March 2007

• [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
• • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Morris Cox
  • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Michael Hartman
  • • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
    • • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Michael Hartman
  • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Mike Rozak
  • • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
    • • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Damion Schubert
      • • [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
• [NEWS] Trident Games Prepares New Online Game Using Skotos Engine Shannon Appelcline
• [TECH] MMOG Design List Weston Fryatt
• • [TECH] MMOG Design List Lachek Butalek
  • • [TECH] MMOG Design List Adam Martin
  • [TECH] MMOG Design List Mike Rozak
  • • [TECH] MMOG Design List Weston Fryatt
  • [TECH] MMOG Design List Hyrup, Darrin
  • [TECH] MMOG Design List Morgan Ramsay
• [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work mud-dev-list@jaruzel.com
• • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Lachek Butalek
  • • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Sean Howard
    • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work David Johansson
    • • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Lachek Butalek
      • • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work David Johansson
  • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Keith Dunwoody
  • • [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Sean Howard
• [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
• • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Caliban Darklock
  • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Lachek Butalek
    • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
    • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Caliban Darklock
  • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
  • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Craig Huber
    • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
      • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Craig Huber
        • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: Arantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Dave Scheffer
          • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
    • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
    • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
    • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
      • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
        • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
          • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Damion Schubert
          • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Tess Snider
            • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
              • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Adam Martin
                • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
              • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Mike Rozak
              • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
                • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
              • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
              • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Acius
              • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
        • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Mike Rozak
        • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Chris Richards
          • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
            • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Ling Lo
              • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
            • [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
            • • [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study Mike Sellers
              • • [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
                • • [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
            • [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names cruise
            • • [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names John Buehler
              • [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names Johnicholas Hines
              • [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names Lachek Butalek
          • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
          • • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Adam Martin
        • [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jon Leonard
  • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
  • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
    • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
      • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
        • • [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
• [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Michael Hartman
• • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jean, Yannick
  • • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Michael Hartman
    • • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Damion Schubert
      • • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jeffrey Kesselman
        • • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) cruise
          • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Michael Hartman
          • • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jeffrey Kesselman
      • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] cruise
      • • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] John Buehler
        • • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Sean Howard
            "John Buehler" <johnbue@msn.com> wrote:
            > Here's a sincere question for anyone who has been involved with
            > developing a published game in the action genre: why are combat systems
            > the way they are?
            
            > Is it inertia from the past, failure to find a new sweet spot, simple
            > enjoyment of things the way they are, difficulty in producing anything
            > much more involved than exists today, something else?
            
            I am not speaking from personal design experience, but I was part of a
            team that worked on a snowboarding game, which liberally borrowed from the
            previous games. In this instance, it was for several reasons:
            
            1) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was really popular at the time, which set up
            expectations of how the buttons should work. It would've been difficult to
            sell a different control scheme to our publishers, much less our target
            audience. SSX, for example, changed its control scheme with the fourth
            game to be more like Tony Hawk for exactly this reason.
            
            2) The designer and producer weren't very smart. I don't mean to be crude,
            but they had very limited exposure to all the other snowboarding games out
            there. Naturally, they drew from this limited experience completely. They
            also actively worked against broadening this experience and refused
            multiple snowboard games after five minutes of play because they were
            pre-PS2 generation.
            
            3) Back to the smart thing. They tried to create new gameplay systems, and
            even as modest in scope as they were, failed to produce something playable
            or fun. Some of these failures could've had moderate success with some
            effort, prototyping, and testing, but they seemed resistent to do that and
            instead attempted to implement the systems full bore without even thinking
            it all the way through. Others were doomed from the start, either being
            genuinely bad ideas or unfeasible for the time we were allotted.
            
            4) After these problems and slow progress due to having to constant rework
            systems, the publisher eventually started babysitting each design decision
            and milestone. By the time I left the company, they were sending out
            weekly cds to some designated third party designer in another city and no
            longer controlled the milestone progress at all. The game was eventually
            cancelled.
            
            In other words, yes. Everything you said is right. It is generally a
            mixture of expectations, inability, time, and failure - even if you
            conquer one of these, the others may still bring you down. I don't think
            it is impossible to create new and unique gameplay systems, but in a
            monolithic corporate entity which answers to shareholders and not other
            game designers, it is a far, far safer route to do the tried and true. It
            is the first resort and the last resort.
            
            --
            Sean Howard
        • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Michael Hartman
        • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Jeffrey Kesselman
        • • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] cruise
          • • Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Jeffrey Kesselman
    • [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jeffrey Kesselman
• [DESIGN] Turn Around Time On Experimentation (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
• • [DESIGN] Turn Around Time On Experimentation (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
• [ANNOUNCE] What Makes A Next-Gen Game? Morgan Ramsay
• • [ANNOUNCE] What Makes A Next-Gen Game? Lachek Butalek
• [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Mike Rozak
• • [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction John Buehler
  • [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Paolo Piselli
  • • [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Mike Rozak
• [BIZ] Austin Game Conference Contacts? Jeffrey Kesselman
• • [BIZ] Austin Game Conference Contacts? Daniel James
• [MEDIA] A good, hour-long news segment about Second Life Mike Rozak
• Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Adam Martin
• • Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Adam Martin
  • • Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Hudson, Thomas C.
    • • Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Jeffrey Kesselman
  • Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Kerry Fraser-Robinson
  • Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Jeffrey Kesselman
• [Announce] CircumReality - A grahical MUD (kind of) develoment toolkit Mike Rozak
• Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Hudson, Thomas C.
• • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
  • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Shannon Sullivan
    • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
      • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
    • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
    • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
      • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Peter Keeler
        • • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
        • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
    • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Tess Snider
  • Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguardreviews and rants) Richard A. Bartle