Tagged News: editorial

Sean Bulger's community management driven column this week is called "Emergent Gaming". He looks at the upcoming trends in gaming and how that relates back to the community.

This could appear in several different forms, one of which is known as emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay has been a popular phrase lately. Effectively, it is players doing something with a game that the game wasn't actually designed for. Races in MMOs, creating pictures with gold in Lineage 2, or using grenades to launch vehicles or players in the air in spectacular ways in FPSs, are all prime examples of this.

In fact, there are some games out there, and in the works, that are built entirely upon the principle of emergent gaming. They aim to give players tools, as opposed to game systems, with which they can create their own gameplay.

Read more after the jump.

Jim Moreno gets back into the groove in 2008 with his latest column: Roleplayers Set S.A.I.L.! This is an acronym for "speech, actions, interactions and look", which are to him four main traits roleplayers focus on. Every other Monday, Moreno brings us a new column where he focuses in on issues that are important to roleplayers.

Taking a good look at my fellow roleplayers in the four MMORPGs I play, and across many other RPGs I've played, I see a vast number of ways we display our RP talents, way too many to count. Yet, I think these methods may all be categorized under four main traits that we focus on - speech, actions, interactions, and look - and are very easily remembered with the acronym SAIL.

Read more after the leap.

I had the opportunity to give dungeon raiding and CTF PvP a go while over in the Funcom offices last week, and today I present my my hands-on report of my experience:

"If the 'Age of Conan' dungeon designers were going for a dark, hellish, dank, and misty look for the Sanctum of Burning Souls, then they well and truly pulled it off."

Whether your game's dungeon raiding or PvP, 'Age of Conan' will be a game to sate your gameplay desires.

In his latest article, community columnist Sean Bulger looks at "The Site Beyond the Game". This community management focused column looks at official sites, how different games do it and what else is out there.

Every game has an official site for various reasons. The official site of a game is either an important hub of information and activity or it is simply a marketing page trying to draw players in. Or sometimes it is both, like how Sony Online Entertainment sets up their websites - the main page being a flash page used to draw players in, while also retaining forums and the Players websites.

Read it all after the leap.

I'll bet that you, the Mitra's Method faithful, are dying to read on and find out what I have learned about 'Age of Conan' and its progress through the beta stage.

"...This was an opportunity to see the groundwork of this game; the developers hard at work making this game what it is set out to be on May 20, 2008."

Today, it's information about the game itself with a plethora of information to come over the next coming days also.

Sam Kennedy, an editor at 1Up.com has written an opinion piece trying to make sense out of the recent problems at Gamespot and the reliability of game reviews from major news organizations.

And how about GameSpot? Will it be able to rebound from Gerstmann-gate? As a business, it'll be just fine (the dirty little secret of sites like GameSpot is that traffic is largely made up of stuff like cheat codes and forum posts anyway). In fact, the controversy surrounding Gerstmann was said to have actually boosted traffic to the site. But the question is, for those people who used to rely on GameSpot for its reviews -- and there were a great many people out there who did -- will they still, knowing that they might not be getting the same honesty as they used to? Whether or not GameSpot management realizes this, but every single review for the foreseeable future is going to be viewed with a certain air of caution. It could take years for Gerstmann-gate to leave peoples' minds (GameSpot of all publications should know this -- it took years for Sega fans to forgive the site for its 6.8 score of Shenmue). Potentially toned down reviews? I don't think gamers are going to stand for that. Not when they're shelling out $60 a pop for these things. And going forward, believe me, every advertisement in proximity of editorial will be closely scrutinized (did a publisher pay for this review?).

It's a very long and provocative article. Be sure to read it. It's an eye opener into the "biz" of game reviews.

Jonathan Steinhauer's bi-weekly Monday column looks at the "level barrier" in its latest edition. Within, he examines the very concept of levels that most MMOs embrace and what's wrong with them.

Looking more into levels within games, we find that their use a broad statement of experience demands a certain rigidness of focus. Only a few rare exceptions (such as Neverwinter Nights where an adventurer can have more than one character class) allow for greater flexibility of experience. But if you were to twist character levels and actually measure real life experience, would it be absurd to find a man that is a Level 25 computer programmer, a Level 30 husband, a Level 10 bowler, and a Level 42 chef? Not at all.

Read more after the leap.

What began as a year in review editorial, morphed into an analysis of the evidence 2007 gave us that the subscription model was on its way out in North America and Europe. In this article, I look at the historic evidence and where things might head in 2008 and beyond.

All the evidence suggests that World of Warcraft is not the harbinger of an expanded marketplace, but an aberration, a lightning strike at the right moment. Among Western audiences - as it was among Eastern audiences years ago - the subscription based MMORPG is at best on life support and more than likely on its way out the door.

The one-two punch of WoW and Guild Wars in 2004 has delivered a significant blow to the prospects of any company that has the audacity to charge their subscribers a monthly fee. Guild Wars showed that a high quality experience can be free and WoW redefined what people expect for that $14.95 a month.

Read more after the click.

In his latest column, Jonathan Steinhauer continues his look at what he calls "The Killing Experience". He began two weeks ago in part one and today looks at more recent examples of this trend. It's all about RPGs and how they use killing as the primary form of advancement, or experience.

A second, much more recent, example is with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, particularly Oblivion. In this game which follows the standard RPG model, there is no experience gain from killing. In fact, there is no experience at all. Instead, character growth is built on an array of skills specific to a particular class. As those skills are used over an over again, proficiency grows. Once there are ten threshold increases in the class skills, a new level is gained. At that point health, stamina, magicka, and prime stats also improve.

Read more after the click.

None of us can predict the future, so why do we waste our time guessing about things that might come?

"We have this uncanny ability to break-down every single word Funcom utter and jump very quickly to our own conclusions. There's a soothsayer in every single one of us, it seems."

This fortnight the question is asked, "Is this our way of dealing with the wait?" and an opportunity for you to get your questions answered by Funcom in the weeks to come.