Btw, most of you who know me irl know about my love of the escapist magazine (online), they have a killer interview with Raph presently and he discusses swg and uo and the good and bad of each. Interesting tidbit…
“I didn’t like a lot of the subsequent choices – thinking here of Holocron drops, [Temporary Enemy Flag] changes, group sizes, buff expansions, global market, entertainer changes, creature handler removal, levels, a lot of the combat upgrade … I could give you my opinions there, but there’s no point – even those changes have been changed. Many of them were essentially trying to dig out of the hole that launching prematurely had caused. I can’t really blame anyone for them, whether I agreed with the decisions or not. The whole time, the team worked their ass off and tried their best.
I’ll make an exception for the NGE. I don’t think you can or should change a game that radically out from under a user base. You dance with the ones that brung ya, whether they are the market of your dreams or not. They have invested their passion and built expectations about where they want the game to go. Changing things out from under them isn’t fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It’s like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won’t love you back.” – Raph Koster (the escapist magazine interview)
Go read the rest of the interview… but my point is… this is pretty much what everyone who left the swg community has said since they butchered it. Good to see that changes like that don’t sit well even with some of the original creative content behind the game.
Gaming
… than never eh? I just read this from the GDC 2005 notes, thought it brought up some interesting points and also brought up some things I kinda wanted to mention. Here’s the GDC notes section I wanted to mention (Warren Spector, Brenda Laurel, Jason Della Rocca, Chris Hecker, Greg Costikyan):
Q: I am one of the bad guys: I’m working on a big budget next generation console game. I want to ask about totally legalised piracy? Not Russia and grey markets I’m talking Blockbuster. 20 dollars a year you can borrow whatever you like then give it back. People are going to rent my game for 4 dollars. I won’t see any of that. They’re robbing me!
Chris: I’m pro-piracy. I want people to play the games I make. I do it because it’s art. I think DRM is a total fucking stupid mess. If the game industry collapses and can be reborn, I’m all for it. Pirate on!
Greg: they’re not pirating the game! Someone bought a legal copy! The world is not designed in such a way that money inherently funnels its way into your wallet!?
Warren: I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!
I think DRM is starting to hurt the gaming industry in general. Why? Because it *annoys* people, I recently got a game off of steam that I can play maybe 1 time in 4 that I try. All my other steam games work fine, but this one can never seem to authenticate. I’ll never buy another game from that developer again, it’s a waste of my money. This is one example of how its starting to hurt the industry in general, another is almost all of my friends when they buy a new game is head to a crack site and get the no-cd crack… because its annoying to have to get your disks out constantly and change them every time you play another game… even more so when the ENTIRE GAME IS ON THE HARD DISK. I think one of the many reasons that the MMO games are doing so well is… they’re not annoying, you enter your key ONCE and you’re done! There’s no ensuring the disk is in the drive, if your friends disk gets ripped up he can borrow yours or burn a copy, no problems. It’s exactly how the system *SHOULD* work. We can use our stuff freely and the developers make their money. Any who… just my couple cents.
Shadus Ramblings