empty
Latest
EVE Evolved: Has EVE Online boxed itself in?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online in 2004, it was an empty shell of a game. There were only three classes of ship, no alliances or starbases, and neither exploration complexes nor level 4 missions existed yet. EVE consisted of 5,000 systems of almost completely empty space populated by less than 50,000 players. The user interface was an order of magnitude worse than it is today (if you can imagine that), and the tutorial just dropped you in the middle of space with the ship equivalent of a pea shooter and a less-than-enthusiastic "good luck!" Though much of the game was empty, it sat before players like a blank galactic canvas. Not only could players paint their own stories into the game world, but EVE's highly active development team was updating the game at lightning speed. Players instinctively filled the voids in the game with their hopes and dreams, projecting all the things that EVE could be into the gaps. People shared ideas on the forum directly with the developers, and practically anything was possible. Things aren't quite the same today, as new ideas have to be compatible with over nine years' worth of updates, and developer CCP Games really can't afford to rock the boat and potentially lose subscriptions. In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider whether the past nine years of development has boxed EVE in, forcing the gameplay down an ever-narrowing branch of choices.
What's Keeping Me? 1.0.5
Have you ever tried to empty the Trash on your Mac only to receive a dreaded message that said the trash couldn't be emptied because a file was in use? Well, "What's Keeping Me" hopes to solve this problem with it's advanced trash-error detection technology (we kid, it's really just magic). If you encounter the message that the trash cannot be emptied, just click on What's Keeping Me to see what application or process is keeping the trash from being emptied. You can have What's Keeping Me quit the application or if need be kill (force-quit) the application. You can download What's Keeping Me from HAMSoft Engineering; this application is freeware, however, donations are accepted.
Big business analysts looking more kindly on Second Life once again.
It seems like only yesterday, but I guess it was about 6 months ago, that a lot of big business analysts were saying, in rather more business like language, "OMG what's all the fuss about Second Life?" This isn't from the point of view of the casual player, this was stories such as "a responsible IT manager should block access to Second Life because it is a risk to your data security" and "No one can make a decent return on investment in Second Life."Over the last few days I've started to see, directly or indirectly, articles changing this advice: Erica Driver asks does it matter if Second Life appears empty in places for the Forrester Information and Knowledge Management blog; Peter Abrahams, for IT Director, suggests that Second Life is now too important not to be accessible - and whilst he concentrates on disabled accesshe has the underlying assumption that businesses are increasingly using Second Life productively and this will continue to increase in importance; Pham Neutra in his Otherland Blog points out an article from Gartner saying that by 2010, 20% of tier 1 global retailers will have a marketing presence in virtual worlds and online games. That's in 2 years time remember! We are starting to see more and more people working out how to use Second Life - and as Pham comments in his blog, they are starting to learn how to define useful metrics for success in this brave new world.
An empty E3 show floor? Only at the Barker Hangar
Here's something we bet you've never seen before today -- an open E3 show floor that isn't flooded wall-to-wall with people. The much-reduced invite list might have something to do with it, but personally, we feel it was a bad move to put the show floor at the Barker Hangar, which is roughly five thousand miles* from everything else. Still there were some nice games out there, and the Joystiq crew will be making the long, long journey throughout the show to give you some hands-on impressions.* - Your mileage may vary.
First screenshots of MySims DS lack fun
Though EA announced MySims for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii, we haven't spotted many previews for the handheld version like we have with the console's. Looking at the screenshots Jeux-France posted earlier today for MySims DS, we're a little worried about where EA plans to take the game.We understand that MySims will have to be pared down for its portable adaptation, but the limited character customization options on the DS seem bare-bones compared to what we've seen on the Wii. Also, the media released for the Wii's MySims features the cartoonish characters in a range of activities -- hosting parties, playing in fountains, and eating spaghetti dinners at the neighborhood restaurant. These DS screenshots show the Sims strolling through empty streets and exploring lonesome piers. How depressing!We're hoping that EA won't wait too long to reveal screenshots of MySims DS that better resemble the Wii version's cheerful attitude. As it stands now, the handheld game looks like it has more in common with REM's music video for Everybody Hurts. Jump past the post break for a preview of the bleak neighborhood.
