Don’t Make an MMO

Bill Roper is known for work on Bliz­zard titles from 1994 to 2003. Since then, he admits that he’s met with less suc­cess, for what­ever rea­sons. After his expe­ri­ences on the sort-of MMO Hell­gate, and Cryptic’s two recent releases, Roper expressed con­cern that the fund­ing model of MMO devel­op­ment is bro­ken, espe­cially when it comes


Like Call of Duty? You’ll Love FarmVille

So, you’re a gamer. This seems a rea­son­able assump­tion given the web­site you’ve cho­sen to read. That means that you’ve likely played Call of Duty, judg­ing by the sales of Black Ops and its two imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors. You may even have spent two hun­dred hours earn­ing its many weapons, unlocks, and badges. Con­grat­u­la­tions, you’ve killed


Watson may win Jeopardy, but does it matter?

Con­tin­u­ing a short-lived fas­ci­na­tion with Skynet’s immi­nent takeover, recently I saw that IBM has designed a com­puter to win at Jeop­ardy. The asso­ci­ated com­pe­ti­tion begins air­ing, oddly enough, on Valentine’s day. And hey, that’s neat. This par­tic­u­lar man vs. machine skir­mish is a lot more approach­able than Deep Blue vs. Kas­parov. But there’s some­thing odd here…


Watching a “Non-Gamer” Game

Dur­ing the recent hol­i­day, a Christ­mas gift exchange pro­vided a chance to learn some­thing. Being me, I embraced expec­ta­tions of what a geek and a game designer con­sid­ers a good gift, and I deliv­ered a 360 copy of Red Dead Redemp­tion to some­one who is a bit of a gamer, but not much of a