022008
 

I love the serendipity factor of the Internet. Right after I post the last post on whether players know what they want, I see that Richard at QBlog has a ranked list of survey results from players on what they said they wanted in their muds back in 1985. Here’s a sampling:

Intelligent mobiles 25
Conversing with mobiles 22
Regularly improved 19
Messages to pick up later 15
Lots of rooms 14
Lots of players 11
Speed of response 10
Long textual descriptions 9
Never crashes 9
International game 6
Built-in adverts -3
Graphics -3

Check the link for the full list. 🙂

Do players know what they want?

 Posted by (Visited 18857 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jul 022008
 


There has been a lot of criticism towards the game industry, accusing them of being unoriginal. Sequels, sequels, everywhere. Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, GTA 4, Halo 3, The Sims 3, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, not to mention the annual versions of various sports games. Why can’t game companies be more original? Because game companies are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, making the games that players want, and the players don’t want original games.

— Tobold’s MMORPG Blog: Follow the money

If I say to you, “do you want chocolate ice cream?” you probably say yes. If I say to you “do you want more chocolate ice cream, this time with sprinkles on top?” you probably still say yes.

If I say “by the way, there’s also this mango sorbetto,” you may or may not try it. But you aren’t going to ask for mango sorbetto without prior knowledge of its existence.

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Query: BBS games in the late 70s?

 Posted by (Visited 18464 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Jul 012008
 

Got this email from T. L. Taylor (author of the excellent Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture):

I’ve checked on Raph’s timeline page (and googled a bunch) but don’t quite see the answer I need. I am writing this (very odd) handbook chapter on the internet & games and in my history section I am actually trying to give a bit of a nod to the old BBS scene. The Door stuff is fairly well documented but what I can’t quite find is if BBS’s in the (late) 1970s also had games you could play. I would assume so but would prefer to know for sure.

Post away if you know anything about this topic! I didn’t log onto a BBS until the mid 80s myself, so I have no idea.

Blizzard case becoming EULA test case

 Posted by (Visited 10723 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Jun 302008
 

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin

 Posted by (Visited 10568 times)  Misc  Tagged with: ,
Jun 292008
 

For those who recall the whole “blog gets hacked” odyssey, and my subsequent request for a plugin that would do security scans, check this out:

WordPress Exploit Scanner 0.1

This WordPress plugin searches the files on your site for a few known strings sometimes used by hackers, and lists them with code fragments taken from the files. It also makes a few checks of the database, looking at the active_plugins blog option, the comments table, and the posts table.

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